Close election leaves Amagoalik with few options

MIRIAM HILL

John Amagoalik fought a tight, see-saw race with Cathy Towtongie as the results of the NTI presidential by-election began rolling in Monday night.

At about 9:30 p.m., as candidates and supporters gathered in a conference room in Iqaluit’s Navigator Inn, Amagoalik took an early lead with 27 per cent of the vote in 10 out of 40 polling stations.

By midnight, Cathy Towtongie’s numbers had begun to rise rapidly. She led the pack with 1,159 votes, 11 votes more than Amagoalik. Candidate Jerry Ell was 21 votes behind Amagoalik, with 32 stations reporting.

At 12:15 a.m., after 37 polls had delivered their numbers, Amagoalik again took the lead over Towtongie, by 65 votes.

When 2 a.m. hit, Amagoalik checked the board, saw he was still leading by a tiny margin and left the building.

About 15 minutes later, when Arviat’s 519 votes were reported, Towtongie was declared the winner with 1,700 votes. Amagoalik had 1,526, Ell 1,386 and Methuselah Kunuk 1,000. Rachel Qitsualik and Andrew Tagak received 409 and 314 votes respectively.

Amagoalik disappointed

“Perhaps the results could have been different if I’d worked a little harder on my campaign,” Amagoalik said the day after the election. “Looking back, I should have visited more communities, my campaign should have been more visible.”

Amagoalik, the former Qikiqtani Inuit Association executive director who is often called “The Father of Nunavut” is unemployed and admitted that he couldn’t afford to travel to communities.

“Being ambushed by Nunasi and CBC didn’t help,” he said, referring to a news story released just before the election, which reported Nunasi Corporation, an Inuit development corporation, had filed a court claim against Amagoalik for $37,500 in unpaid rent.

Amagoalik admitted to owing the money, but said he had to make a choice between feeding his family and paying the rent.

He said because of the narrow margin of victory in the Dec. 10 election, the news story might have made the difference between winning and losing.

But, he said, the close race didn’t surprise him. “When you look at the regional breakdown of the votes and the candidates, there were four men from Baffin and a woman from the Keewatin,” he said. “Certain communities tend to vote regionally, so it wasn’t surprising to see Cathy walking up the middle.”

He said he will spend a few days assessing his situation before deciding what he will do next. “I don’t have too many options, but I’ll figure something out,” he said.

Ell happy with Rankin

Jerry Ell, a former president of the Nunavut Construction Corporation and president of the 2002 Arctic Winter games, says he is going to focus on establishing his own business.

“I’ve done that in the past where I’ve worked as a consultant for business development, in terms of lobbying. But I’m not ruling out running for NTI president again in the future,” he said.

He watched the results come in from his home in Rankin Inlet and said while the overall results were disappointing, he found the voting results from that community heartening.

“It was just fantastic here with 45 to 50 per cent turnout and I got about 45 per cent of that right here in Rankin,” he said. He received 207 votes out of 460, compared with Towtongie’s 134. “That to me is so very personal because I just moved here in the summer.”

The 45 per cent voter turnout across the territory is not as wonderful. Of 14,218 eligible voters, only 6,335 bothered to make their choice for NTI president official.

Ell said he encountered some of that apathy when he was on the election trail. He chalks it up to poor leadership from those in elected office.

“So many people are disappointed by the results and the lack of commitment by the elected officials to maintain honesty and to avoid embarrassing Inuit. That was really coming out strong and I think that’s the major reason why there was such a low turnout,” he said.

Kunuk wins Igloolik

Methuselah Kunuk, an Iqaluit resident and chief executive officer of Qikiqtaaluk Corporation, came out in fourth place with 1,000 votes.

When the first results came in, Kunuk was in second place behind John Amagoalik. By the time votes were calculated at the 25th polling station, Kunuk had dropped to fourth place.

Kunuk won Igloolik, his hometown, with 148 votes, but it wasn’t enough to push him ahead.

Following the final tally, Kunuk said: “I was hoping to do better than that. It’s the people who vote and they voted for what they wanted. I have to congratulate Cathy on her win.”

He said he hopes Towtongie focuses on creating economic opportunities for small businesses and making Inuktitut the working language of Nunavut.

With files from Denise Rideout.