Smear campaign tainted vote, candidate alleges

ODILE NELSON

Allegations of a radio smear campaign and a defeated candidate’s promise to “consider her options” may cloud Pita Aatami’s March 28 re-election as president of Makivik Corp.

Aatami won a third consecutive term as president at last week’s Makivik annual general meeting by an overwhelming margin.

Though only 53 per cent of eligible beneficiaries cast ballots, Aatami’s popular appeal was evident. He took 1,745 of the 2,709 votes cast, or 64 per cent of the total. His two rivals, Annie Popert and Johnny Oovaut, won only 25 per cent and nine per cent respectively.

Aatami ran on a platform of continued economic development, a reputation for brokering successful deals including the billion-dollar Sanarrutik economic agreement with Quebec, and support for the new-government framework negotiations between Nunavik and the provincial and federal governments.

But Popert, whose campaign focused on social issues and who is against the current new-government framework agreement, was crying foul days before the election.

Popert alleges that Harry Tulugak, a new-government negotiator for Makivik and a long-time employee of the organization, spent the week before the election making libelous statements against her on different community radio stations. In an interview with Nunatsiaq News this week, Popert said Tulugak’s comments, made so closely to the election date, may have affected the election result.

“His intention was be to smear my campaign, that’s all,” Popert said. “For the many people who voted, that did not know me or my principles, it may have put a question mark in their head and then they wouldn’t vote for me then. I don’t know that for sure, but that’s certainly what I would do if I had three people running and one of them’s being called a liar. It would put doubt in my mind.”

Popert, a former director-general of the Kativik School Board, worked with Tulugak as a commissioner on the 2001 Let Us Share report. Tulugak was a strong supporter of the report, but Popert refused to sign it.

She claimed the report, which was intended to provide the foundation for future self-government negotiations, threatened the right of Nunavimmiut to self-determination.

Popert alleges Tulugak’s on-air comments during the run-up to the election created a false impression of her refusal to sign the agreement.

According to Popert, Tulugak publicly said she lied about the Nunavik commission and that she must be an unreasonable individual, otherwise she would have signed the document. She also alleges that Tulugak claimed she once bumped a recently released hospital patient off an airplane flight so she could have a seat.

Popert said she reported Tulugak’s comments to Makivik’s corporate secretary two days before the election. She requested Makivik end Tulugak’s radio addresses and take corrective measures to undo the damage that she alleges were caused by Tulugak’s words.

Popert said Makivik later informed her that Tulugak was ordered to stop. But the organization, she said, also told her that was all that could be done. Makivik, she said, refused to make Tulugak apologize publicly for his remarks.

“I would have liked someone, like the corporate secretary, to go on the regional radio station to say, ‘What you have been hearing is not acceptable. What has been happening is not acceptable. We don’t operate in this matter as Inuit regarding elections’,” Popert said.

Though she would not confirm whether she is seeking legal advice, Popert said she is “considering her options.”

Harry Tulugak could not be reached for comment as of Nunatsiaq News press-time this week. But Lisa Koperqualuk, communications officer for Makivik, said the allegation that Tulugak’s remarks affected the election is unfounded.

“Harry I hear went on the radio only on two occasions. It was not a factor at all in swaying popular opinion,” Koperqualuk said. “If I were to see Annie win this election you know what I see? An angry leader and that’s what I think people see as well.”

Popert dismissed the idea that Aatami’s victory is a show of popular support for the new-government framework agreement.

“Because I was on the commission and I didn’t sign the report, people have a tendency to say, ‘Well it’s a self-government issue.’ But the most important issue of my campaign was the social issues,” she said.

“Our young people are dying whether by suicide. We’re losing over a dozen a year from suicide…. We have to do something for them…. That’s why I ran.”