The New Zealand Parliament has voted to impose record suspensions on three lawmakers who did a Maori haka as a protest. The incident took place last November during a debate on a law on Indigenous rights.
New Zealand’s parliament on Thursday agreed to lengthy suspensions for three lawmakers who disrupted the reading of a controversial bill last year by performing a haka, a traditional Maori dance.
Two parliamentarians — Te Pati Maori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi — were suspended for 21 days and one — Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, from the same party — for seven days.
Before now, the longest suspension of a parliamentarian in New Zealand was three days.
I mean, a surprise pray-in also would have gone over poorly.
Doubt
New Zealand is over 50% atheist. “Pray ins” are not a thing there. It would be political suicide.
Its Parliament is Westminster system.
IIRC, people get in trouble for that in the US. This is New Zealand, where the standards of decorum are much higher and evangelical nonsense is much weaker.
I’d love to see that be the case
Lol, it appears protests happen during American proceedings so much that there’s no actual list. Pray-ins are an established tactic, though, and the penalties are given out on a pretty much production-line basis, so I doubt any exception is made. But, I can’t find a concrete example, sorry.
They’ve recently established in the Supreme Court that pray ins are kosher
Interesting! Do you have a link? My search is returning a bunch of stuff about praying for the supreme court or the supreme court on prayer in local council meeting openings.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/justices-side-with-high-school-football-coach-who-prayed-on-the-field-with-students/
They ruled that school officials can openly pray on school grounds and encourage students to pray.
https://www.ncronline.org/news/court-upholds-rule-house-open-each-day-it-session-prayer
And they openly pray in legislative houses
Ah, yes.
That’s not the same as doing it in a manner that disrupts official proceedings, though. And technically it applies to all religions, although we know how coach SayAShahada would go in practice.