for their alleged paternalism towards Māori. Fox commented that Māori have "gone back like a beaten wife to the abuser" in regards to Labour's sweep of the Māori seats. Metro Magazine described the Māori Party's poor results as being part of backlash against them for helping National form a government. Within the following 12 months, the party’s senior figures resigned: Flavell and Fox stepped down from the co-leadership, as well as party president Tukoroirangi Morgan. This opened the field for a new generation of party leaders, namely Rāwiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. 2020 election The party announced John Tamihere as its candidate for the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate in March 2020. Tamihere had held the electorate from 2002 to 2005, but for the Labour Party. He had also run for Mayor of Auckland in 2019 without success. Tamihere's mayoral campaign was more right-wing, and he said the Māori Party could happily work with the National Party. This contradicted Māori Party President Che Wilson, who had set out a clear preference to work with Labour and had said "if we ever do talk to National it will have to be a big deal for us to move that way again." On 15 April 2020, the party announced that John Tamihere and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were the new party co-leaders. The party received a broadcasting allocation of $145,101 for the 2020 election. At the 2020 general election, held in October, the Māori Party's Rawiri Waititi captured the Waiariki electorate, defeating Labour MP Tāmati Coffey by a margin of 836 votes. This allowed the Māori Party to enter Parliament, and with its party vote of 1.2%, it was entitled to two MPs. After Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer entered Parliament as the highest-ranked person on the party list. Under the Māori Party's constitution, its co-leaders must be drawn from its MPs first, and one must be female and one male. As the only male Māori Party MP, Waititi replaced Tamihere as a co-leader. On 11 November, former party co-leader Tamihere requested a vote recount in the Māori electorates of Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Tai Hauāuru, alleging Māori voters had encountered discrimination during the 2020 election. Tamihere claimed that the recount was intended to expose discriminatory laws such as the five-yearly Māori Electoral Option (which limited the ability of Māori to switch between the general and Māori rolls for a period five years). He also alleged longer wait