K Gurunathan, 63, edged out five other candidates for the post, including the one-term incumbent Ross Church, The Star reported today.
Gurunathan had garnered 8,911 votes to emerge victorious over Church’s 6,611 votes, and will serve the 2016-2019 term.
In the last mayoral election in 2013, Gurunathan came in second to Church.
Gurunathan started his journalism career as a chief reporter with the now defunct Penang-based The National Echo, back in 1983. He later joined DAP’s The Rocket as the editor, before moving to The New Straits Times as a political commentator.
He last served in Malaysia as the special features editor with The Sun before leaving for Wellington with his Kiwi wife Claire and two young children in 1995. He’s now a father of three children aged between 33 and 19.
Guru also worked for a local community paper The Kapiti Observer from 1995 to 2008, and later Kapiti News.
In the latter, he had his own column called “Notes from a Corner Dairy”.
Guru attributed his win to his track record as a two-term councillor since 2010, saying it was proof that “meritocracy had be supported by a long association before you are accepted as culturally safe”.
His key message in his campaign was to have an open, transparent and accountable council.
“Being a migrant and from a minority community was not an issue although some of them voting for me said that I could not win the mayoralty because of the redneck element,” he was quoted as saying by The Star.
Guru is not the only Malaysian elected to a senior local government position overseas.
It was recently reported that Malaysian-born Ken Ong, 57, was running for the Lord Mayor’s position in Melbourne, Australia.
Ong, who has been living in Melbourne the last 30 years, is a two-term councillor.
On the national political level, Sabah-born Penny Wong served as finance minister in Julia Gillard’s Labour government.
A former lawyer in Adelaide, Wong was elected to represent South Australia in the Senate in 2001 and later named minister in charge of climate change, energy efficiency and water when Kevin Rudd became prime minister in 2007. She remained in the Cabinet, after Rudd resigned and Gillard took over in 2010.