Wilkie Olaf Patua Rasmussen (born 21 March 1958) is a Cook Islands politician and former Cabinet Minister.
[4] In 2002 he resigned as High Commissioner to New Zealand to contest the 2002 Penrhyn by-election as Cook Islands Party candidate, and was elected.
[5] Early in his political career he challenged the eligibility of two Government MPs to sit, on the grounds that they worked as paid consultants and were therefore public servants.
[7] After being narrowly re-elected in the 2004 election, Rasmussen was brought into the coalition Cabinet of Jim Marurai, replacing Piho Rua as Minister of Culture and Tourism.
[13] On 28 July 2009 he was sacked for "disloyalty" by Marurai,[14] and subsequently expelled from Cook Islands Democratic Party on 25 August 2009.
[18] Rasmussen was co-president of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly until December 2009, when he was replaced by Charles Milupi of (Zambia).