With only four more seats in the 50-member Parliament yet to be officially declared, there is no outright winner in the Solomon Islands elections.

As of Monday, the two largest blocs in the winner’s circle, independents and the incumbent Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s Our Party, were tied with 12 MPs each.

It is a significant result, given at the last election in 2019 Our Party did not even exist going into the polls, but was created by Sogavare with the sole intention of pulling together the large number of independent MPs that emerged from the election that year.

RNZ Pacific investigations have identified the location of some of the lobbying camps in the capital.

The Honiara Hotel camp in Chinatown was set up by former prime minister Gordon Darcy Lilo’s Solomon Islands Party for Rural Advancement a week before polling even began.

Sogavare’s Our Party, the largest grouping in the last Parliament, has a well-documented affiliation to the Cowboy’s Grill in the eastern side of town.

The former opposition leader Mathew Wale, who gambled in setting up the country’s first ever publicly announced pre-election coalition “CARE”, is understood to be holed up at the Heritage Park Hotel in the CBD.

Prediction impossible
At this stage, it is next to impossible to predict the final form of the coalition government because MPs are not legally bound to political parties and can move freely between the different camps.

In Solomon Islands, there is a stark disparity in both pay and benefits between government, opposition and independent MPs, which ups the stakes significantly and has been fingered by political experts as one of the root causes of political instability in the country.

Meanwhile, losing candidates around the country are already preparing election petitions ahead of a 30-day window for submissions which opens once all the election results are in.

In 2019, more than half of the MPs had election petitions filed against them but the majority where dismissed due to a lack of sufficient evidence.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Former Supervisor of Elections Jon Apted says that the coalition formed by the  Social Democratic Liberal Party with the People’s Alliance/National Federation Party should be able to successfully elect a Prime Minister at the first sitting.

He said that with the 2022 General Election over and FFP tied with the PA/NFP coalition at 26 seats each and Sodelpa holding three critical seats, there were a number of steps to be taken in the process of forming the next government.

“Once the Electoral Commission formally conducts the allocation of seats, they will publicly declare the names of the candidates who have been elected,” he said.

“They then forward those names to the Secretary-General to Parliament.

“They also endorse those names on the writ of election that was earlier issued to the Commission by the President and return the writ to the President.” Apted said under section 67 of the Constitution, the President must then call Parliament to meet within 14 days.

“This can be any date within the next two weeks.

“Under the Constitution, he needs to act on the advice of the current Prime Minister. The President has no power to act in his own judgment.”

Swearing in new members
Apted said under the Constitution where no party had won an outright majority of seats, the sitting PM and Cabinet remained in office until the first meeting of Parliament.

“At that first meeting, the SG must first swear in the new members who then elect the Speaker.

“The Speaker comes from outside Parliament. A candidate or candidates would be nominated by the members of the parties in Parliament. The Speaker must be elected by a simple majority of votes. Assuming that everyone turns up and is sworn in, that means that the new Speaker must have the support of at least 28 new MPs.”

Apted said once the Speaker was sworn in, he or she would preside over the selection in Parliament for who is to be the PM under section 93 of the Constitution.

“The Speaker first calls for nominations. If only one person is nominated and seconded, that person automatically becomes the PM. However, if there is more than one nominee, a vote must be taken.

“If a nominee gets more than 50 per cent of all the members of Parliament, then they will be PM. If no one gets more than 50 per cent, then a second vote must be held within 24 hours.

“The assumption is that lobbying will go on during this period.

“If after the second vote, someone has more than 50 per cent, he or she will be PM. If not, there has to be a third vote within 24 hours.”

Apted said if no one gets more than 50 per cent in the third vote, then the Speaker has to notify the President that Parliament is unable to elect a PM, and the President must within 24 hours dissolve Parliament and issue a new writ of election for a fresh election.

However, in reality with Sodelpa agreeing to form a coalition with the PAP/NFP coalition, that coalition should be able to successfully elect a PM at the first sitting, Apted said.

Felix Chaudhary is a Fiji Times journalist. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The results of Vanuatu’s snap election have been released, but it is not clear who has come out on top.

The official results have revealed a fractured Parliament with seven being the highest number of MPs won by a single party.

The caretaker prime minister and leader of Vanua’aku Pati, Bob Loughman, has secured seven seats and former opposition leader Ralph Regenvanu’s Graon mo Jastis Party has four seats.

A commentator on Vanuatu politics, Dr Tess Newton Cain, said both sides now needed to rely on independents and minor parties to form a majority.

Leading up to the release of the official results on Sunday, two coalition groups had formed.

Ralph Regenvanu’s coalition claims to have 31 out of 52 seats.

However, some candidates are appearing on the roster for both coalitions and things will not become clear until Parliament is called to swear-in the MPs.

Woman elected
It has been confirmed that a woman has been elected for the first time in more than a decade.

Gloria Julia Kings of the Union of Moderate Parties has been elected in Efate Rural alongside two colleagues. She was the fourth of five elected candidates with 1618 votes.

The election was triggered when Vanuatu’s Supreme Court dismissed a constitutional application in September challenging the dissolution of Parliament.

The 27 opposition MPs had challenged the legality of the dissolution, given a motion of no confidence had been filed against Loughman as prime minister.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Voter turnout in 🇻🇺 reached below 50% in this year’s election. Only 48.45% of all registered voters who turned up to vote on the 13 October 2022. pic.twitter.com/9OJduQRCtf

— Jason Matariki (@Jaxniel) October 23, 2022

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz