Only a year after its re-election, the “OUR” government in Solomon Islands has collapsed. At least ten ministers and backbenchers, including Manasseh Sogavare as finance minister, have resigned from the Ownership, Unity and Responsibility Party and formed a coalition with their former adversaries. With the opposition now boasting a majority in the 49-member parliament (one seat is vacant), a no-confidence vote on 6 May may see the end of Jeremiah Manele’s short-lived tenure as Prime Minister.
In itself, this is scarcely unusual for Solomon Islands. The country has regularly seen “rubber band” or “grasshopper” politicians switching sides along with mid-term convulsions driven by frivolous no-confidence challenges. Beleaguered prime ministers have been left desperately trying to shore up their fragile coalitions using money donated by unscrupulous logging companies or would-be casino operators.
What is unusual is that the latest rupture follows a period of relative stability. Uniquely in Solomon Islands history, the cabinet went into the April 2024 elections unified behind a single party in OUR. Buoyed by the 2019 switch to diplomatic recognition of China away from Taiwan, the OUR Party leadership promised a new era of economic development funded by Beijing’s infrastructure investments. On the campaign trail in early 2024, the prime minister Manasseh Sogavare confidently assured crowds of supporters that a bright future awaited them. Rosy promises that living standards would be substantially lifted by the new partnership struck a chord in a country with the lowest per capita GDP in the Pacific region. Not even Solomon Mamaloni, who served as prime minister three times in the 1980s and 1990s, ever managed to unite his cabinet in this way.
Yet the April 2024 election was not a spectacular success for the OUR Party. Half of its ministers lost their seats. None of the party’s new candidates won in any constituency. Nevertheless, those that did win were able to assemble a coalition with a motley group of independents to form a new government. The price paid was that Sogavare, who has served four times as head of government but who is also a polarising politician, stepped aside to allow his former foreign minister Jeremiah Manele to take the top job.
The period between general elections and formation of a new government is often highly unstable in Solomon Islands, with rival camps based in Honiara’s hotels seeking to lure naïve first-time MPs from rival factions. Not so in 2024. The OUR Party group, camped out at the Cowboy’s Grill, a restaurant in eastern Honiara, always had the numbers. The opposition faction, led by Matthew Wale, never stood a chance.
The reconfiguration of the Solomon Islands government after the April 2024 elections was not unwelcome in Australia and New Zealand. For over two decades, Sogavare has had troubled relations with Canberra and Wellington, dating back to his tumultuous periods in government in 2000–01 and 2006–07. Manele was better able to cultivate relationships on the international stage, but he too had some uncomfortable bedfellows, and he proved less adept than his predecessor at mastering the dark arts of holding together the ruling coalition in Honiara.
The opposition can club together to oust a sitting prime minister but then splinter over the divisive question of choosing an alternative leader.
Manele’s deputy prime minister Bradley “Smokey” Tovosia, also the mining minister, became a focus of opposition criticism due to claims of a haughty and tyrannical ministerial leadership style. Unpaid royalties on 33 shipments of bauxite to China also drew attention, as well as allegations about illegal mineral exports and unlawful issuance of mining leases. Even before the 2024 election, there were shocking revelations about a “road to nowhere” constructed in Tovosia’s remote East Guadalacanal constituency. Dug out by a joint venture with Chinese company “Win-Win” investments, the road ran 20 kilometres into the interior before stopping abruptly, allegedly because the real objective was prospecting for minerals in a hitherto uncharted mountainous area. After Sogavare and the other rebels crossed the floor this week, Tovosia promptly resigned, possibly to leave a vacancy to allow Manele’s government to reconfigure itself by belatedly enticing one of the prominent grasshoppers to return to government.
Even if a no-confidence vote challenge proves successful, there is no guarantee that Sogavare will return for a fifth time as Prime Minister. In neighbouring Papua New Guinea, as in Germany, a “constructive” no-confidence motion requires the opposition to simultaneously nominate an alternative prime minister, but in Solomon Islands there is no such necessity. So, the opposition can club together to oust a sitting prime minister but then splinter over the divisive question of choosing an alternative leader. It was in that way that Sogavare proved able to immediately return to office as deputy prime minister after he was ousted in a no confidence vote in late 2017.
What has changed since 2017 is the amount of money potentially at the disposal of politicians ahead of no-confidence ballots, including cash from the Chinese-donated National Development Fund. This time around, Beijing has allies on both sides. So that could either fuel a spending bonanza or else China might more sensibly recognise that it has little to lose from a change in government.
