An analyst on Melanesia politics from Australia says there are successes from the November 19 elections, but added there’s more to be done.
Dr Karl Claxton was part of a team from the Australian National University that participated in monitoring the elections.
He is an expert on South Pacific security, Melanesia, non-traditional security, Australia’s defense partnerships working at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
While a detailed report on the monitoring will be made available soon, Claxton agreed to offer his personal reflections.
He said the November 19 polls were widely seen as a test of Solomon Islands stability after withdrawal of military component of RAMSI last year.
“First the good news, the process seems to have gone extremely well, at least so far,” he said.
“The new voter Biometric system has essentially resulted in the end of double, triple and sometimes quadruple voting.
“While it was very expensive it’s given people real confidence, results and the process.
“At the same time photo intimidation seems to be down and my hunches that the survey results will show that election violence down too,” he said.
However, he said even though most candidates, including sitting MPs, run on a time for change platform, there’s very little change in politics here.
“The number of incumbents that returned actually increased from the usual half to over seventy percent. That seems to suggest that the normal money in politics played an enormous part in this election.
“That was certainly the result on that electorate that I was monitoring and I expect that will come through in the data,” the analyst said.
Claxton said the Political Party’s Integrity Act passed early this year seems to have had almost no impact on voting or at least none so far.
He said for most sitting candidates they have around $6 million a year under their care, which they used to assist individuals with roofing irons, solar panels and other goods.
“But it’s not transformative to the individuals, this simply means there’s not enough in the budget to fix the roads, hospitals, schools and generally take forth Solomon Islands national projects.
“So, was the cost and the effort of running a successful election or at least an election that is been successful so far, was that worth it?
“I’d say without a doubt, yes, here we have to remember that it’s only a decade since the Solomon Islands was coming out from a nasty small scale civil war with 250 people killed, thousands of people displaced and many women and other people assaulted including sexually assaulted.
“Solomon Islands was a failing state on our door step, so while we shouldn’t expect rapid transformation it is worth holding the democratic window for gradual change overtime
“For Australia it means two things in particular, firstly we need to preserve the security back stop, currently provided by the RAMSI Police component that funded through 2017 but even after then I think the Solomon Islands Government will need to decide with friendly governments some mechanisms for providing a better security certainty.
“Secondly, it means we need to help encourage economic growth and particularly jobs creation in the Solomon Islands to keep up with rapid social change, pressure on land and population growth.
“Doing so won’t be at all easy, but there are things that we can do to help, things that we already doing and can enhance, that however is a subject for the future analysis,” he said.
BY BRADFORD THEONOMI
