{"id":17129,"date":"2014-11-27T11:35:50","date_gmt":"2014-11-27T00:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=17129"},"modified":"2014-12-02T07:13:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T20:13:17","slug":"solomon-islands-the-freest-and-fairest-election-money-could-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/solomon-islands-the-freest-and-fairest-election-money-could-buy\/","title":{"rendered":"Solomon Islands: the freest and fairest election money could buy?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"To<\/a><\/figure>\n

Last week, as Australians focused on visits by the leaders of two large countries<\/a> that will help shape our long-term strategic environment, a small country that forms part of that environment faced a more immediate test with its first national election since the departure of the military component of RAMSI.<\/p>\n

I was fortunate to spend a fortnight with the Solomons election-monitoring mission<\/a> run by the ANU\u2019s State Society and Governance in Melanesia Program (SSGM) and Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI). Detailed findings of its close study of a dozen electorates will be out soon (see the conclusions of similar studies of PNG\u2019s 2012 election here<\/a>) but in the meantime let me offer some personal impressions.<\/p>\n

Although the 50 elected MPs are still negotiating who\u2019ll be prime minister and in cabinet, and previous such manoeuvrings have sometimes triggered public disorder<\/a>, most signs suggest these horse-trading and formation-of-Government processes will remain largely peaceful. And while 90 additional Australian, NZ, and Pacific police<\/a> were brought in to bolster the RAMSI Participating Police Force, they\u2019ve been deliberately held in the background\u2014with the Commonwealth Observer Group<\/a> commending the security arrangements planned and executed by Solomons Police.<\/p>\n

Other organisational aspects of this ninth election since Independence in 1978 worked pretty well too. In particular, it was the first to use a biometric registration system (provided by the same company that prepared the rolls for Fiji\u2019s recent election). Past claims of multiple-voting have probably been exaggerated<\/a>, but both anecdotal accounts and the high percentage of the voting-age population<\/a> who\u2019d previously cast ballots suggest they weren\u2019t entirely fictitious. The biometric system was expensive, but popular, and contributed to the poll\u2019s credibility with voters.<\/p>\n

Less encouragingly, although most non-incumbent candidates (and many incumbents) campaigned on a \u2018time-for-change\u2019 platform, there\u2019s little sign of movement beyond Solomons politics-as-normal. While we\u2019ll have to wait to see whether ANU\u2019s survey data confirms my hunch that there was less voter intimidation, I\u2019m fairly confident money-politics<\/a> increased across the board. Nor, apparently, has the composition of those elected changed much. True, Prime Minister Lilo lost his seat. But the number of incumbents returned<\/a> actually grew from around half to 70%, with analysts attributing that growth to the scale and timing of sitting MPs releasing<\/a> their discretionary Constituency Development Funds and other monies. Again, only one<\/a> of the 26 women who contested was elected. And the new Political Parties Integrity Act<\/em><\/a>, intended to stabilise parliamentary politics, hardly had any impact on the way candidates campaigned or voters voted.<\/p>\n

None of that will surprise those familiar with the Solomons\u2019 acutely clientelistic<\/a> political culture. But, the results may further deepen a seemingly intractable cycle of electoral politics whereby rational choices by voters<\/a> seeking MPs\u2019 personal assistance contribute to poor governance and reinforce those choices in turn. And they mean last week\u2019s good electoral process won\u2019t necessarily deliver the good government<\/a> the country urgently needs. The problem isn\u2019t so much that leaders and voters don\u2019t take seriously the national motto\u2014\u2018to lead is to serve\u2019\u2014but rather that they do so at a profoundly local rather than national level. It might be unfair to condemn candidates\u2019 provision of solar panels, roofing iron, school fees, or small-scale water and sanitation projects to constituents as merely \u2018frittering away\u2019 national wealth, since such help can be of real benefit to the poor. But the seemingly vast SI $6 million<\/a> available to each MP (often supplemented by income from business favours<\/a>, and sometimes allegedly from corruption<\/a> or theft<\/a>) only translates to about A$50 per citizen each year\u2014not enough to be individually transformative but cumulatively enough to sap state funding for roads, schools, and hospitals.<\/p>\n

If that seems an overly gloomy take on last week and the country\u2019s prospects, it probably is. We saw some successful candidates speak passionately, persuasively and apparently sincerely about national issues, even as they vigorously transacted the sub-local hustle necessary to have a shot at winning. The low priority attached to policy issues doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no national consciousness. And we should keep in mind that it\u2019s only a decade since Solomon Islands emerged from a debilitating conflict<\/a> that claimed 250 lives and caused near state-failure. The possibility politicians could again stir up rowdy protests, property destruction, and opportunistic or targeted looting doesn\u2019t detract from the fact a return to nation-rending ethnic violence is unlikely.<\/p>\n

In this context and given our interest in regional stability, it\u2019ll remain worthwhile to \u2018hold the window of democratic space open<\/a>\u2019 for local solutions to emerge over time. That\u2019s partly a matter of preserving the security backstop currently provided by RAMSI police in some form, depending on the next Solomons government and Canberra\u2019s assessment\/funding from 2017. But, increasingly, it\u2019ll also mean using energy, infrastructure, and governance enablers\u2014including elections support\u2014to help spur enough of an economic take-off to keep pace with population growth, land pressure, and social change.<\/p>\n

Karl Claxton<\/em><\/a> is an analyst at ASPI. Image courtesy of Karl Claxton.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, as Australians focused on visits by the leaders of two large countries that will help shape our long-term strategic environment, a small country that forms part of that environment faced a more immediate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":17132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,83,376,227,142,228],"class_list":["post-17129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-politics","tag-ramsi","tag-regional-security","tag-solomon-islands"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSolomon Islands: the freest and fairest election money could buy? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/solomon-islands-the-freest-and-fairest-election-money-could-buy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Solomon Islands: the freest and fairest election money could buy? 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