Pro-China Solomons leader Sogavare steps down after ‘awful’ election result

The most pro-China leader in the Pacific, Manasseh Sogavare, has conceded his prime ministership is over after suffering a bruising voter backlash in this month’s Solomon Islands elections, a development that will come as a major relief to Australian officials.

Sogavare has been the dominant figure in Solomon Islands politics over more than two decades, holding the prime ministership on four separate occasions since 2000.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (left) with his Chinese counterpart, Li Qiang in Beijing in July 2023. Credit: AP

Sogavare has often had an antagonistic relationship with Australia, alarming Australian officials when he switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019 and again in 2022 when he agreed to a secretive security pact with Beijing.

Sogavare announced he was standing aside from the prime ministerial leadership contest on Monday to allow Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele to run for the position on behalf of a coalition led by his Ownership, Unity and Responsibility (OUR) Party.

Solomon Islands Governor-General David Vunagi has summoned MPs to attend the national parliament on Thursday to choose a prime minister.

Sogavare’s governing party won 15 seats in the April 17 elections, well below the 26 seats required to form a government.

Terence Wood, a fellow at the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre, said that Sogavare’s party had suffered an “awful” election result, performing far worse than it would have expected.

Wood said Sogavare’s departure was a significant moment that would alter Solomons-Australia relations, even if his party is returned to power.

“I doubt any other Solomons politician feels the degree of animus to Australia that Sogavare does, or is as wedded to China,” Wood said.

The election was mostly fought on local economic issues rather than geopolitical issues such as Chinese influence, Wood said.

Sogavare was re-elected to his local seat, raising the prospect he could continue to wield influence if his party forms a governing coalition.

After visiting Beijing last year, Sogavare declared that China was “the way to go forward” for his nation, and insisted that China did not have strategic ambitions in the Pacific.

The failure of any party to gain an outright parliamentary majority has triggered an intense round of negotiations, with rival politicians and their advisers holed up at chosen hotels in the nation’s capital as they scramble to secure the numbers required to form a government.

Sogavare’s allies have been meeting at the Cowboy’s Grill Bar and Restaurant by the Honiara waterfront.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese embracing Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in July 2022. Credit: Joe Armao

“We are in the phase when the real bargaining happens,” Meg Keen, director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands program, said.

“The game is not over; no-one has the magic number yet.”

However, Keen said the results showed a clear mood for change among Solomon Islands voters.

While Australia and the United States would welcome the end of Sogavare’s prime ministership, Keen said that competition for influence in the Pacific would remain intense.

Sogavare delayed the parliamentary elections for seven months to focus on the Pacific Games, leading to accusations he was backsliding on democratic rights.

University of Queensland emeritus professor Clive Moore, one of Australia’s foremost experts on Solomon Islands, has described Sogavare as intelligent and energetic, but also emotional, “quite paranoid” and “self-serving”.

Sogavare expelled Australia’s high commissioner in Honiara, Patrick Cole, in 2007, declaring him “persona non grata” and accusing him of meddling in local politics.

Former Solomon Islands politician Alfred Sasako suggested there was a mystical element behind Sogavare’s apparent antagonism towards Australia. In 2007, Sasako claimed Sogavare had told him that he had been visited by the spirit of a deceased prime minister who warned him that Australia couldn’t be trusted.

Jon Fraenkel, an expert on pacific politics at the Victoria University of Wellington, has described Sogavare as a “master of the mayhem that so regularly afflicts his country”.

The Solomon Islands, with a population of about 730,000, is one of the Pacific’s poorest countries, with most of the working population engaged in subsistence farming and fishing.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.