All eyes are on Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott as they try to cobble together a majority. But just as close to home the Solomon Islands are in post-election negotiations, and if anything their task is even more complicated.

Political parties in the Solomons are little more than loose groupings. For the past two weeks groups of MPs have camped in Honiara’s top hotels, in shuttle negotiations to form a majority and choose a Prime Minister. The country has been watching nervously mindful that in 2006 the announcement of a new PM sparked rioting that saw the capital’s Chinatown burnt down.

I have just returned from a UN election observer mission to the Solomons. Nine Kiwis took part including my Labour colleague David Shearer, several other MPs and a city councillor, MFAT staff, and led by former deputy PM Wyatt Creech.  We were part of a 60-strong contingent coordinated by the UN.

I was deployed to Makira, a relatively undeveloped province in the east. It is the real Solomons: not much town to speak of, most people living from subsistence agriculture and a bit of fishing, a reliance on open motorboats to travel between villages because of a lack of roads. And sadly the Malaysian logging companies are ripping the guts out of the forests as fast as they can go.

On election day, my colleague (an American from the East-West Center) and I visited polling stations in 10 villages. We travelled with the two police officers, one Aussie and one Fijian, stationed on the island by the Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI). Without their old 4WD we’d never have been able to travel the unbelievably pot-holed road.

It was quite something observing the elections. Churches, school rooms, health clinics and in one case even a private dwelling had been converted into polling places. Well trained and equipped polling staff ran them like clock work. Briefed by the UN and with a clipboard in hand we looked for even the slightest irregularity, and mostly found none.

Turn out was good by anyone’s standards, possibly as high as 70%. There are high rates of illiteracy in the Solomon Islands villages and it was touching to see the polling staff carefully explain to some of the older folk how they should tick the symbol of their preferred candidate.

Given the cynicism these days about politics and politicians – and the Solomon Islanders are more cynical than most, they tend to chuck out about half their MPs every election – I was struck by how the voters went about the task with a solemnity I recognised from election day at home. Democracy as ritual.

The observer team reported some minor irregularities but mostly noted how well organised the elections were. There were three small outbreaks of violence around the country when counting was underway but in the scheme of things that is not so bad.

The real problem, and it is not something foreign observers are likely to even see, is the corrupting influence of money. Cash for votes is rife. Two candidates I spoke to said it was almost impossible to get elected if you don’t hand out cash or goods during the campaign. The locals even have a name for the night before the election when candidates dish out the goodies: Devil’s Night.

Part of the problem is cultural. Melanesian kin-based politics demand MPs deliver material benefit to their constituents. But it is made worse by logging companies and corrupt businessmen who pour money into the system. Taiwan donates $4 million a year to a fund that is divided between the 50 MPs to distribute but thankfully it looks like they are about to put an end to it.

The Solomons have some big challenges. Getting money out of politics is one of them. But I read the Robert Caro biography of LBJ while I was away, and hell, Solomon Islanders couldn’t teach Texans in the 1940s anything about ballot-stuffing, election-rigging and any number of corrupt practices.

Voters choose the symbol of their preferred candidate.

This school room next to the ocean was polling booth for the day.

These two women, one of them a scrutineer,  watch the voting from outside.

Scrutineers put in a long day watching the vote counting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under democracy, international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.