Solomon Islands, which caused a stir in 2022 as the government of the Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare will sign a Security pact with Chinaholds parliamentary elections on Wednesday, in a strong environment Competition between Washington and Beijing in the strategic Pacific region.
In these elections, both the United States and Australia, a regional power located about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) southwest of the Solomon Islands, are watching closely to see whether Sogavare, who has insisted, will ultimately win will never host a Chinese military basecontributes to Beijing’s further expansion in the region.
As Terence Wood, an expert on Solomon Islands electoral affairs at the Australian National University (ANU), told EFE today, some commentators on regional politics are concerned about this “China could build a military base in the Solomon Islands” with the eventual re-election of Sogavare.
“It is not clear that China wants a base in the Solomon Islands: a politically unstable country that would not be ideal for Chinese military purposes. I also doubt that Sogavare will allow China to establish a base in the Solomon Islands any time soon. “It needs Australian help and other support,” Wood said.
A strong ally of Beijing in the Pacific
Sogavare, which ended 36 years of bilateral relations with Taiwan in China’s favor in 2019 and opaquely negotiated a security pact with that country in 2022 that included sending its security forces to the Solomon Islands at Honiara’s request, is Beijing’s most important ally in the region.
Also in 2022, China attempted to sign a regional security agreement with the Pacific Islands Forum states but failed due to a lack of consensus, while the United States and Australia redoubled their efforts to regain their much-coveted influence in this region due to the impact of the climate crisis since attracted attention for years.
Still, China made significant moves in the Pacific, where Tuvalu and Palau are the only nations in the region that maintain relations with Taiwan, as Beijing also managed to establish diplomatic relations with Kiribati in 2019 and with Nauru last January.
As Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, former director of the Center for Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawaii, commented in an article in In-Depth, Beijing will likely use its resources to maintain its ties with Honiara.
Solomon’s dilemma
But among the 334 candidates seeking the 50 seats in the Honiara parliament, where the government will be formed, there are also voices favoring a review of the agreement and restoring ties with Taiwan, such as Peter Kenilorea Jr., leader of the Honiara Parliament United States Party (UP, acronym in English).
Another candidate, former prime minister Gordon Darcy Lilo, believes that “instead of choosing one particular option,” what is needed is a government “that behaves more responsibly and transparently,” as he told Australian public broadcaster ABC yesterday explained.
In this sense and from an international approach A possible change of government would “likely” lead to an increase in Australian influence and American, Wood said.
The cost of living and development
But in the Solomon Islands, a country of about 700,000 people that is considered by the United Nations to be one of the poorest countries in the Pacific and relies heavily on international cooperation, particularly with Australia and China, the issues marking the election are different .
Solomon’s economy, the experienced a sharp decline between 2020 and 2022 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and later due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it grew by a modest 2.5% in 2023, despite the celebration of the Pacific Games, an event that Sogavare used to postpone the elections that were supposed to take place last year.
In this context, the coalition of the Democratic Alliance and the Solomon Islands Democratic Party, led by Matthew Wale, has pledged to focus on, among other things, reducing the cost of living, increasing wages, improving education and healthcare, and boosting investment in… the infrastructure to focus on others.
