Solomons provincial member wants election laws changed

Updated July 2, 2009 17:29:16

There has been a call for an overhaul of Solomon Islands electoral laws in the aftermath of local polls in Western Province.
Danny Kennedy, the re-elected Provincial Member for Gizo, says the one-thousand Solomon dollars which each candidate is allowed to spend on their campaign is not enough.


Presenter: Sam Seke
Speaker: Danny Kennedy, Provincial Member for Gizo

KENNEDY: I understand that he's regained his seat so he's regained his seat in Morobe ward and there's a bit of a report in the papers the other day that he'll be attempting to come back as the premier and carry out some of his development plans.

SEKE: And what are the chances of his government returning to power?

KENNEDY: Well at this stage it's a little unclear. From certainly the word around here I think that most people are looking for a bit of a change, particularly after the tsunami. There are a number of things that I certainly wasn't very happy with and one of those was that they setup a land taskforce and in most of the issues regarding land was actually here within my ward in Gizo, and they didn't have the respect or acknowledged me as the member here. And I was not a part of any of the issues that were on Gizo and there's still a lot of issues surrounding people in camps and surrounding islands and giving away land that shouldn't have been given away. So I mean in my own personal view I'll be outwardly opposed to it and I'll be looking for somebody new to lead the government for the next four years.

SEKE: What can you tell us about the conduct of the provincial elections? Were they free and fair would you say?

KENNEDY: Well they definitely were not free. I would say they were fair, there was certainly some, a few little hiccups along the way, but there were a couple of candidates and I would say realistically that they would have spent between the two of them maybe nearly half a million dollars to try to get elected. So I think that more than anything I think that my re-election actually is the first big step towards corruption in politics and trying to be re-elected. I've just done my spreadsheet for my election expenditures, and I spent roughly about 18-thousand dollars, that's on a drum of fuel, a drum of petrol, and you can't go to a village without actually bringing a little bit of tea and coffee and some biscuits and sit around and let them hear your story for a couple of hours. But certainly the electoral laws need to be changed because at the moment by law provincial members are only allowed to spend one-thousand dollars to be re-elected, 50-thousand for national and a thousand for a provincial. So there certainly needs to be some election reform before the next election comes. So basically anybody who would have been running as a candidate would have certainly spent more than that because even like one drum of fuel in a boat to get around is about 18-hundred dollars at the moment. So you'd have to, even if you bought a drum each of petrol and diesel you would be well and truly in excess on what you're actually allowed to spend legally.

SEKE: A strike by the director and the seconded staff of, well government employees anyway, they went on a strike on the eve of the elections. Was that politically motivated?

KENNEDY: I don't think so actually, I mean it may have been, I certainly was not privy to any of the earlier conversations about the strike. I think that maybe there might have been some discussion about having the police join in to disrupt the election, so there may have been some underlying issues there. But I wasn't really privy to those conversations and it's hard for me to actually making a decision or a comment on that.

SEKE: How much has the strike affected the operations of the provincial hospital in Gizo?

KENNEDY: Well it's actually affected it quite a lot. Most of the staff of course are actually out, there really just running on skeletal staff in the morning from about eight to 12 for emergency cases and things like that. But I walked down there the other day after I was re-elected just to walk through and say thank you very much and show my appreciation for the support of the hospital, and there was really very few nurses in sight and only one doctor and just a lot of people on the wards looking very, very confused.