Manasseh Sogavare’s party will have 15 out of 50 seats in Honiara’s parliament, the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) reported on Thursday.

The main opposition coalition, led by Matthew Wale, won 13 seats, with the remaining votes being shared among smaller parties and independents.

The Solomon Islands parliament, where lawmakers elect the prime minister, will also have eight women, according to the country’s Electoral Commission website.

Sogavare, who in 2019 ended 36 years of diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favour of the People’s Republic of China, will have to negotiate with other smaller parties and independents to be re-elected.

The election is a key test in the strategic competition between the United States and China in the Pacific region, after Sogavare’s government signed a security pact with Beijing in 2022.

The details of the deal were not made public and Western countries fear it could allow China to open a military base in the territory.

Washington responded to the security pact between China and the Solomon Islands by opening an embassy in the country, which is located about two thousand kilometres northeast of Australia, and organising a summit with regional leaders.

The US has also revitalised the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, the partnership between the US, Australia, Japan and India, created in 2007 to boost regional cooperation after the ‘tsunami’ that had devastated parts of the region three years earlier.

The partnership now aims to uphold a “free, open and inclusive” Indo-Pacific, an implicit reference to China’s advances in waters that were key to maintaining logistical supply lines and projecting military force during the Second World War.

The prospect of China establishing a military base in the South Pacific is particularly worrying for Australia, as it would change the way Canberra sees its defence and security settings, anchored in the alliance with the US.

The Solomon Islands, with a population of around 700,000 people and considered by the UN as one of the poorest countries in the Pacific, suffered a sharp economic contraction between 2020 and 2022 due to the impact of the pandemic and, later, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The island nation registered a growth of 2.5% in 2023.

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