Nauru election
If you’re a reader of this site, you’ll know by now that Nauru is facing a snap election, called after recent political instability. A state of emergency has been imposed by the President, affording him executive powers, pending the election.
From Cuba to China, the story has attracted some international media attention:
- The Australian newspaper: Focuses on violence at Nauru’s police station earlier this year, rumoured to have been fuelled by opposition politicians. Quotes the President attacking the opposition’s conduct as “self-serving agenda of economic destruction”.
- Radio Netherlands: Reports that the President alleges that the opposition has ben responsible for delaying budget bills and threatening investment projects.
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A very similar story to the Radio Australia link I included in my previous post.
- BBC: Summarises the events leading up to the state of emergency, in the context of Nauru’s economic plight
- Xinhua: Notwithstanding that Nauru maintains diplomatic links with Taipei rather than Beijing, Xinhua rather neutrally reports that “Adeang had used his pivotal role to unsuccessfully try to force out government MPs”
- Prensa Latina (Cuba): Another report summarising the tension between opposition and government leading up to the election being called.
The one thing that none of these stories has done is to create any segue between current events and those of late 2004, when almost the same sequence of events occurred. In 2004 also, opposition politicians attempted to exclude Dr Kieren Keke from Parliament on the basis that he is a dual citizen, and the ensuring political crisis was resolved by the President calling a state of emergency and holding elections. In 2004, the government was returned in a landslide, and the “old school” politicians who were associated with presiding over Nauru’s demise, were largely evicted from parliament. This included the then Speaker, who was agitating the dual-citizenship issue, much like his successor has been recently.
The main difference this time is the identity of the players. The present Speaker, David Adeang, was one of the government members swept back into office in 2004, having campaigned on a reform platform and promising better standards of governance. In a dispute with Dr Keke, Mr Adeang was accused of improper conduct last year, which led to the split of the government that won the 2004 election. It’s somewhat ironic that some of the politicians who won on a reform platform have been using the same type of political tactics to attempt to throw out from government their former colleagues.
The Nauruan Constitution contains some articles that govern how states of emergency are to be implemented. Article 77 says that the President may declare a state of emergency when he is satisfied that there is a “grave emergency” threatening Nauru’s security or economy. This is why the President is quoted in the above news stories as saying that Nauru’s economy has been threatened by the political crisis.
Article 77 also says that a state of emergency lasts for 7 days, unless ratified by Parliament. This is presumably why the election has been scheduled to take place within a week, as it seems that the likelihood of ratifying a state of emergency in the current Parliamentary numbers deadlock is most unlikely.
The election will be held on Saturday, 26 April.
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David,I enjoy reading your blog and find many of your observations insightful.
However your comparison to the dual citizenship issue to the situation in 2004 does not take into account last year’s constitutional reform vote, where it was enshrined in the constitution that there was no problem with Nauruan politicians holding dual citizenship.
The now infamous “candleight sitting” of opposition members on Easter Saturday, without any government members attending – and without any formal notice or even a quorum -tried unsuccessfully to amend the Citizenship Act which would have rendered two ministers inelligible to remain in the parliament, was ruled null and void by the Chief Justice a week or so ago, as was the entire “sitting.”
What isn’t widely published is the fact that President Marcus Stephen also holds dual citizenship with Samoa, which was achieved so he could compete in the weightlifting for that country at the Barcelona Olympics. However, there was no attempt by the opposition to exclude him, even after the president challenged the speaker to do so at the start of one of the aborted sittings just prior to the Chief Justice’s ruling. That, in itself, raises more questions in respect to the speaker’s / opposition’s motives.
In that overall context, the issue involving Dr Kieren Keke in 2004, while having dual citizenship as its core basis, is over-ridden by both constitional considerations and those of the highest court in the land as it applies to the present issue.
I hope this is of assistance.
Rod Henshaw,
Media Consultant,
Government of Nauru,
Brisbane, Australia.
[...] blog has attracted the attention of the Nauruan government. In a comment to my last post “Nauru election“, a Nauru government media consultant/spokesperson based in Brisbane, Rod Henshaw, has [...]