The following event constitute what had been happening prior to the election of the Prime Minister of Solomon Islands and to those who are interested in politics this is going to be a good piece for you.
More so, you will be able to tell who the culprit is which saw our Pacific Casino disintegrated before the election of the PM.
However, I wish to state here before going through the details- Abana is a liar from the beginning to the very end of the election of the Prime Minister. The following details will prove what I’ve stated above.
Prior to the elimination process within our Pacific Casino camp, Steve Abana approached me and raised a point that concerns him and that was if he was to become the Prime Minister it will not look good as the current Governor General is also a Malaitian.
He then asked me who is our candidate for the Prime Minister’s post, I told him that I cannot become a candidate as I’m new to politics having entered the parliament merely a year ago and that I won’t commit one hundred percent of my time to serve the nation on that highest order as I’m a businessman as well. I suggest to Abana that honorable Douglas Ete will be our candidate based on three points, first, Ete is part Malaita and Guadalcanal his origin makes him an ideal candidate as he can be seen as the bridge to facilitate the on- going reconciliations between Malaita and Guadalcanal Provinces. Second, Ete is an MP from East Honiara and never in our history was a PM elected from the three Honiara constituencies, namely East Honiara, Central Honiara and West Honiara. And thirdly, Ete had an extensive experience in the public service having served the government in different ministries for many years. Abana had fully agreed to my group’s choice of Ete as PM’s candidate; however he had his condition as well. His condition was his group would support Ete’s candidature for the top job on the condition that he would become the Deputy Prime Minister and Rick Hou as the Finance Minister. We agreed to the arrangement and within half an hour, the elimination process started.
Four candidates were selected for the elimination round- they were Milner Tozaka, Douglas Ete, Manasseh Sogavare and Matthew Wale. My group’s candidate, Ete, was nominated by Abana and seconded by honorable Chris Laore. The results were Wale and Sogavare were ousted in the first rounds and leaving Tozaka and Ete to battle it out for the final choice of the PM’s candidate. Tozaka emerged as the winner having voted for by 15 votes against Ete’s 12. The twelve votes collected by Ete were from my group and not Abana, even though he had nominated Ete. However, I and my group accepted the result without any personal grudge against anyone. It was after the elimination process that Sogavare revealed to me about Abana’s intention to support him (Sogavare) to become the Prime Minister. Sogavare told me that Abana had invited him to meet him in Fiji and so he agreed to the invitation and went over to Fiji to meet Abana there. Sogavare said at their meeting Abana promised him that he (Abana) would supported him (Sogavare) for the Prime Minister’s post. Sogavare was clearly annoyed by Abana’s lies and he stated and I quote “I do not like liars and I will not work with liars,” end of quote. Sogavare was truly upset and I can see why because Abana did not nominate him or vote for him despite promising him in Fiji that he would supported him for the PM’s post. We then decided to have Sogavare as our negotiator because of Abana’s obvious lies. However, we then agreed to have the names of our candidates to be forwarded to the Governor General’s office and so we had Milner Tozaka, Douglas Ete and Manasseh Sogavare as the PM’s candidates.
It was Abana who had broke our promise to support only one candidate because he realized that Ete was going to be the Deputy Prime Minister in the event that Tozaka was to win the Prime Minister’s election. He went out with his group to Honiara Hotel to meet up with his comrade and close ally, Gordon Darcy Lilo. After that he asked my group to withdraw Ete’s candidature and he would return to our camp. At that time, I was already fed up with Abana’s lies and I decided not to compromise with him this time around. Ete’s eleventh hour withdrawal was reached after close consultation and we came to an amicable understanding to back only one candidate.
My good readers as you can see, Abana, is the architect of all the liars that culminated into the disintegration of our camp.
I would like to call on Abana not to use me as a scapegoat for his dubious well planned move. If Abana disputed this explanation, I’m more than willing to go back one year from today and reveal all the proposals he gave me then. I kindly asked Abana to politely refrain from going over the media about the issue of the disintegration of our camp. I want Abana to concentrate more on the current issues that have been put forward by the civil society and remember this as national leaders our country and its people first as our national emblem states ‘To lead is to Serve’. God Bless Solomon Islands.
Bodo Dettke
MP for North West Guadalcanal
(All the views in this article are from MP for North West Guadalcanal Bodo Dettke and not of the Solomon Star newspaper)
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