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How will the coalition look - efi426hemi - 07-19-2012
My friends,
Now that the votes are in and counting is well underway, we are beginning to get a picture of what the coalition could look like. To form a majority government, 56 seats are required. If we assume that the candidates that are currently leading their riding actually win their seats, below is a list of the parties that will have at least 5 seats:
27 - O'Neill - People’s National Congress Party
17 - Independent
14 - Don Poyle - Triumph Heritage Empowerment Party
9 - Belden Namah - PNG Party
7 - Michael Somare - National Alliance Party
6 - William Duma - United Resources Party
5 - Peter Ipatas - People's Party
5 - Sir Julius Chan - People’s Progress Party
Now, imho, there are a few keys to forming the coalition:
* - 31 available ministry positions being offered as the carrot to join the coalition (click here)
* - O'Neill's party strength of almost half of the required seats
* - O'Neill's agreement with Namah
* - Poyle and Namah are strong leaders that appear to have their parties under control
* - Independents or 1-3 member parties are unlikely to become a factor unless they decide to merge with an existing larger party, something I see as unlikely. [EDIT: Perhaps merging with another party is not so far fetched after reading Tree's post - click here]
So if you take O'Neill and Namah you have 36 of the 56 seats. Now, how to get the remaining 20, keeping in mind the National Alliance Party is not an option as Somare hates O'Neill.
Option A
A natural selection is to add Don Poyle's party. He has worked with O'Neill as the treasury and finance minister and adds 14 seats for a total of 50. I would expect only 5-6 minister positions would have to be given up. Only 6 more seats needed, which could easily be made up from independents or one of the smaller 5-6 seat parties. These could be bought with 4-5 more ministry seats and would leave 20 or so ministry positions for O'Neill and Namah.
Option B
Gather Duma's, Ipatas's and Chan's parties together by offering 1 high profile and 1 normal profile ministry seat per party. This would give 52 seats with the remaining 4 seats from independents or a party with 4 or less seats. That would leave approx 20 ministry positions for O'Neill and Namah.
Option C
Combine option A and B to form an extremely strong coalition that would be very difficult to challenge. In fact I would see it as near impossible for an opposition member to gather the strength (with 1-2 members in their party) to challenge the new government.
After crunching the numbers further, even if all the parties with 5 or more seats (not including the independents) try to exclude O'Neill they only have 46 votes. Indeed it would take all the parties with 2 or more seats to exactly form the 56 seat minimum. A fragile impossibility in my opinion.
So with everything being said I believe that O'Neill holds all the cards and Option C will be the final outcome. All that remains is who gets the high profile ministry seats and that would appear to be reserved for the Poyle, Namah and O'Neill parties. The coalition should form quickly and I believe by early to mid August we will know who our new DPE is.
As always Please Do Your Own Research, fwiw and most importantly, Health and Happiness,
hemi
RE: How will the coalition look - Justin94360 - 07-19-2012
Efi, I agree with C, I think O'Neill is a pretty savvy politician and will have been tying up support from other parties for sometime now. On top of that he will still have support of numerous MP's who he formed the last coalition with. He is in a much stronger position this time as he will have a lot more MP's elected from his party amd hence will have more credibility when 'horse trading' with the smaller parties. My guess is O'Neil will have 30 MP's and Namah 10. I think Duma will end up with 5.
RE: How will the coalition look - Tree - 07-19-2012
Agree with you on C, Polye should become a valued coalition partner.
It is true as you post that 'Somare hates O'Neill' and it doesn't stop there.
Somare dumped Polye as his deputy, demoted him to Foreign Minister and replaced him with Abal Jan. 2011.
Polye could well have been Acting PM when Somare's health failed Spring 2011. No love loss there between these 3.
Abal in June 2011, sacked Polye and Duma claiming he needed 'cohesion in cabinet'. Abal and Somare via Abal, lost MP support as their actions alienated large blocks of MPs and allowed O'Neill coalition to takeover the Gov't. O'Neill reinstated Duma as powerful DPE, Polye as Treasurer and picked Namah as Deputy PM. Likely these choices were of necessity, not of preference. It will be of interest how O'Neill builds his coalition and odds are good Polye will be key. One of my sources on the ground in PNG has verified that Duma will be picked by O'Neill to be the first 'Curator of Bouganville Civil War Museum and Guide of Walking Historical Tours'. He will be dispatched immediately.
Regarding cash for coalition programs, this is far from new in PNG. Per Dame Carole in an earlier interview:
..."As an outgoing, Australian-born MP, Dame Carol Kidu—herself formerly a cabinet minister under Sir Michael—said last week, politics in PNG is “fraught with problems with numbers, having to buy numbers”. That issue arises not only after general elections, when the process of building governing coalitions is greased with large sums of money. Helped by a mineral-resources boom over the past decade, even the passage of ordinary legislation nowadays often requires payouts."...
The resource boom is about to get turbo charged with Gulf LNG and there should be much cash thrown about again.
RE: How will the coalition look - jft310 - 07-19-2012
I imagine the new IOC coalition JKM knows how to get things done and if payments are necesary then they will be made.
RE: How will the coalition look - TxPm - 07-19-2012
Were there ever any official releases regarding Poyle's comments that he showed Chevron the IOC facilities? Now that it appears Poyle will play a much larger role in the next govt it'll be interesting to see if Chevron's name comes up again. I have believed since that story was released that Chevron was there to look at T2 not E/A. I fully expect more farm-In deals on T2 & having Chevron on board wouldn't be to bad. Just speculating though.
RE: How will the coalition look - admin - 07-19-2012
You could well be onto something here, Tx. That makes sense. They were there for a reason.