Nauru President David Adeang reached a treaty deal with Australia late last year. Photo: ABC News / Ian Cutmore
David Adeang, 55, has been re-elected unopposed as Nauru president at the inaugural sitting of the 25th Parliament.
The Nauru parliament convened on Tuesday following the return of the writ for the general election to the Speaker.
Adeang won the Ubenide constitency won by securing 837 votes in the 11 October polls.
Nineteen members of parliament were elected in the 2025 general election.
One MP is elected as the Speaker, leaving 18 members to vote for the president.
The Speaker calls for nominations for the presidency, according to the Nauru government.
Marcus Stephen has been elected the Speaker of Parliament, while Isabella Dageago has been elected as Deputy Speaker.
President Adeang will appoint the Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers from among the 18 MPs.
'A controversial option'
TVNZ Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver told Pacific Waves Adeang had shown to be a "controversial" leader from his previous presidential term and time as the country's justice minister.
Dreaver has spent decades covering the region, including investigating issues on Nauru over the years.
In 2018, she was detained for interviewing a refugee in Nauru while in the country for the Pacific Islands Forum leaders' summit.
"David Adeang is very controversial. He doesn't take the easy option. He takes a controversial option," Dreaver said
"For example, he's selling passports. Again, there's quite a lot of guardrails around it, so they don't sell it to criminals."
She also pointed to Adeang's close-knit relationship with Baron Waqa, who was president of Nauru from 2013 to 2019. Waqa is now the secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum.
"Both [Adeang] and Baron Waqa were….accused of taking kickbacks from a phosphate company, and that's been investigated by the Australian police."
Both have denied the allegations.
"He [Adeang] sacked a whole lot of judges. He changed the judicial system… while he was justice minister, and he was also part of this government that has really cracked down on media," Dreaver said.
In March, a research report into the state of the media found it was dominated by state-owned media platforms run by the Nauru Media Bureau (NMB).
All journalists in Nauru were employees NMB, and classified as public servants.
They also had to take an oath of allegiance to the government. The report was a joint research project between ABC International Development and the University of Adelaide.
Any journalists from overseas who wanted to report in Nauru had obtain a visa, which has an AU$8000 application fee.
Dreaver said those circumstances made it difficult to scrutinise the Nauru government.
"I can't go there to do this critical thinking or to do this 'see what the mood-on-the-ground-is' and talk to people because it's going to cost us $8000 Australian each to apply for a visa, and you could get denied.
"It's a great way of controlling the media without saying we're controlling the media."
