Speaker says Integrity Bill way forward for Solomons

Transcript

The Solomon Islands parliament speaker says the country's democratic institutions are gradually strengthening and should be well served by legislation to help forge political stability.

Sir Allan Kemakeza, who is a former Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, is expected to contest the upcoming general election after he lost the Savo/Russel constitutency in the last election in 2010.

Sir Allan says he is a supporter of moves to establish a registry of political parties and legislation around the integrity of parties.

He spoke to Johnny Blades who asked how the parliament can move away from the unpredictable system of horse-trading around the post-election formation of government.

ALLAN KEMAKEZA: First thing we should do is bring this integrity bill in to make the party systemn become stronger so that the members will not cross the floor as and when they wish to. So when you have a majority of members in a party, then that decides the Prime Minister so that we don't have the gas, so to speak, so somebody might have some resources more than the other so therefore they will draw the members to vote for certain particular candidate (for Prime Minister). But this is guided by the party politics, this bill, so that some other countries, when you have the majority - or even you don't have the majority but you have the number to form government - that is how the Prime Minister will come out from there. I think that is an area which we will immediately look at it. The other one, which (former Prime Minister) Mansseh Sogavare has suggested, is the whole country elect the Prime Minister or the President or whatever. It's good but it'll take us a bit of time to get there.

JOHNNY BLADES: There's a bit of a perception among some people in your country, from what I've noticed, that maybe there is not enough robust debate in parliament and maybe the opposition is not given enough time to respond to government policy and things. What do you think?

AK: I don't think so because my office is to ensure any certain bill for example, take a bill, if a government sends a bill to my office, first of all I will approve to be the first reading, and then when it's distributed to all members of parliament, the billls and legislation committee will have to examine the bill, and call the public to give their views and ideas. It takes sometimes one or two weeks, then you can find its second reading and that is when the members will debate the bill in the floor of parliament.