Parliament House in Kiribati Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koro Vaka'uta
In interim results after the first round of the Kiribati election on Wednesday, Radio Kiribati reported that 22 of the 23 constituencies have been counted.
Among those retaining their seats are the incumbent president, Taneti Maamau, in Onotoa, and the opposition leader, Tessie Eria Lambourne in Abemama.
Six MPs in the last parliament, including one cabinet minister, are reported to have lost their seats.
As of Thursday afternoon, the counting for 41 out of the 44 seats in the parliament had been completed.
So far in sixteen of these seats, no candidate has secured more than 50 percent of the vote which is the threshold for an outright win.
This means the top three polling candidates for each seat will contest in a runoff round on Monday, next week.
Counting is continuing in the largest constituency, Tarawa Teinainano, which is the country's largest with 22 candidates vying for the three seats.
Kiribati journalist Rimon Rimon Photo: Facebook / Rimon Rimon
RNZ Pacific's correspondent in Kiribati, Rimon Rimon, said he is anticipating that the final results should be available later on Thursday.
"I think the whole nation spent the whole [Wednesday] night doing their own tallies," he said.
"For Kiribati, we need to establish a system of having a central result tally that helps people.
"All of the results that were coming around are unofficial reports."
Rimon said Radio Kiribati had been live broadcasting throughout the night on Wednesday "so people were glued to their radios".
"We are still waiting on the last remaining electorates who are yet to finalise the count.
"There is no website that we [can] to, so it is all community level effort where we ask each other and they point us to, you know, information available."
However, on Thursday night, Rimon said the Kiribati Ministry of Culture and Internal Affairs "without any official announcement to the public" had published election results "on the Ministry of Culture and Internal Affairs website".
He is urging the I-Kiribati people to follow the ministry's website official results.
Meanwhile, the Maneaba ni Maungatabu's (Parliament) clerk Eni Tekanene has announced that the first sitting of Parliament will be on 13 September.
