Hope of new faces in Nauru parliament

Transcript

A Nauru MP, Baron Waqa, says there is hope next month's general election will usher into parliament a host of new members capable of breaking the pattern of political deadlock.

Nauru goes to the polls on 22 June, following numerous attempts by the president Sprent Dabwido to dissolve the 18-member parliament and hold early elections.

Parliamentary stalemates have stopped a succession of governments from operating effectively, as well as introducing constitutional reforms some consider essential to allowing the country to prosper.

Mr Waqa told Annell Husband he knows of at least one new person from the 10,000-strong population putting themselves forward in one of the bigger constituencies and he hopes there will be more.

BARON WAQA: [It'll] help solve this stalemate and parliament being dysfunctional, as well as government, because of the numbers being tight. I think it'll be a good idea, and I can see there'll be some changes, as well.

ANNELL HUSBAND: Do you think new faces will be enough to move the political system away from the stalemate that it's been in for some time?

BW: Well, we cannot really guarantee. Our system here is a party system, so everyone goes in as independents, and they group up according to their interests and what they believe in and their ideology and so forth. And people do move around between parties. And especially new ones that are coming in, they'll be looking for groups that they can associate with and work well with.

AH: Can I ask, why don't you have parties? Is this the fact that you just stand as in independent? Is that contributing to the problem?

BW: That's probably it. But because we're so small a party system won't work here. As we can see, the last couple of parliaments that we've had, there's always been a problem because of association of members. They tend to stick to one group and act more or less like a party, as in New Zealand or Australia.

AH: How do you think it can work better? And is it possible to find a better system for, as you say, such a small government?

BW: It's very difficult, and maybe one way of doing it is to review the constitution, which we are actually doing at the moment.