Paias Wingti loses seat in PNG elections (original) (raw)
This was published 17 years ago
Former Papua New Guinea prime minister Paias Wingti has been unseated as a national MP and Western Highlands governor in a surprise last result of the country's elections.
Former university student activist and independent candidate Tom Olga polled 141,286 votes in the Western Highlands seat, picking up more preference votes than Wingti in the final stage of counting to beat him by 3,305 votes, PNG's newspaper The National reported.
Wingti, who is leader of the People's Democratic Movement, was prime minister three times between 1985 and 1994 and the first Highlander to hold the nation's top post.
He had been leading in the seat from the outset but when counting resumed on Monday after a court-ordered suspension, Wingti picked up less than half the preference votes Olga did.
The Western Highlands seat was the last in the 109-member parliament to be declared.
Wingti lost the seat before in 1997 to Catholic priest Robert Lak but won it back in 2002.
His loss this time might spell the end of his political career and means he will play a lesser role in the political horse trading to form a new government, though his party won five seats.
Another former prime minister, Rabbie Namaliu, also lost his Kokopo seat early in the counting but former prime minister Julius Chan made a comeback in New Ireland after a 10-year absence from politics.
At Government House in Port Moresby, Prime Minister Michael Somare accepted an invitation from Governor-General Paulias Matane to try to form a coalition government.
Somare's National Alliance won 27 seats, well ahead of former prime minister Mekere Morauta's PNG Party, the nearest rival with eight seats.
The National Alliance has already attracted 13 independents to join it and claims to have well over the 55 seats needed to form government after doing deals with smaller parties.
A rival political camp led by Chan, Morauta and former treasurer Bart Philemon is still trying to form an alternative government but is behind in the numbers game.
Their three parties combined have only 16 seats.
But negotiations between parties and independents will continue until parliament meets on August 13 to elect a speaker and prime minister.
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