Lobbying to form Solomon islands next government is intensifying with only four more seats in the 50-member parliament yet to be officially declared, there is no outright winner.

As of Monday, the two largest blocs in the winner’s circle, independents and the incumbent prime minister Manasseh Sogavare’s ‘Our Party’ were tied with 12 MPs each.

Given the last elections, this is a significant result since the in the 2019 elections ‘Our Party’ did not exist going into the polls, but was created by Sogavare with the the sole intention of pulling together the large number of independent MPs who emerged from the election that year.

Sources have verified that investigations have identified the location of some of the lobbying camps in the capital.

The Honiara Hotel camp in Chinatown was set up by former prime minister Gordon Darcy Lilo’s ‘Solomon Islands Party’ for Rural Advancement a week before polling even began.

It is also noted that Sogavare’s ‘Our Party’ the largest grouping in parliament as a well-documented affiliation to the Cowboy’s Grill in the eastern side of town; Matthew Wale, who gambled in setting up the country’s first ever publicly announced pre-election coalition ‘CARE’ is known to be holed up at Heritage Park Hotel in the CBD.

It is next to impossible at this stage to predict the final form of the coalition government because MPs are not legally bound to political parties and can move freely between camps.

There is also a stark disparity in the Solomon islands in both pay and benefits between the government, opposition, and independent MPs, which ups the stakes significantly and has been fingered by political experts as one of the root causes of political instability in the country.

Meanwhile, losing candidates around the country are already preparing election petitions ahead of a 30-day-window for submissions which opens once all the election results are in.

More than half the MPs in 2019, had filed petitions against them but the majority were dismissed due to lack of sufficient evidence.