New Zealand congratulated Kiribati’s Taneti Maamau after the president was elected on Saturday to a third term in charge of the Pacific Island nation.
According to the New Zealand High Commission in Kiribati, Maamau received 20,676 votes, equating to about 55 percent support at the polls, to head off nearest challenger Kaotitaaake Kokoria, who received about 42 percent support.
Chief Justice Tetiro Semilota publicly declared Maamau the winner of the presidential election and conveyed her congratulations, the High Commission said in a statement.
Maamau, 64, had been tipped as a hot favourite to remain president — or Beretitenti — of the country of around 120,000 people, with his two rivals hailing from his own ruling Tobwaan Kiribati Party (TKP).
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was among the first to offer congratulations.
“Warm congratulations to President Maamau on the Kiribati election result,” Luxon said in a social media post.
“We look forward to working with the Government of Kiribati to deliver on our shared priorities,” he said.
Maamau had retained his seat by a landslide in August parliamentary elections that were dominated by concerns about the cost of living, rising sea levels and relations with Beijing.
Members of the new Parliament then nominated three candidates, including Kokoria, who defected from the ruling party in a late surprise leading up to the election.
Maamau switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019 in the hope that the world’s second-largest economy would help Kiribati meet ambitious development goals.
However, he unexpectedly criticised China’s test firing of a ballistic missile in the Pacific last month.
In a social media post, Maamau said his country hadn’t been warned and “does not welcome” its regional ally’s act — the first such weapons test by Beijing in four decades which sparked fierce criticism from around the South Pacific, where the dummy warhead splashed down.
Kiribati is one of the countries that relies heavily on foreign aid.
Saturday’s outcome is viewed as the Kiribati voters’ endorsement of policies Maamau’s government has implemented over the last four years, including deepening the Pacific Island nation’s ties with China.
During the parliamentary election in August, the ruling Tobwaan Kiribati Party, or TKP, secured 33 out of 44 seats in the new parliament, and Maamau won his seat by winning close to 83 percent of the votes in his district.
“The TKP has a very healthy majority [in the parliament], and it sort of shows that the people of Kiribati want to see more of what has been happening [over the last few years],” said Henryk Szadziewski, an expert on Pacific-China relations at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Since switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019, Kiribati has deepened its engagement with Beijing. The Maamau administration’s efforts to elevate security ties with the Chinese government have prompted concerns from partners such as Australia and the United States.
In 2021, China helped Kiribati revamp a World War II-era airstrip on the island of Kanton, which is less than 3,000 kilometres from Hawaii and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where major U.S. military bases are located.
In February, Kiribati’s acting police commissioner, Eeri Aritiera, revealed that Chinese police would help Kiribati’s community policing programme and IT department, raising concerns from the U.S that the cooperation could negatively impact Kiribati’s sovereignty.
Some analysts say since China has ambitions to deepen its economic and security reach in the Pacific region, Australia and the United States are very concerned about any advancement in security relations between Beijing and Pacific Island countries.
“It’s unclear how the policing arrangement with Kiribati will evolve in Maamau’s next term, but it’s unlikely that Chinese engagement will cease or decrease,” said Meg Keen, a senior fellow at Lowy Institute in Australia.
Despite these concerns, Szadziewski said Kiribati’s efforts to build closer ties with China shouldn’t be viewed through a pure zero-sum lens. “The Kiribati economy is heavily reliant on tourism and fishing, and China has stepped up with infrastructure projects in that respect,” he told VOA by phone.
But China’s engagement with Kiribati hasn’t been “all benevolence,” Szadziewski said. “Kiribati has opened up its maritime domain for increased Chinese fishing, so there is something in it for China that’s economic,” he said.
During a reception celebrating the fifth anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between China and Kiribati, the Chinese ambassador to Kiribati, Zhou Limin, said the relationship has further consolidated and vowed to strengthen synergy between the two countries in the future.
Under Maamau’s third term, Keen in Australia said, Kiribati will likely maintain its close relationship with China while also trying to seek assistance from other countries, such as Australia, to help improve the country’s infrastructure and climate resilience.
“There’s no indication that the relationship with China will change under another term for Maamau, and he will be seeking a strong legacy in his final term by working with any development partner that can assist with his ambitious development goals,” Keen told VOA in a written response.
She added that most Pacific leaders don’t view maintaining relations with China or other democratic countries such as Australia as “an either/or choice.”
In response to China’s elevated relations with Kiribati, Australia and the United States have also stepped-up efforts to deepen ties with the Pacific Islands nation.
In 2023, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced that Canberra would “rapidly scale up” security and development with Kiribati during her visit to the country. In February, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted joint patrols with Kiribati in the country’s exclusive economic zone.
Despite these efforts, Szadziewski at the University of Hawaii said it’s important for democratic countries to understand the priorities of Pacific Island countries and try to engage with them on “equal footing.”
“Pacific Island states have heightened sensitivity about sovereignty, so they prefer to see exchanges with other states on an equal footing,” he told VOA, adding that democratic countries should ensure the priority of their engagement with Pacific Island countries is not solely about geopolitics.
“If China is your main concern and why you are in the region, that’s not going to be something of interest to the Pacific Island leaders,” Szadziewski said.
In addition to the presidential election in Kiribati, Palau is going to hold a general election on 05 November, with the current president, Surangel Whipps Jr., running against former president Tommy Remengesau J. in a race that analysts say Beijing will be closely following.
Experts say competition for geopolitical influence between China and the U.S as well as its allies will intensify as countries try to engage with winners emerging from these important elections in the Pacific region. “Election periods will always heighten activities, and competition [between these countries] is only going to get more intense over the next couple of years,” Blake Johnson, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told VOA by phone.