This article lists political parties in the Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands has a multi-party system with numerous political parties. In most elections, no one party has won an absolute majority of seats and so usually parties must work with each other to form coalition governments. The one exception is the 1989 election, when the People's Alliance Party (PAP) led by Solomon Mamaloni did win an absolute majority. However, in late 1990, Mamaloni broke away from the PAP and continued ruling in a coalition government until the 1993 election.
Many parties are established immediately prior to an election and most are very short-lived. Some will achieve no parliamentary representation and dissolve within a year. Others will achieve parliamentary representation but, having served their purpose, are then discarded.
The most enduring political parties in the Solomon Islands are the PAP and the Solomon Islands United Party, founded in 1979 and 1980, respectively. The PAP has led three governments and been in coalition in at least three more. The United Party led two governments in the 1980s however its representation has waned in recent years and after the 2006, it no longer had any parliamentary representatives.
Read more about Political Parties In The Solomon Islands: Active Political Parties (2006–10), Parties Created in Lead Up To 2010 Election, Former Political Parties
Famous quotes containing the words political, parties, solomon and/or islands:
“The real grounds of difference upon important political questions no longer correspond with party lines.... Politics is no longer the topic of this country. Its important questions are settled... Great minds hereafter are to be employed on other matters.... Government no longer has its ancient importance.... The people’s progress, progress of every sort, no longer depends on government. But enough of politics. Henceforth I am out more than ever.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I’ve given parties that have made Indian rajahs green with envy. I’ve had prima donnas break $10,000 engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing button back in Ohio, I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that I had to sink my yacht to make my guests go home.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Flowers ... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery of God only by them—when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.”
—Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)