SYDNEY (Reuters) – Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape is likely to face a vote of no confidence with parliament resuming on Tuesday after the opposition party nominated Rainbo Paita, who defected from Marape’s cabinet days earlier, as deputy prime minister.
Paita, the finance minister, was among the ministers who defected in a group of eighteen members of Marape’s Pangu party.
Newspaper front pages in the capital Port Moresby have been dominated by the political drama, which has overshadowed a devastating landslide that is estimated to have buried some 2,000 people on Friday in remote villages in Enga province, where rescue efforts continue.
Parliament will meet at 2pm on Tuesday and return after three months, with a vote of no confidence expected to be tabled, officials said.
Before the motion can be voted on, it must be approved by a parliamentary committee meeting on Wednesday, the parliament speaker’s office added.
In a statement Monday evening, Marape said six of the 18 defecting lawmakers have now returned to the government side, and that his coalition partners had also pledged support.
The parliamentary majority threshold is 56.
“We had a very large coalition of 93 MPs, which has dropped to just over 70,” Marape said.
He said his coalition partners agreed that “now is not the time for instability, but for reconstruction under the current government.”
Marape was re-elected for a second term as prime minister in 2022 and already survived a vote of no confidence in February after riots in the capital.
“Tomorrow the government will have the figures, but the consensus is that we as a government must work hard to tackle the problems affecting our country in a sincere and serious manner,” Defense Minister Billy Joseph wrote in a Facebook post on Monday evening. post.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)
