Papua New Guinea prime minister quits

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Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister Peter O'Neill announced his resignation on Sunday after weeks of high-level defections from the ruling party.

O'Neill's opponents said on Friday they had mustered enough support in parliament to oust him over a range of grievances including a gas deal with France's Total, which critics have questioned.

Defections from the ruling coalition have been going on for weeks, and on Friday at least nine members switched sides, according to two ministers who were among them.

O'Neill's opponents needed to rally 62 members of PNG's 111-seat parliament to vote him out.

Opposition politicians said on Friday they would push for investigations in Australia and Switzerland into an 830.76 million dollars loan arranged by finance group UBS if there was a change of government, the Australian Financial Review reported.

Political instability is something of a fixture in the resource-rich but poverty-stricken South Pacific nation and O'Neill, who had been the leader since 2011, had seen off previous attempts to topple him.

He handed over leadership to Sir Julius Chan, ABC News reported.

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill speaks at the closing of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Port Moresby, November 18, 2018. /VCG Photo

A report by the Ombudsman Commission of PNG into the 2014 deal that allowed the South Pacific nation to borrow from UBS to buy a 10-percent stake in Australian Stock Exchange-listed energy firm Oil Search is scheduled to be tabled in PNG's parliament next week.

Oil Search, in turn, used the money to buy into the Elk-Antelope gas field being developed by France's Total.

PNG is estimated to have lost 287 million U.S. dollars on the deal after being forced to sell the shares when the price fell in 2017.

(Cover photo: Peter O'Neill speaks during the opening of the PNG Mining and Petroleum Investment Conference in Sydney, Australia, December 5, 2016. /Reuters Photo)

Source(s): Reuters