Protect the Maneaba

Protect the Maneaba
Maneaban te Mauri
Founded1985
DissolvedAugust 2010
Merged intoUnited Coalition Party
IdeologyChristian democracy
ReligionChristianity

Protect the Maneaba (Gilbertese: Maneaban te Mauri, lit.'Protect the meeting house', MTM), initially known as the Christian Democratic Party, was a political party in Kiribati.

History

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The party was established as the Christian Democratic Party in 1985 by members of the House of Assembly opposed to president Ieremia Tabai.[1] By 1994 it had been renamed Protect the Maneaba, and was a loose grouping of MPs led by Roniti Teiwaki. In the 1994 parliamentary elections it won 13 of the 39 seats.[2] In the subsequent presidential elections two months later, MTM's Teburoro Tito was elected president.[3] In the 1998 parliamentary elections the party won 14 seats,[3] with Tito re-elected president two months later. By the late 1990s the party had two dominant factions, a Christian-Democratic faction led by Tito and a liberal faction led by Tewareka Tentoa.[1]

The party was reduced to only seven seats in the 2002 parliamentary elections,[4] but Tito was re-elected as president in February 2003. However, the government losing a vote on the supplementary budget by a vote of 21–19 in March 2003 led to early parliamentary elections in May.[5] Although MTM won 24 of the 40 seats,[5] in the subsequent presidential elections in July, MTM candidate Harry Tong lost to his brother Anote.[6]

The party was subsequently reduced to only seven seats in the 2007 parliamentary elections,[7] and did not nominate a candidate for the presidential elections. In August 2010 it merged with the Kiribati Independent Party to form the United Coalition Party.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b J. Denis Derbyshire & Ian Derbyshire (2016). Encyclopedia of World Political Systems. Routledge. p. 731. ISBN 978-1-317-47156-1.
  2. ^ "Elections held in 1994". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  3. ^ a b "Elections held in 1998". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  4. ^ "Elections held in 2002". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  5. ^ a b "Elections held in 2003". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  6. ^ "Republic of Kiribati presidential election of 4 July 2003". Psephos.
  7. ^ "Elections held in 2007". Inter-Parliamentary Union.
  8. ^ Tom Lansford (2015). Political Handbook of the World 2015. CQ Press. ISBN 978-1-4833-7155-9.