Mr Suidani appealed for calm and for people to refrain from illegal activities, while calling for a “nationwide dialogue” with the prime minister and other provincial leaders. The central government needed to listen to public concerns, he said. 

Mr Sogavare has blamed “foreign powers” – referencing the ones “influencing Malaita” and opposed to the Solomons’ ties with Beijing – for instigating recent violence in the capital, Honiara. He did not name names in his comments to Australia’s ABC news. 

Street protests in late November, calling for his resignation, descended into a frenzy of looting and arson focused on the commercial centre of Chinatown. The violence led to the arrest of more than 100 people, and an estimated $25 million in damage. 

Mobs almost breached the parliament and there was an attempt to burn down Mr Sogavare’s home, prompting him to appeal for Australian troops to be deployed under a security treaty signed with Canberra in 2017. 

While foreign intervention had restored peace, it did not solve the country’s long-term underlying economic and development problems, said Mr Suidani. 

“Our belief is that the regional forces on the ground will continue to allow bad governance in the Solomon Islands. We remind the international community the arrival of the international forces, led by Australia, has only given confidence to Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare,” he told an online press conference in Taipei. 

He said the main grievance of Malaitans was the government’s failure to enforce the Townsville Peace Agreement, signed 21 years ago to resolve ethnic conflict between rival island groups with a form of self-autonomy for Malaita, and Guadalcanal province, where the capital is located. 

“The reality is that the Solomon Islands today is a house built on sand, unless the promise of more autonomy and the issue of land and natural resource control and indigenous benefits are meaningfully addressed,” he said.