Solomons MPs to elect new PM this week

The large hand-written sign in the service station window says it all - "locally owned".

Things have calmed considerably in Honiara in the past week.

Contentious prime minister Snyder Rini has resigned, a strict curfew has been lifted and residents can now be seen laughing, eating and drinking late into the night.

But fears remain that the burning and looting that reduced about 60 of the town's businesses to rubble, after the controversial election of Snyder Rini as prime minister, could flare again when a replacement is chosen later this week.

Local businesses - like the service station - are at pains to point out they have no links to the ethnic Chinese who were vigorously targeted in the rampage. Allegations that Rini was in the pocket of Chinese businessmen and used dirty money to buy crucial votes lit the fuse of last month's violence.

Along with local businesses, New Zealand and Australian police and soldiers - part of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (Ramsi) - are showing no signs of relaxing.

Heavily armed soldiers in full battle kit can be seen on Honiara's streets and a beefed up police presence is also obvious.

Will Jamieson, head of the Participating Police Force - the police arm of Ramsi - describes the current situation as "quiet but fragile".

Several riot instigators - possibly part of an organised group - are believed to still be at large. Reports that some people were carrying military-style assault rifles during the two days of violence have also raised the level of vigilance.

So far police have arrested over 100 people in relation to the riots - six of them for instigating the violence, two of them MPs.

Mr Jamieson says more arrests are imminent and if the the orchestrators of last week's violence can be caught the chance of a repeat is dramatically reduced.

"The strategy we're adopting is one of removing the threat - that is removing the leaders involved in this riotous behaviour and obviously removing any other threat such as weapons."

The arrests also showed people they would be held accountable if they broke the law, he says.

Ramsi has faced criticism on two fronts for its handling of the riots - for firing teargas into demonstrators, which some commentators claim provoked the riots, and then for not doing enough to halt the rampage of arson that razed much of the town.

In Honiara itself there are rumours that Ramsi actually allowed parts of the town to be destroyed and a feeling among some that it sided with the unpopular Mr Rini.

All of those factors mean that as well as the threat of rocks, machetes and arson, Ramsi has a public relations battle on its hands. But police say the timeline of the events on April 18 - the initial day of the riots - shows they only fired teargas into the crowd outside parliament once two police officers were injured and a vehicle set alight.

Ramsi co-ordinator James Batley says they did the best it could to protect Honiara, but with limited resources and rioting on several fronts police were forced to prioritise saving lives over protecting property.

However Patrick Leong, the owner of the burned out Pacific Casino Hotel, disagrees with Ramsi's tactics.

A week ago his business was a thriving hub. Now it is a shell, surrounded by rubble, the burnt out husks of cars and a palpable stench.

He was forced to flee his hotel as a several hundred-strong mob descended on it for the third time in 24-hours. Earlier rioters had tried to break into several rooms, some containing New Zealand sports teams and tourists.

Mr Leong says he escaped out the back of the hotel with two police.

At one point they were confronted by a gang of men, but they fled when one of the police drew his pistol. Earlier about 20 police guarding his hotel left before the mob arrived. He says they should have stayed and used their guns to frighten off the crowd.

"That's all the other police needed to do. People here are frightened of guns. If they had stayed and got out their guns the mob would have disappeared."

But Mr Jamieson believes police did well in the circumstances. In a worst-case scenario high security prisoners such as murderous warlord Harold Keke could have been busted out of Honiara's Rove Prison, the police armoury could have been raided, or several lives lost.

None of these occurred.

Most Honiara residents spoken to by NZPA feel that Mr Rini's resignation and the opposition's seeming majority in Parliament mean a repeat of the unrest is unlikely.

But some local commentators believe that while the opposition is favoured to win this week's vote, it is far from a done deal.

There are several days before the vote - probably on Thursday - meaning plenty of time for potential horse trading of votes. If some MPs are seen to again have changed their stance as a result of lavish lobbying or money politics it could spark further unrest.

Mr Jamieson says while a repeat on some scale cannot be ruled out, lessons have been learned from the rioting. The reinforcements flown in after the riots and the arrests of alleged key instigators give Ramsi the upper hand in keeping law and order, he says.

But for some businesses, vital to the Solomons stuttering economy, that could be too late.

Mr Leong says he is keen to rebuild his hotel and casino, but says he has now lost confidence in the Ramsi force to prevent the same thing happening again. "There are Australian and New Zealand police here, but they could not stop this from happening," he told NZPA.

"What can I do? I would like to start again, but with no guarantee and no insurance it is a problem."

- NZPA