Tuvalu’s Taiwan ties in the balance as Pacific nation gets new prime minister

Teo secured the support of lawmakers who were elected last month and was declared prime minister by the governor general, government secretary Tufoua Panapa said in an emailed statement. Teo, who was educated in New Zealand and Australia, was Tuvalu’s first attorney general and has decades of experience as a senior official in the fisheries industry – the region’s biggest revenue earner.

Tuvalu lawmaker Simon Kofe congratulated Teo in a social media post. “It is the first time in our history that a prime minister has been nominated unopposed,” he said.

Only one nomination had been sent to the governor general, before the formal vote by the lawmakers on Monday morning.

Taiwan earlier said it was paying close attention to the election after Tuvalu’s finance minister in the previous government, Seve Paeniu, said the issue of diplomatic recognition should be debated by the new government.

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The deal was seen as an effort to curb China’s rising influence as an infrastructure provider in the Pacific.

Teo’s position on Taiwan ties, and the Australian security and migration pact, have not been made public.

Jess Marinaccio, an assistant professor in Pacific studies at California State University, said it was too early to say whether Teo would maintain ties with Taiwan.

“I don’t think anybody knows, because he hasn’t been in government for a long time,” Marinaccio said. “The positions he has worked in were ones where he had to deal with countries which did and didn’t have relations with Taiwan, so he has probably had to be fairly even about that … He couldn’t express an opinion either way, so we don’t have an idea whether he leans one way or the other.”

Marinaccio said