Fritch, who is the co-president of historic pro-French Tahoeraa Huiraatira party, received the votes of 38 of the 57 MPs. He replaces Temaru, who was the speaker until his election at the top post on Thursday.
Fritch’s election is part of the new coalition agreement that brought Temaru to power this week.
The coalition consists of Temaru’s Union for Democracy, 19 seats; former President Gaston Flosse’s Tahoeraa Huiraatira, nine seats; and Jean-Christophe Bouissou’s Rautahi party, which now seems to have the support of at least nine MPs, some of whom recently defected the former ruling To Tatou Ai’a coalition of former President Gaston Tong Sang.
More MPs seem to have deserted former President Tong Sang’s To Tatou Ai’a party — three of them have now officially defected to Tahoeraa Huiraatira bringing its number of seats to 12.
Fritch has been speaker of the House on several occasions and more recently last year, under a brief Flosse government that was ousted in a motion of no confidence after less than two months in power.
After his election, Fritch once again stressed that the new parliamentary majority was the largest in French Polynesia in a very long time.
During the past five years, governments could only rely on paper-thin majorities, with, typically, not more than one or two more seats than the opposition, thus allowing small independent MPs to act as kingmakers by switching sides to shift the balance of power.
Fritch also reiterated that the new majority, with its strong base, intended to work on the French Pacific territory’s economic recovery.
