14 Sep 2004

Cooks PM Woonton retains seat

1:23 pm on 14 September 2004

The Cook Islands prime minister, Dr Robert Woonton, has overturned preliminary results to recapture his seat in the elections.

Dr Woonton was trailing the president of the Cook Islands party, Henry Puna, by 15 votes but the final count saw a reversal with the P.M. winning by 142 votes to 138.

This puts the Democratic party further in the lead with 14 seats to the Cook Islands party's nine and a split vote on Rakahanga.

The chief registrar of electors, Terry Hagan, says other final counts are continuing this afternoon and they all should be completed by the end of tomorrow.