Samoa is set to confirm La'aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polata'ivao Schmidt as the Pacific nation's new Prime Minister by the end of the week.
The charismatic leader would replace Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, Samoa's historic first female PM, who remains in charge of the country until final votes are counted.
The leader of the Samoa United Party is one of only three of her party's candidates to have secured a seat in the Legislative Assembly – the 'Fono' national parliament – following the closure of polls last Friday.
But Mr Schmidt, who earlier in the year had led an internal government revolt against Ms Mata'afa, has subsequently won a huge majority in his constituency.
The Samoan Electoral Commission has confirmed his Faʻatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party appears to have earned 30 of the country's 51 seats.
While provisionally the party has been confirmed to have won at least 28 seats, FAST may have up to 31 MPs before the commission officially calls the election.
Results are not final until each of the seats are counted and every one of the elected candidates are declared a winner.
The Human Rights Protection Party has won 14 seats in the new Legislative Assembly, which could include four independents and just three seats for the Samoa Uniting Party.
The result comes after electoral officers allegedly responsible for separate errors in four polling booths are set to be investigated after vote counting is completed.
Mr Schmidt will be announced the eighth Prime Minister of Samoa since its independence from the UK in 1962.
The former Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Scientific Research has a turbulent political past, once resigning his Cabinet position midway through his third MP term in 2017 after being charged with more than 100 counts of forgery and theft.
He was later acquitted of all charges.
Mr Schmidt was also sacked in 2020 by ex-Prime Minister, Tuila'epa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi, from his former Human Rights Protection Party of which his late father was one of its founding members.
Instead, Mr Schmidt joined the FAST Party under Ms Mata'afa's leadership before she also sacked him as her deputy leader while serving as the party chairman, dismissing him from the Cabinet earlier this year.
He was charged with 10 criminal offences, including harassment, making a false statement causing harm to a person's reputation, using insulting words to provoke a breach of the peace, conspiring to fabricate evidence and conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Mr Schmidt refused to resign at the time, forcing the political hand of Ms Mata'afa.
The stance led Ms Mata'afa and four of her cabinet ministers to be expelled from the party, but not before they rejected the expulsion as unlawful while claiming they remained FAST members.
After parliament rejected the government's budget in May, Ms Mataʻafa advised the Head of State of Samoa to dissolve parliament so to call for a snap election.
Ms Mata'afa and her ousted cabinet ministers later announced they had left FAST and were establishing the Samoa United Party after surviving a no-confidence motion from the incumbent Opposition, the Human Rights Protection Party, in February of this year.
The certain victory for the socially conservative, Christian-based FAST party appears to have vindicated Mr Schmidt's political positioning from the once house speaker during 2011 until 2016.
