Papua New Guinea has appointed Mr. James Marape as its new Prime Minister following Wednesday’s resignation of  leader, Peter O’neill.

Marape, a former Finance Minister and O’neill’s ally who resigned last month in protest over a gas project was overwhelmingly elected by the country’s lawmakers on Thursday with 101 votes against the eight scored by his closest challenger, Sir Mekere Morauta.

The 54-year-old O’Neill had faced calls for his resignation for weeks and was finally pressured into stepping down.

The ex-Prime Minister’s leadership was put under pressure by a series of political defections in recent days and tensions over a multi-billion-dollar gas project signed this year with French company, Total and the US firm, ExxonMobil.

Although the project is expected to almost double the country’s gas exports, local communities  raised fears that they would be excluded from the benefits of the contract.

Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation of 7.3 million people has rich reserves of copper, gold and oil but development has been hampered by public order issues, rugged terrain and disputes over land.

Marape, the member for Tari-Pori in New Hela Province was a key minister in O’Neil’s government and his defection from the government to the opposition camp in April is believed to have accelerated O’Neill’s resignation from office.

At a time, he was the opposition bloc’s candidate to replace O’Neill as Prime Minister, before he was beaten in a secret ballot by Patrick Pruaitch earlier this week to become opposition leader.

As if to underline the fluid nature of the country’s politics, the 64-year-old Marape and his supporters returned to the government camp shortly after O’Neill officially resigned.

Speaking shortly after his election, Marape said he would make fixing Papua New Guinea’s economy, which he described as bleeding and struggling his priority and sounded a warning to foreign companies working in the country.

“We will look to maximizing gain from what God has given this country from our natural resources.

“This government is all about putting our country in the right place and taking back our economy. We don’t need foreigners to come in to take advantage of our forestry,” he said.

O’Neill who had led Papua New Guinea since 2011 was the second Prime Minister in the  country’s history to have served out a full term in office.