HONIARA (AFP) -- The Solomon Islands High Court has rejected a government plea to delay the opening of parliament, forcing Prime Minister Manesseh Sogavare to face a vote of no confidence on Thursday.

In the judgment delivered to a packed courtroom Wednesday, Justice Edwin Goldsborough dismissed the government challenge to the December 13 opening as ""frivolous and vexatious"".
Sogavare had gone to court to delay the sitting of parliament to December 24 after his position became tenuous with the defection of nine government ministers.
When parliament meets, the only item on the agenda is the vote of no confidence in the prime minister.
The resignation this week of aviation minister Johnson Koli gave the opposition a majority of 25 members in the 48-seat parliament.
Sogavare has filed a complaint that Koli was kidnapped and forced to join the opposition, however, deputy police commissioner Peter Marshall said he would talk to Koli before deciding if the matter was to be taken further.
The government defectors have criticized the leadership style of Sogavare, who came to power in April last year after riots forced the resignation of his predecessor, Snyder Rini.
In October, Sogavare boycotted the Pacific Islands Forum of leaders from 16 regional nations over his opposition to Australian dominance of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which is formally under the forum's control.
Sogavare has been in a long-running confrontation with Australia since he expelled the Australian ambassador last year and Canberra tried to extradite Solomons Attorney-General Julian Moti on child sex charges.
RAMSI started as an Australian-led armed intervention in 2003 to end five years of bloody ethnic strife in the Solomon Islands.