AUCKLAND -- Over 4,000 voters cast ballots Saturday in the troubled central Pacific island of Nauru, but it could be weeks before the outcome is known, a government spokesman said by phone.

Balloting for the 18-seat Parliament was held as news was announced in Fiji that another of Naurus key off-shore assets, the once romantic but now abandoned Grand Pacific Hotel (GPH) in Suva, had been sold.

GPH had a legendary quality about it and hosted famous writers -- and Queen Elizabeth II.

Nauru has owned it for around 10 years but left it unattended and rotting. In 1999 the then Fiji prime minister Mahendra Chaudnry seized the property, although he soon after was toppled in a coup.

Nauru said Fiji had purchased the building for 4 million Australian (2.5 million U.S.) dollars, but there has been no confirmation from the Fiji government.

On a per capital basis Nauru was 20 years ago one of the richest nations in the world, but its phosphate-rich topsoils have been mostly stripped now and its investments around the world have mostly collapsed. Earlier this week the Asian Development Bank issued a damning report on Nauru, home to 12,000 people, saying it was "in a long-term decline, resulting from prolonged economic and financial mismanagement and the progressive exhaustion of its phosphate reserves."

Nauru has had three presidents this year with the longest serving one -- Bernard Dowiyogo from January to March -- dying in Washington while in office.

The government official who would not be named said it appeared to have been an untroubled election with a good turnout, which, she said "is normal here".

Voting, as in Naurus former colonial master Australia, is compulsory.

Nauru uses a preferential voting system with each vote, on subsequent recounts, worth diminishing value. Their system is designed to cope with very small electorates but also delays counting.

However, the real outcome of the election, and whether significant political change is in the offing, will only come when Parliament sits and votes for a speaker and a president.

Since the middle of last year under then president Rene Harris, Parliament has barely functioned with no budget passed due to divisions in the assembly, AFP reported.

This year's third president is Derog Gioura. Many of the senior civil servants, criticized by the ADB for not showing up to work, are also candidates.

The ADB said the state was failing to pay its workers and creditors had been unpaid and were threatening to sue, or to cut off services to the island.

The state's Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust (NPRT) had begun selling off the last of the properties it owned, the country's main financial asset.

"While the net market value of the NPRT is unknown, it is believed to have seriously fallen because of the financing of sustained large government deficits and poor investment of NPRT assets.