Vanuatu

The headline in the Vanuatu Daily Post on the first day after the New Year holiday—“Police Boss Orders Bribery Case Completion”—indicates how intent the current government was to pursue the investigation of alleged bribery involving a number of members of Parliament (mps) dating back to the previous year (vdp, 2 Jan 2015). Indeed, the bribery case dominated the news throughout 2015, making it the most politically unsettled year since Vanuatu’s independence in 1980.

In early November 2014, the local press reported that the leader of the Opposition, Moana Carcasses, had deposited a check for 35 million vatu in his personal account at a local bank and subsequently transferred sums of money ranging from vt500,000 to vt1 million into the accounts of a number of mps (100 vatu [vt] averaged around us$.91 in 2015). Ten days later, the prime minister, Joe Natuman, and deputy prime minister, Ham Lini, lodged a motion in Parliament to suspend sixteen Opposition mps on charges of alleged bribery, based on provisions in the Leadership Code that leaders in government should conduct themselves so as to avoid demeaning their office or the integrity of the Republic of Vanuatu. The next day, Carcasses tabled a motion of no confidence against the Natuman government.

Speaker of Parliament Phillip Boedoro ruled that the two motions should be dealt with in the order they were received; thus the bribery case against sixteen Opposition mps was debated first. Carcasses denied the allegation of bribery, claiming instead that he had offered the money as “loans” to any mp—either Opposition of Government—who was willing to “pledge their allegiance to him.” On 25 November, however, Parliament voted for suspension of sixteen mps on the basis that the Leadership Code specifically states that “a leader must not accept a loan (other than on commercial terms from a recognized lending institution) and only if the leader satisfies the lending institution’s usual business criteria” (Leadership Code Act [Cap 240], part 3—Breaches of Leadership, section 21).

The sixteen mps left Parliament and remained absent for the rest of the session. Carcasses, however, turned to the Supreme Court for redress, arguing that “only the court has the right to punish anyone and not parliament” (vdp, 26 Nov 2014). The court ruled in favor of the sixteen mps, stating that the motion “to suspend the Petitioners from Parliament amounts to breaches of their Constitutional rights and is therefore invalid, void and of no effect” (vusc 2014). The accused mps were, therefore, reinstated. The Speaker, however, called for a judicial review, arguing that the court’s decision had “intruded” in the affairs of Parliament—that it “interfered with the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary under the constitution of the country … [and] that the Parliament had a duty to act to protect its integrity by deciding to discipline those members concerned” (vdp, 4 Dec 2014).

Realizing they did not have the numbers to proceed, the Opposition allowed the motion of no confidence to lapse. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Natuman responded to the accusations that had been leveled against him as part of the motion. In particular, he focused on the airport concession agreement signed by the Carcasses-led government, which an ad hoc committee engaged to investigate the project had concluded “did not favor the government, the people and Vanuatu but ‘only foreigners and it could cause a catastrophe’” (Van Trease 2015, 546–547, 554–556). Natuman cautioned that “there were people around trying to get the Opposition to return to government to reopen the agreement” (vdp, 5 Dec 2014). Whether or not there was a link between the airport project and the alleged bribing of mps remains to be seen, as the whole incident has yet to be fully investigated—in particular, the original source of the vt35 million.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office began preparing a case against those alleged to have been involved in the bribery, which it was expected to present in court around mid-March 2015. The investigations were disrupted, however, due to the devastation inflicted on...