Correspondent's Notebook
Vanuatu’s political instability
26 September 2008
This week, Vanuatu’s parliament elected Edward Natapei as the country’s new Prime Minister after a close contest with Maxime Korman.
However, just days after Mr Natapei formed a coalition government, the opposition lodged a motion of no-confidence in the new leader.
Pacific Beat reporter Bruce Hill has been looking at the political instability in Vanuatu following elections early this month.
A lot of news items this week began with the sentence, “Vanuatu politics remains unstable today, with another vote of no confidence”.
In fact, we could have had virtually the same story with only very minor modifications, in every news bulletin.
“Vanuatu political instability” has managed to become something of a journalistic cliche, as in “sun rises in east” or “dog bites man”.
To be fair though, up until the recent election. the former Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides had enjoyed a spell of relatively quiet governance.
And as with most elections in Melanesia, it can take time for the new political landscape to settle down, and for alliances between the various parties to form.
But with almost daily attempts to topple the government with votes of no confidence, and a parliament balanced 27 votes to 25, or 26-26 depending on which MPs public assertions of allegiance you believe, it certainly doesn’t look as if the problem is going to go away any time soon.
With the balance between the government so finely balanced, all an MP needs to do to get a promise of a cabinet post is to accept an offer to switch sides.
The opposition are just as capable of this as the government, and of course if it succeeds, then the opposition will BE the government.
And the game will begin again, but with the teams playing from opposite side, like halftime in a rugby match.
So, should the current prime minister, Edward Natapei, make sure he doesn’t buy any green bananas for the prime ministerial fruit bowl?
Should his office get a revolving door installed?
And perhaps, does this really matter?
After all, instability is by no means an exclusively Melanesian phenomenon.
Italy famously had changes of government more than once a year since the end of World War Two, and it has a powerhouse economy and a standard of living the envy of the world.
Do countries actually need strong, effective and stable governments?
The cynics might argue that if the MPs and cabinet ministers are all occupied 24 hours a day plotting and scheming their next parliamentary manoeuvre rather than trying to run the country, that at least means they can’t do much harm.
But in the end, a direction does have to be set, and there are decisions that need to be made that are above any civil servants pay grade, and only a government with some sort of democratic mandate from the people has the right to make those decisions.
There are cultural reasons why Melanesian countries tend to have unstable governments.
In traditional Melanesian societies, social rank was determined by ownership of pigs, and the biggest man was the one most successful at trading, making deals, networking, making friends, setting up trade links and, yes, knowing when it was time to betray someone.
In Polynesia, where the islands tend to be much smaller, there were fewer resources available, and no extra land available, so their situation was more akin to being in a fragile lifeboat, leading to a tradition of very strong central leadership in which one man at the top made the decisions, and everyone else obeyed.
But that was then, and this is now, and although culture and custom still shape people’s attitudes, the question needs to be asked, are the patterns of the past helping or harming when it comes to modern politics?
