6 Nov 2012

Vanuatu women's call to probe alleged election corruption

4:12 pm on 6 November 2012

A candidate in last week's election in Vanuatu is calling on women's organisations to investigate allegations of corruption that prevented women being elected.

With the official results to be released tomorrow, none of the 10 women who stood has been voted into parliament.

Jenny Ligo, who stood in the Port Vila constituency, says while she believes the women ran a clean campaign, there have been allegations of bribery to stop women candidates being supported.

"Some of the politicians, they pay the whole community to vote for a certain man politician. It's something that people know about. And some of the women are threatened - if you vote for this woman, we are going to chase you out from the village, or they will do something to them."

Jenny Ligo says she has called on UN Women and the department of women's affairs to do an evaluation of the whole election.