Watchdog group says democracy doesn't apply in Vanuatu

Transcript

Transparency International Vanuatu says politicians right across the spectrum are complicit in allowing an electoral system which can be misused.

The organisation has completed a report on last year's election which found major fraud took place and it wants a complete overhaul of the electoral system.The chairperson, Marie-Noelle Ferrieux-Patterson, told Bridget Tunnicliffe the main findings of the report.

MARIE-NOELLE FERRIEUX-PATTERSON: The biggest problem, and I think a major overall problem overall that needs to be addressed, is the number of registered voters. We've found from the electoral roll that there was 192,000 registered voters, when, in fact, compared to the population that is more than 18 years old we should have only 120,000 people. And apart from that, we had a major problem in the second count of the vote, and that was not transparent at all. MPs were forbidden access. When our officer went, we were refused. So I think that Transparency will make a second counting of the vote, the number of voters. And another result more of the social situation is the absence of successful women. We get more women going for election, but they seem to get fewer and fewer votes. And our system, basically, might not be as democratic as we want, because the (Indistinct) staff means that you have MPs who do not represent a lot of people in their constituency. It can start at 5% to 20%, you know? So it's not very much when you end up having these MPs in parliament - they don't really feel like they represent the whole population. These were some of the major findings.

BRIDGET TUNNICLIFFE: With the issue with the voter registration where you had far too many registered, then what would make sense for the population - would you put that down to poor administration or is that just straight election fraud?

MFP: With that type of scale, no, I think it has got to be a major fraud. Do not forget in Vanuatu a lot of people are not even registered at birth, so you have a lot of potential to actually misuse the system if you apply yourself to it.

BT: Isn't that just incompetence on the part of the electoral commission?

MFP: When you're facing a system where politicians are making sure the electoral commission is starved of funds and is not very operative because they don't  want it to improve because they know how it operates... Throughout the years, I think politicians have used the system, and they can see how they can use the electoral counts, get their people to register in different places, there's often misuse of proxies, so it's a very difficult situation.

BT: The irregularities that you found in last year's election, who do you think is responsible? Is it the incumbent government that's desperate to cling on to power? Is it opposition MPs desperate to get power? Are all the politicians just as bad as each other?

MFP: It seems to be because when we mentioned that the politicians are familiar with the system, it's all of them. I think absolutely no-one wants the system changed.  And I don't think there's one worse than the other. At the moment they're all absolutely responsible for what is happening. Democracy doesn't apply in Vanuatu. And especially when you look at the MPs representing 5% of the population in some places, it is almost a joke of democracy.