26 Jan 2010

Another attempt to remove Vanuatu's speaker stifled

9:13 pm on 26 January 2010

Vanuatu's Parliament has started its first extra-ordinary session for 2010 with a resumption of the ongoing battle between the speaker of parliament Maxime Carlot Korman and the coalition government of prime minister, Edward Natapei.

On Friday, the government deposited another motion against Mr Korman to vote out him as speaker.

However Mr Korman told parliament that while his office has received the motion, it was not in order to be debated due to technical mistakes

He told the parliament that the motion against him will only be debated on Thursday and if the government re-drafts it without the mistakes.

This follows several attempts by the government late last year to sack Mr Korman however as Speaker he has found a series of technical flaws preventing the motions reaching the voting stage.

In November, Mr Natapei sacked Mr Korman's Vanuatu Republican Party from his government.