. becoming only the fourth Pacific country to embrace this ground-breaking international treaty.
The Convention harnesses a global consensus on what State parties should do to prevent and combat corruption, establishing a global framework to strengthen legal and regulatory regimes.
Transparency Vanuatu has welcomed the move saying .. it's certainly a positive step.
Presenter: Sonja Heydeman
Speaker: Marie-Noelle Ferrieux-Patterson, President of Transparency Vanuatu
FERRIEUX-PATTERSON: We cannot be more pleased by Vanuatu actually signing the convention and agreeing to follow the principle of the convention. I think that's a first step. But a long way is ahead of us to actually implement it and to start reporting on the achievements have, so I think that's a first step, so it is excellent and one can only praise it, about the goodness of the government to be the fourth country in the Pacific to go ahead with agreement with the convention. But as we know in Vanuatu we have had in the last, many years but recently quite a few scandals coming out, and we really need to tidy up our act in order to comply with the convention.
HEYDEMAN: Do you think it will make potentially a difference given some key challenges that Vanuatu faces?
FERRIEUX-PATTERSON: I mean now they are bound by the convention so there are a certain number of legislation, of even writing on the point of legislation we're quite advanced. But if we don't follow the convention then in a way it exposes them more to the international world, and if it hadn't signed it because then they're in breach of the convention. So we hope that the pressure coming from the respect or the non-respect, the advantages that we can get out of the respect will be enough to push them in the line of better governance and fighting more against corruption. The system has been set up in such a way that they have put at the head of some of the enforcement agencies people who are weak and I think the choice of these people must be reviewed because with convention or without convention, if you create an institution that should do the overlook of the leaders behaviour and you appoint at this position people who are doing very little, then even very good legislation becomes useless. So I think that's where more we would see civil society and also the international community to ensure not only the implementation of the new legislation, but the good choices of good leaders to take us there.
