Big voter turn-out in Vanuatu general elections

Updated September 2, 2008 16:16:31

It is expected to take up to 48 hours after the polls close in today's general elections in Vanuatu before official results can be declared. Australia Network's Pacific Correspondent Sean Dorney says things seem to be running smoothly.

Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Australia Networks Pacific Correspondent, Sean Dorney

DORNEY: Well here in Port Vila there were quite significant crowds turning up to vote and one of the polling stations where I spent about 15 or 20 minutes there were two long queues of people stretching right back, probably about 50 or 60 metres winding around the trees. There were lots of people waiting to vote. It's been fairly ordered and fairly well organised. I did have a quick chat to the Chief Electoral Commissioner and he was saying that he was pretty pleased with how things have been going so far. Counting is going to take quite a while of course so it could be some days, in fact he doesn't expect final results until next week. But we may have a bit of a clue of what's going on within 48 hours I would think.

COUTTS: Sean, the 341 candidates contesting these elections, a record number, a lot of them independents, why so many independents turning out?

DORNEY: Well I think it's a trend in Melanesia isn't it that there are more and more people who think that the elections go on and think that there's a chance of getting into parliament. There are actually no fewer than 29 parties, so I don't think you can say parties are losing favour, in fact there's lots of people setting up political parties. But Vanuatu which had this extraordinary record for Melanesia in the early years of having an absolutely dominant Vanu'aku Party, where it won I think in the election just before independence two-thirds of the seats and then it kept winning more than half the seats in a couple of subsequent elections. Well the Vanu'aku Party this time seems likely to win less than or fewer than 10 seats, and in fact from what I'm being told by observers here nobody's expecting any of the main political parties to wind up with more than 10 seats. So in a 52-member parliament you're going to have yet again a collection of parties forming a coalition. There are ten parties represented in the current parliament, five in the government and five in the opposition. So just what does happen to political parties and to some of the older political identities who've been in parliament for quite some time now, their futures I'm told or some of them anyway are very much in the balance. But of course we will not know until the counting really gets underway.

COUTTS: Well we have heard stories along those lines, Sean, that a lot of people are disenchanted with the current leadership. What does that say about the current Prime Minister Ham Lini and that family who have ruled for so long in the country?

DORNEY: Well I think Ham Lini's concentration over recent years has been stability and his party, the NUP has been campaigning on that very issue that Vanuatu needs political stability. The economy hasn't been going too badly here in Vanuatu in recent years. So he's campaigning on a platform that he should be returned. Just what sort of a government does form out of this it's impossible to really predict at the moment. There are some weird and wonderful candidates standing in this election. Wendy Himford who used to be on the staff of Serge Vohor, back when he was prime minister has established her own political party, and there are posters all over town or there were, lots of the posters have had to be ripped down in the last 24 hours because you're not supposed to campaign on the day of the election. But Wendy Himford's posters proclaim her as Jesus Christ's candidate, Jesus Christ's chosen candidate. And there's a big poster up outside her church which has got Wendy Himford and then underneath, Jesus Christ and Moses. She's campaigning very much trying to win people over by suggesting that she has the official endorsement of Jesus Christ.