Do we need another GNU?

At first there was the

so-called People’s Provisional Government of the Vanua’aku Pati in November 1977 as a reaction to the closing of ranks by the two metropolitan powers, especially in relation to lands and education issues, as some sort of Independence had to be nearing.

Then in August 1978 the French Minister for Overseas Territories, Paul Dijoud, arrived for four days of discussion as to what would be necessary for France to agree to any independence.

This resulted in the Dijoud Plan which required a Government of National Unity (GNU), a census and the writing of the Constitution.

This writer well remembers Dijoud’s press conference and insistence on the protection of the French language, regionalisation within the country, the need for the establishment of “les institutions”, and the fact that a census and new election would likely hugely delay what the big Vanua’aku majority was wanting — Independence and an escape from the foreign control represented by the Condominium’s two powers.

Discussions between the opposing political parties saw a GNU formed which, as Howard Van Trease points out in “The Politics of Land in Vanuatu,” was to have an enlarged Council of Ministers with five coming from the Vanua’aku Pati. This first GNU was run by George Kalsakau, but not for long as there was soon to be a motion of no confidence and Fr Gerard Leymang appointed as the new Chief Minister. By 1978 anyway, Vincent Boulekone had resigned from the UCNH party.

Van Trease observes “Boulekone’s defection from the UCNH, and that of other prominent Francophone Melanesians, reveals the almost total failure of French Government policy to create a Melanesian majority which they could manipulate and count on to support their aims of retaining power in Vanuatu for ever.”

The Dijoud Plan did, however, work, insofar as it got the emerging country its Constitution written and the important 1979 elections for the Representative Assembly in which the Vanua’aku Pati won a resounding 62% of the popular vote. It paved the way to Independence. And even though the GNU’s Fr Leymang was UCNH and a francophone, he was held in high respect by the largely anglophone VP. There were really only the two big parties and they understood each other and were able to contribute to a national Melanesian unification.

However, in 2012 Vanuatu had 17 parties going to the polls, one with only one candidate, and many MPs having moved from party to party. The electoral environment is just not the same. And as Howard Van Trease also observes from time to time in 1979 76.4% of the population managed to have their chosen MP elected. In 2012, with so many hopefuls after the Parliamentary jobs, this had dwindled to 36%. Getting into Parliament had become like a job application.

Bribery has got this country into this tangled mess: self interest as opposed to the national interest.

Melanesians talking to other Melanesians on an equal basis, as the Opposition underscored yesterday in its press conference, can decide on how to build a government in the interest of the nation.

Good leadership will be needed as it was in 1978.

At least in the view of many, maintaining the rule of law and good leadership is just what this country currently needs.