AAP: THE fun and colour of Vanuatu’s campaign trail is over, leaving this week’s vote and then coalition negotiations to form the next government in Port Vila.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s trailblazing climate advocate and mould-breaking Port Vila MP, has declared his ambitions to be prime minister following the country’s snap election.
The Pacific nation goes to the polls on Thursday to elect a new crop of parliamentarians.
Many ni-Vanuatu resent being sent to to the ballot box in a second-straight snap election caused by political instability.
Add in widespread concerns over the use of public money – both by MPs who receive constituency funding straight into their own bank accounts, and by government agencies with poor track records – and Mr Regenvanu hopes it could fuel support for his party.
“Politics at the moment is not doing Vanuatu any favours,” he told AAP.
Mr Regenvanu is one of a handful of Pacific politicians with a global profile, owing to his efforts to alter international climate law through the Vanuatu-led case at the International Court of Justice.
In December, he left the campaign trail for The Netherlands to make the opening statement in the two-week hearings at the world court.
Back home, the Australia-educated 54-year-old and former museum curator is best known as a transparency warrior.
The Land and Justice Party leader has published his constituency spending for the last decade, as opposed to other MPs who do not have to account for the funds, and choose not to.
“He is honest. A good man, not like the others,” David, a Port Vila local, tells AAP.
Mr Regenvanu has also campaigned differently, eschewing the common practice of driving along the streets in vehicles with party colours, tooting horns and waving flags.
“Those are for politicians who have little to say,” he said.
Instead, he held roadside meetings with supporters, talking about his party’s platform.
He says the cost of living, the poor state of infrastructure – especially roads – and services are the biggest issues raised during his canvassing.
In a slice of good-natured poll fun, rival parties targeted those meetings, driving past in convoy and chanting to bring proceedings to a halt, which Mr Regenvanu laughs off.
He wants these games left outside parliament, as he battles to create a more stable political environment in the fractious Melanesian nation.
Since independence in 1980, elections typically send a dozen or more parties to parliament, requiring unruly coalitions of several parties to command a majority.
This has led to regular overthrow of governments amid shifting allegiances and no-confidence motions, or snap elections such as this week’s poll.
An electoral system which favours incumbents gives well-remunerated MPs little incentive to change these practices.
Hoping to minimise disruption, Mr Regenvanu and others championed a successful referendum last year – the first in Vanuatu’s history – that requires independents to join parties and bans party-hopping.
“This is the second snap election in two years. It’s obviously not good but we’ve started the political reform that we need to do,” he said.
Also on his to-do list, Mr Regenvanu wants to end his country’s controversial pay-for-passports citizenship scheme and public sector reform.
These policy shifts require the authority of the prime minister, a role he “definitely” wants to achieve.
“We need big reform up there,” he said.
“All these issues I’m talking about in the campaign like citizenship, the public service, they’re under the PM’s office and they’re the issues we need to sort out and we haven’t sorted them out,” he said.
Those positions will be decided in closed-door coalition negotiations following the public vote.
While Mr Regenvanu is hopeful of growing his parliamentary team to eight MPs at this election, privately, analysts and local journalists are doubtful he will emerge to lead his country.
A sometimes-prickly disposition and his transparency efforts can rub colleagues the wrong way, even if his climate efforts are well regarded.
He expresses his displeasure at the coalition-building ahead, when his party will join with the Reunification Movement for Change and Leaders parties to again form a bloc seeking additional partners.
“I’m not looking forward to that at all, that negotiation, because you have to make a lot of compromises,” he said.
