There are conflicting reports of the official death toll from this week’s massive earthquake in Vanuatu as rescue teams continue to scour the rubble for survivors.

On Tuesday, the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office reported 14 deaths.

It said four people had been confirmed dead by the hospital, six others were killed in a landslide and four others died in a collapsed building.

But yesterday, the disaster management office reported only nine people had been confirmed dead by the hospital and made no mention of the deaths it had earlier attributed to the landslides and collapsed buildings.

One consistent figure is the more than 200 people injured, with the hospital saying many patients were being treated for broken bones.

This area has been closed to the public and search and rescue operations were ongoing.

Any buildings still standing had sustained significant structural damage.

The Port Vila main wharf remained closed due to a major landslide.

The two main water reservoirs supplying Port Vila had been totally destroyed and would require reconstruction — an assessment of the rest of the water network was ongoing.

A boil water notice is in place for all of Vila.

Power and telecommunications
The utility company Unelco is working to restore power and water supply.

Vodafone Vanuatu informed its customers that instant messaging on Messenger, Viber and WhatsApp had been restored on its mobile network.

Audio and video calling via these platforms, however, was still unavailable by today.

Vodafone said its team was working hard to resolve these issues and fully restore its internet services.

State of emergency
A one-week state of emergency was declared on Tuesday by the President, Nikenike Vurobaravu, for the worst affected areas.

Police had been urging people to adhere to the nightly curfew of 6pm to 6am local time.

They had also warned of a greater chance of opportunistic crimes being committed after the disaster and urged everyone to look out for each other.

Commercial flights
There were no commercial flights operating into or out of Vanuatu.

Local authorities said on Tuesday they were closing the Bauerfield International Airport to commercial flights for 72 hours to repair damage and prioritise disaster relief flights.

Passengers booked to fly Fiji Airways to Vila on Thursday had their flights moved to December 21.

Solomon Airlines had also indicated it would resume flying to Vanuatu from Saturday.

Virgin Airlines has cancelled flights until Sunday and a spokesperson for the Qantas Group told the ABC they were monitoring the situation closely.

International aid
International defence and medical personnel, search and rescue teams and disaster response experts from New Zealand, Australia and France were now on the ground in Port Vila.

They were helping local emergency response teams, which had been working around the clock since Tuesday’s 7.3 magnitude quake alongside locally based staff at UN agencies and non-government organisations in Vila.

Time is of the essence for the teams scouring the rubble for any sign of survivors.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Forty nine regional and international observers have arrived in Vanuatu to monitor the running of the country’s snap election tomorrow.

The election was triggered after the dissolution of the country’s Parliament on August 19 by President Nikenike Vurobaravu, and on the eve of a motion of no-confidence against the now caretaker prime minister Bob Loughman.

More than 300,000 people are expected to cast their vote in the snap election.

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Edward Kaltamat, has confirmed observers from Australia, China, Fiji, France, Kiribati, Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, New Zealand, Pacific Islands Forum, United Kingdom and the United Nations are in the country.

Kaltamat said their presence will provide confidence to the voters on the transparency and credibility of the election.

The 49 observers have signed their code of conduct to guide them while they are in the field.

Kaltamat said some of them would stay in the capital to monitor the elections in Port Vila and the Efate constituency, and some would be deployed in the islands.

He said the observers will be briefed before being sent to the islands by aircraft.

This is not the first time that international observers have monitored an election in Vanuatu.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Chief Justice of Vanuatu has ordered the amendment of a constitutional application against the dissolution of Parliament to exclude the president of the republic from the case.

The application, which was heard in the Supreme Court today in Port Vila, was brought by 27 opposition MPs who were signatories to a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Bob Loughman earlier this month.

On the motion being tabled in Parliament, the House was dissolved by President Nikenike Vurobaravu at the request of Loughman and his council of ministers.

Vanuatu lawyer Wilson Thompson is the assistant deputy Private Secretary to Vanuatu’s Head of State and was in court today for the proceedings. He said the court found the constitutional application too broad in its scope.

“The Chief Justice, who is the one presiding over the matter, has advised the applicant’s lawyers to amend the constitutional application and make it as an ordinary civil matter,” Thompson said.

He said the core difficulty in the original application was that it named the President as first respondent in the case but he could not be challenged because of the powers accorded to him by the Constitution.

“Because article 28 (3) of the Constitution does provide for the President to dissolve Parliament if he receives a council of ministers’ decision. And that provision does not provide for any other authority, whether from the opposition or whether from the leader of the opposition, for the President to consult before making a dissolution [of Parliament] ”

Thompson said the constitution also did not require the President to base his decision on any specific criteria.

Chief Justice Vincent Lunabek has given until the close of business tomorrow for the application to be amended to exclude the President and until Friday for the Attorney-General to prepare a response.

RNZ Pacific understands the new case is now being built around challenging Loughman and his council of ministers’ decision to request a dissolution of Parliament despite a date having been set by the Speaker of Parliament for the motion of no confidence to be heard.

The entire matter will be back in court on September 2 to see if there is a case to answer.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The president of Vanuatu has dissolved the country’s Parliament just over halfway through the current four-year-term.

President Nikenike Vurobaravu signed the instrument for the dissolution of Parliament this afternoon on the eve of a proposed motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Bob Loughman that was to have been tabled tomorrow morning.

The now caretaker Prime Minister Loughman, who requested the dissolution, has welcomed the president’s decision and called on all Vanuatu citizens to respect it.

The national broadcaster in Vanuatu is reporting that the president Nikenike Vurobaravu has signed an instrument for the dissolution of parliament and copies of the signed document are circulating online.https://t.co/0Zh028z8pv

— RNZ Pacific (@RNZPacific) August 18, 2022

RNZ Pacific was still trying to reach the former opposition leader Ralph Regenvanu but in a statement on social media he said they would be challenging the president’s decision in court.

“The President of the Republic has dissolved Parliament on the advice of the Council of Ministers just hours before a scheduled motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister in an Extraordinary Parliamentary session called by the majority of Members. The majority of Members will be challenging this dissolution in court. – in Port-Vila,” Ralph Regenvanu posted on the Vanuatu opposition’s official Facebook page.

However, caretaker Prime Minister Loughman is already in campaign mode saying by law they must hold an election in not less than 30 days but also not more than 60 days time.

“My responsibility and that of my ministers [is] to make sure that we run and we conduct an election for the people of this country to elect their new representatives to represent them in Parliament,” he said.

“I had made an appeal earlier on that when it comes to selecting candidates, I appealed to all the communities to nominate and elect reputable leaders that have the qualities to lead this country.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Vanuatu Prime Minister Bob Loughman has confirmed he will attend the next sitting of an extra-ordinary Parliament session on Friday to face a motion of no-confidence in his leadership.

Loughman and 20 MPs loyal to his government boycotted Parliament yesterday, forcing an adjournment to Friday — because of a lack of a quorum — effectively thwarting the opposition’s attempt to move the motion against him.

In response to the boycott opposition leader Ralph Regenvanu said Loughman was only delaying the inevitable.

“We think it’s just a power grab, it’s a last ditch attempt to try in stay in power beyond this week because the numbers have shifted,” Regenvanu said.

Regenvanu also said a request, from the Council of Ministers, conveyed by the Prime Minister over the weekend to the Head of State, calling for the dissolution of Parliament was equally futile.

RNZ Pacific’s reporter in Vanuatu, Hilaire Bule, reported yesterday afternoon that the Head of State, Nikenike Vurobaravu, has now declined the request for a dissolution of Parliament, effectively setting the scene for a showdown in Parliament on Friday.

Bob Loughman said he is prepared to defend himself on the floor.

“We will be there during which time I will have the opportunity to respond to allegations raised against me and I am very confident that the allegations raised against me are baseless,” he said.

Part of Loughman’s confidence also stems from the make up of the 17 government MPs who crossed the floor to join the opposition.

The only complete political party grouping to shift is a handful of MPs from the Reunification Movement for Change Party led by former prime minister Charlot Salwai.

The rest of the MPs to cross over have done so as individuals leaving their party members still aligned with the government, many of them in ministerial roles.

“That to me will continue to provide instability because you cannot satisfy all of the members at any one time,” Loughman said.

“My view is rather than going to other motions coming in the next one-and-a-half-years (the next election will be in 2024) that it would be in the best interest of this country to go for a fresh election,” he said.

But Regenvanu said deliberations among the MPs that had helped shift the balance of power in the House were already well advanced.

“We expect that we will be able to form government on Friday quite peacefully and efficiently and we are currently finalising the policy platform for the new government for the remaining 18 months or so of the legislature,” Regenvanu said.

Both leaders had messages for Vanuatu citizens in the country and around the world watching the political developments unfold.

Regenvanu called for calm and urged citizens to respect the democratic process.

“We have the interest of the people at heart and we are making the changes for the better (sic) of the public,” Regenvanu said.

Prime Minister Loughman also reiterated that the motion of no confidence was a normal parliamentary process but he urged the public to ensure their leaders were making these moves for the right reasons.

“What concerns me though is members, individual members of Parliament moving across from one side of the house to the other for their personal interests as compared to national interests,” Loughman said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Nikenike Vurobaravu has been voted the 12th President of the Republic of Vanuatu.

It took eight rounds of voting by the 58-member Electoral College before he secured the required minimum number of 38 this afternoon.

In the end he got a resounding 47 votes, after the Prime Minister, Bob Loughman, reached a deal with the nine MPs of the coalition party led by former prime minister, Charlot Salwai.

Those nine MPs have been part of the government for the past year but had fallen out with Loughman over his plans for constitutional reform.

The new president has had involvement with Vanuatu governments going back many years.

Most recently he has been the High Commissioner to Fiji.

Vurobaravu has promised to encourage unity around the country and to promote the issue of climate change.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Congr’ns to newly elected ??President, H.E. Nikenike Vurobaravu. Among the 56 votes, Nikenike won 48 votes, more than 2/3. It was the 8th attempt by the college on the 3rd day to elect a new HoS. He succeeds Moses Obed Tallis, whose term of presidency ended on 6/07/2022. pic.twitter.com/ou8MKk6j0S

— Jason Daniel (@Jaxniel) July 23, 2022

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz