There has been some criticism that when law reform initiatives are undertaken by the Vanuatu Law Reform Commission, these consultations may take long.
To refute that, it must be stated that the Vanuatu Law Reform Commission has a clientele that spans from Tafea province in the South to Torba province up North.
According to Lawson Jack Samuel who is the Secretary of the Vanuatu Law Reform Commission,
“Our Consultative Process is the essence of the work we do. We cannot sit in our offices in Vila and undertake desktop legislative processes and claim that we do the reviews on behalf of the people of Vanuatu”.
Samuel stressed that:
“Sometimes officials may consider the people in the outer islands as having no concrete contributions to legislative reforms but they do have brilliant ideas and comments because they are the ones mostly affected by the implementation of our laws. And all the citizens of Vanuatu are our clients”.
According to the importance the VLRC places on consultation, the VLRC has undertaken consultations in all six provinces from 5th June to 16th June 2023. The Consultations were on the proposals to upgrade the standard of Representation in Provincial Councils. We did not have the answers, the people consulted have provided the answers to our questions-a bottom-up approach for the purpose of ownership.
Throughout the six provinces, there was overwhelming support for the need to address the standard of Representation as it is now over 30 years since the establishment of provincial Councils. Even if there were amendments to the rules of elections ever since, there was no major review of the criteria for eligibility of candidature, age, health, women and decision-making, and first-class and second-class citizens in terms of the constitutional rights to vote.
After the consultations, the VLRC team is now compiling the findings for a validation session with the Councils at the November Council Meetings. We want to thank the Councilors who have been part of the consultation session in their respective area councils. We want to thank them for their enormous contributions to the questions raised.
After the validation session, we will have a draft report containing recommendations to present to major stakeholders such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Department of Local Authorities, and the Electoral Office, It is also interesting to note that other issues that were raised by those consulted include but are not limited to issues such as closed constituencies, the need for more electoral reforms, etc.
We want to thank the South Pacific Community for funding this consultation and the upcoming validation and we look forward to more close working collaboration in facilitating law reform for the people of Vanuatu in the future.