On Monday November 19, 2012, Sato Kilman was re-elected Prime Minister of Vanuatu, securing a vote count of 29 – 23. He went on to form a coalition, which includes the following Ministers and MPs:

The offering of ministries to parties and individuals has proved to be an effective method of forming coalitions all over the world, and Vanuatu is no exception. Across the 13 ministries on offer in Vanuatu’s 10^th Parliament, 9 different parties and an Independent are represented. This helps to underscore the reasons behind the constitution allowing no more than 13 ministries to exist at any one time. The law, in turn helps explain why the Ministry of Youth and Sports suddenly disappeared yesterday – the creation of a new ministry (Civil Aviation), requiring that another must go.

With former Minister for Youth and Sports, Morgan Stevens Iatika breaking NUP ranks and joining Natapei’s coalition, the abolition of his ministry and creation of another appears to have become the most tempting option for the new government. At this stage, the government has said nothing about whether the Youth and Sports portfolio will be merged with another Ministry such as Education or Justice and Community Services. Morgan Stevens of NUP was not the only one to vote differently to the rest of his party; going the other way, Silas Rouard ignored his UMP colleagues in order to join the government.

As reports last week suggested, NUP appears to have indeed been the ‘King-maker’. If Natapei had managed to convince the rest of NUP to join his team, he would have secured a narrow 27 – 25, vote victory. Another notable aspect of the formation of this government was the absence of any MPs from Port Vila gaining a ministry for the first time since 1979.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Vanuatu Election 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.