Thousands of youth may miss out on Vanuatu election

Transcript

Thousands of young people in Vanuatu may not be able to vote in this Friday's election, despite efforts by the Electoral Commission to sign them up.

An anti-corruption group says people who turned 18 after the 2012 election haven't had a chance to enrol, but the Commission strongly disagrees.

But with Cyclone Pam, a lack of awareness, and the need to re-enrol every year, many eligible youths may miss out.

Alex Perrottet reports.

Priscilla Meto is the President of Vanuatu Youth Against Corruption. She says over 70 percent of people who turned 18 after the last election in 2012 can't vote on Friday.  That's more than 3,000 young people in a country with a dominant youth population. In 2014, 57 percent of the country was 24 years old or younger.  She says many will have to wait until 2020 to be heard.

PRISCILLA METO:  It will be very unfair because most of the youth will not be casting their vote to participate in this election to show what they want during this snap election.

But the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, John Killion Taleo, says that's totally wrong.  He says each year since the 2012 election, the electoral roll has been duly updated and young people have signed up and received their voting cards.

JOHN KILLION TALEO:  It's totally wrong because the role that we managed to get through for this snap election is the role that was already established in June-July 2015. So people cannot complain about that, we have already established everything ready for this snap election.

But that's not the entire picture. Although youth have been signed up in those years, even in the provinces, many are unaware that they need to take their cards to re-enrol in the inspection period between the first and 15th of June, every year.  If they don't, they fall off the roll.  And with few people aware of that, as well as other hurdles like Cyclone Pam, there's a concern that the youth numbers for this snap election are down.  But Mr Taleo says compared to the 191,000 registered voters in 2014, there's just over 200,000 registered voters as at June 2015.  But Jenny Ligo, from Vanuatu Women against Crime and Corruption, says that doesn't add up. She says she's spoken to many people who were told they will get voting cards this month but haven't received them.  She says she can't understand the higher numbers and says the Electoral Commission has a lot to explain.

JENNY LIGO:  How did they get them to register? And then those who haven't, like there are more people who have not. The most concerned ones are the youth but I don't believe they are only the youth, because many people still claim that they do not have the cards, so I'm just wondering, something is still missing somewhere.

The Principal Administration Officer of the Vanuatu Youth Council, Joe Kala, says it's now even more crucial that those youths who can vote, do so.

JOE KALA:  For them to feel that they are part of this country, to be able to have a say in who gets to Parliament. I think it's crucial that we take this proactive role to try and get more young people to register or to try and go to the polls on Friday.

The Commonwealth Secretariat observers are in Vanuatu, and the head of the team, former Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Ingraham, says it's hard to expect conditions to be perfect after the calling of a snap election.

HUBERT INGRAHAM:  This particular election came about under special circumstances. Ordinarily the election would have been due here by November of this year; Ordinarily, registration of voters would be continuing now. These are not ordinary times, and sometimes in extraordinary times you end up not being able to have a perfect solution to a problem.

Vanuatu's snap election was called after the dissolution of parliament late last year, following the jailing of 14 MPs, who were all members of the government, for bribery-related charges.