Transcript
DAN McGARRY: Effectively what happened was the conviction conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, those convictions were overturned. They were overturned on appeal because the judge ruled, on the verdict that severally as they say - which means he ruled on all the former MPs together rather than individually. and that was rule to be incorrect and it appears that the option remains for the public prosecutor to set a retrial, but I'm not sure what that means or what the circumstances are there. and we have no indication yet from the public prosecutor whether he intends to do so.
KOROI HAWKINS: What's the response in the public sphere in terms of this result?
DM: so the announcement came out, as we know on Friday afternoon, at the same time almost simultaneously with a cyclone warning and more people hear the story about the latter, than the former. And we spent the weekend hunkered down waiting for Cyclone Cook to pass by waters and move onwards. so today we've only really begun to take stock of the situation. But the fact of the matter is there's a great deal of respect for the courts here in Vanuatu and people don't seem to question the rulings. The fact is nobody's getting out of jail as a result of this, though some of them, obviously, if they've appealed and there is no retrial some of them will face much shorter sentences than the originally got and it would also mean that they're eligible for what is called parole because they're approaching the halfway point of their sentence.
KH: Right, yes that's right. So in the case of Pepite, the former speaker, his sentence was almost doubled because of this, wasn't it?
DM: That's correct, yes.
KH: So, another penalty, or result that's been imposed on these MPs because of their bribery convictions and this as well is them being banned from holding public office for ten years. Do you know is that's been affected at all?
DM: No, it's not affected in any way. The breach, or the sanction, comes from the leadership code which is a separate piece of legislation. So for some of these people that was effectively the end of their political career because they were rather elderly... when the leadership sanctions were applied. So for some of them...there's marginally a possibility that they could come back. But frankly, ten years in the political wilderness is quite a long time.
