Transcript
RALPH REGENVANU: One of the issues that was causing a bit of unrest in the ranks was the fair sharing of portfolios between the original parties in the original agreement to put Charlot Salwai as the prime minister. So what has happened now is that prime minister Salwai has re-allocated portfolios to address this perceived unfairness in sharing. And now we have fair sharing, we have a much more solid government.
JOHNNY BLADES: Your party seemed to come out with some quite strong portfolios from this last minute reshuffle. Does that mean you weren't entirely happy with how things were before that?
RR: Well we were under-served. There were two parties that were under-served in the original agreement. One was GJP (Graon mo Jastis Pati) and the other one was the Leaders Bloc, and so they are the two parties that have gained one portfolio each in the current reshuffle. NUP, the National United Party, has lost one portfolio, simply because one of its MPs left the party, I think it was just this year. And then of course the prime minister's party has suddenly grown because of all the defections from UMP (Union of Moderates) to his party, all the people who had come and joined the government subsequent to the government forming. And so with eight members of parliament, they had the prime minister plus three ministers, they were very well served. So that, the prime minister's party, has also sacrificed one minister so that they could satisfy both the Leader's Bloc and the Graon mo Jastis Pati.
JB: Do you think it was a frivolous kind of motion by the opposition? They had listed some concerns over things like de-centralisation and tax, and the PACER Plus trade agreement. Do you feel that was what it was about or were they just putting it out there to see what might happen?
RR: No, I think it was a frivolous motion. It was an attempt just to get into government. The prime minister.. he made a very good response in which he just basically showed how those arguments were not really at all any reason to put a motion. There are some issues we are dealing with, like for example PACER Plus, and we will continue to deal with them. But it's not something that any responsible government had done. It is something that a responsible government is trying to deal with the best it can. And that should be recognised, and it's not a reason to change a prime minister.
JB: So he (Salwai) has been in that position almost two years. It's a fairly good run. But how many motions (of no-confidence) has he faced?
RR: I think it's two.
JB: So this (motions of no-confidence) is still a feature of Vanuatu parliamentary politics. I suppose it's not going to fade away that easily?
RR: Well it's one of the key objectives of this government to make legislative and constitutional changes to reduce instability, and so we now have a renewed mandate to do that after this motion has been defeated.
JB: Do you get the feeling that the MPs, or enough of them, will support that kind of thing? I guess on today's numbers that may be the case.
RR: I think we've tried, we've attempted it since we got into government in January 2016. So we know that we've crossed a number of hurdles. We know a number of approaches that haven't worked. So now we know which way do we think we will win the vote on. So we're going to work on the next strategy in that initiative.
JB: You weren't offered the position of prime minister before this vote?
RR: Yeah. Yes, I was. I'm not interested in being prime minister of a government that I'm not confident about, and that isn't in the best interests of the nation.
