Uneasy times for Vanuatu

Holding a president and an acting

prime minister at gunpoint, cut

ting international phone links,

controlling an airport and national radio are all ingredients of a coup. But the VMF commandos who carried out Operation Thunderbolt maintain they were not intent ion seizing power, only to get what they were entitled to: unpaid allowances.

And by taking such drastic action, they

seem to have got what they wanted, and very quickly indeed.

“We are sad to have to do these things,” said mobile force commander Louis Patu, who had only been in charge for two days. “When I left my house, my children saw me with a gun and cried. I felt bad. But I’m proud of the success of the operation because no shot was fired.”

Although it all ended in an apparently

amicable atmosphere on that afternoon of Saturday, October 12, at the Cook Barracks with the signing ceremony, there remains, however, a sense of uneasiness' in the capital.

“Things will never be the same again,” some ni-Vanuatu residents of Port Vila said.

“They’ve gone too far,” said one pub lic servant, who is also a northern island

chief. He recalls that in November 1993, the Island state’s public servants went on strike, claiming a 16 per cent pay rise.

Four months later, most of them were sacked.

The other feeling is that this action has set a sad precedent in Vanuatu.

Although the soldiers have always claimed they were not interested in seiz ing power, many here fear this example may have been watched with great inter est by some, whose motivations are more political. And they fear that if the sol diers don’t get exactly what they want again, they could once more take arms.

Vanuatu is particularly vunerable in these times of political instability: there have been three governments in the past 10 months.

On September 30, only two weeks before Thunderbolt, Maxime Carlot was ousted in a motion of no confidence and his rival. Serge Vohor, who had resigned last February to avoid a similar motion against him, returned to power as the head of a coalition consisting of his Union of Moderate Parties (UMP), Walter Lini’s National United Party (NUP) and the MTF group (a gathering of Sope’s Melanesian Progressive Party, Vincent Boulekone’s Tan Union and Albert Ratuvia’s Fren Melanesian Party).

And in the 50-seat parliament, the majority is still in the hands of two or three MPs who only need to cross the floor to shift the balance of power.

Hence, the statement by Carlot and his ally, Kalpokas, who two days after the ‘industrial coup’ assured their sup porters they would come back to power soon. There is worry in the diplomatic circles that the absence of sanctions against the instigators might “bring down the whole system”.

“It’s the whole system, the authority of the government, of parliament and the president that will be discredited if no one is punished.” Others doubt the solid ity of principles of parliamentary democ racy Vanuatu inherited at independence from its two former colonial powers, France and Britain.

“Vanuatu has lost another part of its innocence. Things will never return to what they were before,” one diplomat said. ■