VANUATU’S Civil

Minister in sex scandal

By Patrick Decloitre

Aviation and Telecommunications minister Demis Lango was also targeted by Patterson: she alleged he had sex with three women the same night last year. In a damning report, ombudsman Marie-Noelle Patterson alleges Lango took three women to his office after a party last July 25 at night.

After he got the women to drink, the minister had sex with two consenting women, she writes. The third one was allegedly raped. Before she went to the ombudsman, she had filed a complaint with the police. “Lango locked both the interior and exterior doors, came towards her, grabbed and continued to grab her by the collar of her T-shirt”, Patterson reports after interviewing the alleged victim.

“Because her T-shirt was extra large it came off her when she was struggling to get free from Minister Lango, leaving her only in her bra and underpants. (He) continued to hold on to her, pushed her to the floor and had sex with her. She managed to push Mr Lango off her, collected her clothes, and ran outside crying and put her clothes back on”, the report goes on. In a manner of reply to the ombudsman’s allegations, Lango sent a traditional chief to the investigator’s office to say the matter had been settled in “cus tom” and some 100,000 vatu (US$B2O) paid by Lango for having an affair with... yet another woman, unrelated to the report.

Patterson recommends Lango, as a mem ber of Vanuatu’s parliament at the time of the facts and still a minister of state, should not hold a ministerial position in future.

She also asks Prime Minister Serge Vohor (who presides over the Union of

Moderate Parties to which Lango belongs)

to publicly reprimand him for breaching

the leadership code. “On top of its custom ary principles, Vanuatu’s constitution states it is founded on traditional Melanesian values, faith in God, and

Christian principles.

Mr Lango has respected neither of these principles in a Christian country where the motto is In God We Stand”, Patterson told national radio.

“Aside from the personal question of adultery and of forcing intercourse without consent, there is the national question of what kind of behaviour is to be expected from not only officials but Ministers”, she wrote.

Vohor later commented reporting on officials’ private lives was not in line with Vanuatu’s customs and Christian princi ples. “I don’t think she should talk about sex. All these details, this is too much. The ombudsman’s office is not entitled to judge a man.

“Maybe soon the ombudsman office will be teaching the people of Vanuatu about sex”, Vohor said on national radio. ■