Full House (almost)

Well, after three months of preparation here we finally are: parliament is sitting. Courtesy of my counterpart I have the luxury of listening to it on the radio in my office, or at least I have the luxury of listening to a large amount of French easy listening music which is played in between the official and unofficial breaks in the parliament schedule. And here is the rub when trying to get things done. Parliament sittings are like the snow leopard. Officially parliament sits on two occasions each year, each of those for two weeks. So a mammoth four weeks a year are taken up with parliamentary business. But don’t panic because its not all work, work, work: they don’t sit on Wednesday mornings and they finish early on Fridays and start late on Mondays and there is a two hour lunch break and by the amount of French easy listening music a bountiful supply of weak bladders. And so getting anything done can be somewhat difficult. Last November Vanuatu signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the work since then has been to prepare things for the presentation of the domestic bill in parliament by the minister of foreign affairs and the full ratificaiton of the convention. The only problem: the Minister of Foreign Affairs went awol. Apperently he went to his home island last week and has gone to Turkey! this week. So with no Minister of Foreign Affairs we thought the bill would not go through and then, lo and behold, whilst we were sitting in our office listening, the Minister of Trade stood up and started presenting the bill. No-one knew that he was going to do this so it came as something of a surprise. So, despite strong opposition from a member of the opposition (who, just out of interest, was a former Prime Minister of Vanuatu who was jailed for corruption and then pardoned and released by the President) the bill was voted through by parliament. The French easy listening music doesn't sound quite so bad now.