2025 Vanuatu official election results: Solitary woman elected to 52-member parliament

8:52 am on 30 January 2025

Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific Editor

Vanuatu elections 2025. Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koroi Hawkins

Against all odds one woman has secured a seat in Vanuatu's 52-member parliament.

Marie Louis Paulette Milne, one of only seven women among 216 election candidates, secured 1227 votes to pip her closest rival Tony George Yasyas Ailir (who polled 1197 votes) for the final seat in the Port Vila Constituency.

Marie Louis a former Deputy Mayor of Port Vila resigned from the municipality to contest in the election.

She is the sole MP for the Green Confederation Party and ran under the same banner as her husband Moana Kalosil a former Vanuatu Prime Minister.

Kalosil who contested in the Efate Rural Constituency failed to secure a seat polling only 950 votes.

In 2015, then the deputy prime minister, Moana Kalosil, was among a group of 14 MPs convicted and jailed for corruption and bribery. He was released in 2017 two years into a four-year sentence.

Marie Louis's victory means the ratio of men to women in this parliament will be identical to the last as the former solitary woman MP Gloria Julia King failed to win back her Efate Rural seat.

Vanuatu elections 2025. Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koroi Hawkins

By the numbers

The chairman of the Vanuatu Electoral Commission Edward Kaltamat and members of his executive declared the official results of the 2025 Vanuatu Snap Election live on Wednesday evening via the national broadcaster VBTC.

The total number of voters registered for the election was 212,245.

There was a sharp increase in the voter turnout this year with 69 percent casting their ballots compared to 44 percent in the 2022 Snap Election.

Out of the 216 candidates who contested only seven were women.

Although 25 political parties were registered for this election, only 23 actually contested it and only 12 of them secured seats.

Five of the political parties that made it into the house secured only one seat and have three months to affiliate themselves with a larger party for the life of the current parliament under recent amendments to Vanuatu's constitution.

Out of the 31 Independent candidates that ran in this election only one, Gaetan Pikioune in the Santo Constituency, made it into parliament.

Vanuatu elections 2025. Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koroi Hawkins

Political parties in parliament

The Leaders Party was the most successful in the national poll emerging with nine parliamentary seats; two more than its closest rival the Vanua'aku Pati who have seven.

Iauko Group, Union of Moderate Parties and the Rural Development Party have six seats each.

Graon Mo Jastis Pati and the Reunification Movement for Change have five apiece.

And the eight remaining seats in the 52-member house are all held individually by the remaining parties, custom movements and of course the solitary independent MP.

Five-party coalition

On Monday this week the presidents of five political parties signed a memorandum of agreement to form the next government of Vanuatu.

They were Jotham Napat (LP), Johnny Koanapo (VP), Charlot Salwai (RMC), Ralph Regenvanu (GJP) and Marc Ati (IG).

If this grouping holds, on paper, it will command 32 seats in the house which is well over the 27 needed to form government.

However, in the last parliament individual members of some of the political parties in government defected to the opposition but without actually leaving their parties creating a situation where the affected parties were technically represented on both sides of the house.

Two constitutional amendments passed in parliament and voted for in a referendum last year aim to curb some of this political instability by locking MPs into their political parties and forcing independents and single MP parties to affiliate themselves with larger political parties for the life of a parliament.

But, it remains to be seen how effective this will be in reality as it does not prevent entire parties from crossing the floor with its affiliates as a united bloc.

Also, MPs who defect have to actually resign or be sacked from their party and reported to the speaker within 14 days of their termination in order for them to lose their seat.

It is unclear just how much power this actually places in the hands of party presidents and whether or not - in the case of an arbitrary sacking - an MP would still have their seat vacated.