When Vanuatu conducted its fourth postindependence general election, in November last year, more was at stake perhaps than in any previous election. For the first twelve years of independence, the country's anglophone majority had held goverm11ent through the same party, the Vanua'aku Party (VP), and its constituents had enjoyed the benefits that power and the scope for preferment that being in office brings. For many anglophone politicians and constituents alike, therefore, the four years spent in Opposition, 1991-1995, were a painful lesson in the consequences of electoral defeat. By contrast, the francophone minority, who had endured more than a decade of, in their view, disadvantage and discrimination under anglophone rule, finally won office in 1991 and had begun to redress those years of perceived injustice and inequality.

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