President of Vanuatu

The President of Vanuatu is the head of state of Vanuatu. The President is elected for a five-year term by an electoral college consisting of Parliament and the presidents of the regional councils.

The President's role is mostly ceremonial. One function reserved to him or her by the Constitution is the appointment of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and three other justices.

From 1906 to 1980 the List of Resident Commissioners of the New Hebrides was held by British and French colonial officials. From 1887 to 1906 the New Hebrides was led by Anglo-French Joint Naval Commissioners.

List of Presidents

See also

References

Vanuatu

Coordinates: 16°S 167°E / 16°S 167°E / -16; 167

Vanuatu (English ⁱ/ˌvɑːnuːˈɑːtuː/ vah-noo-AH-too or /vænˈwɑːtuː/ van-WAH-too; Bislama IPA: [vanuaˈtu]), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (French: République de Vanuatu, Bislama: Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is a Pacific island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is some 1,750 kilometres (1,090 mi) east of northern Australia, 500 kilometres (310 mi) northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of the Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji.

Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island in 1606. He then claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies, and named it Austrialia del Espiritu Santo.

In the 1880s, France and Great Britain claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906 they agreed on a framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides through a British–French Condominium. An independence movement arose in the 1970s, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980.