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Posted: Friday, April 23rd, 2004 5:35 AM HST

Vanuatu women demand president stand down

By Associated Press

(Wellington, New Zealand-AP) -- Vanuatu women's groups are angrily demanding that the country's newly elected president resign. The groups are citing President Alfred Maseng Nalo's convictions last year in a cocoa-buying fraud that got him a two-year suspended prison term. Vanuatu's National Council of Women condemned Nalo's April 12th election as ``a mockery.'' It demanded a new election. Women's groups are Vanuatu's most vocal opponents of what they call high-level corruption. The groups regularly attack political figures they claim are unscrupulous. Vanuatu law excludes convicted persons from standing for the presidency. The council said Nalo's suspended sentence, for aiding and abetting the misappropriation of money and receiving stolen property, doesn't expire until April third, 2005. Nalo was one of three members of Vanuatu's Commodities Marketing Board to be found guilty of swindling one of the country's major cocoa producers. (Copyright 2004 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.)