The Melanesian Progressive Party is a
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
in
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...
formed after an internal leadership struggle within the
Vanua'aku Pati
The Vanua'aku Pati () is a democratic socialist political party in Vanuatu.
History
The party was founded on 17 August 1971 by Walter Lini as the New Hebridean Cultural Association, renamed later that same year as the New Hebrides National Party ...
in the late 1980s. MPP founder, former Prime Minister
Barak Sopé
Barak Tame Sopé Mautamata (born 1951) is a ni-Vanuatu politician. He is the leader of the Melanesian Progressive Party and was, until 2008, a member of the Vanuatu parliament from the island of Efate. He was the Prime Minister of Vanuatu from 1 ...
, was at that point the secretary general of the VP, and the struggle, as well as his expulsion from the VP and the Parliament for taking part in a protest against the government’s decision to close the Urban Land Corporation (ULC) in April 1988, resulted in him forming the MPP. The party's program is relatively similar to the VP. Despite its small number of seats it has been important in setting up coalition governments since the 1990s.
At the
election held on 30 October 2012, the party won 2 out of 52 seats; it lost one of these in the
2016 election.
Political parties in Vanuatu
*Main
{{Oceania-party-stub