Ati George Sokomanu

Who is Ati George Sokomanu?

Ati George Sokomanu was a ni-Vanuatu paramount chief and politician who served as the first President of Vanuatu from independence in 1980 until 1989. Before independence he was active in local government under the Anglo-French Condominium administration of the New Hebrides and held the senior chiefly title of Ati, giving him standing within both the customary chiefly system and the new national government. As President, a largely ceremonial head-of-state role under Vanuatu's constitution, he represented the young nation during its first decade, a period focused on consolidating independence, building state institutions, and managing tensions between competing political parties. His presidency ended in controversy in late 1988 and early 1989 when, following a dispute with the Vanua'aku Pati government, he attempted to dissolve parliament and appoint a rival prime minister, an action the courts ruled unconstitutional; he was subsequently convicted and briefly imprisoned before receiving a pardon. Despite this crisis, he remained a respected chiefly figure in national life afterward. He died in 2021, remembered as the man who held Vanuatu's founding presidency through its first turbulent decade of nationhood.

Sources: Howard Van Trease (ed.), "Melanesian Politics: Stael Blong Vanuatu" (Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 1995) · Pacific Islands Report / Pacific Islands Development Program archives on the 1988-1989 Vanuatu constitutional crisis