Vanuatu's justice minister has set up a committee to consider pardoning former members of parliament.
A statue outside the Vanuatu parliament. Photo: RNZI
Don Ken said it was designed to heed the president's call for "reconciliation and forgiveness".
One of the five-person committee's first acts will be to consider calls for several former MPs who are currently in jail to be pardoned.
Five former MPs were sent back to prison in June for their role in conspiring to pervert the course of justice when they worked to have themselves pardoned in 2015.
They had conspired with the then-Speaker of Parliament to have their corruption convictions absolved, in a decision that was eventually overturned by the President.
Since then, though, several prominent leaders have called for all involved in the 2015 crisis to be pardoned.
The justice minister, Don Ken, said pardoning MPs is not the committee's sole purpose, and it's been told to leave politics out of its work.