March 2013

March 2013

Contents

Vol. 39, No. 3

Culture

34 Talking in tongues

New Caledonia promotes Kanak languages

Women 36 Keeping the promise on March 8 Let’s stop violence against women

Environment

38 Pacific environment and climate change outlook Not good news for the region

Fisheries

39 Islands fisheries officials to meet To talk marine issues

GOV BENIGNO FITIAL RESIGNS. Cover report—pages 16-19. Cover Photo: Haidee Eugenio

Regular Features 5 Letter from Suva

Cover Report

16 Gov Benigno Fitial steps down, Eloy Inos steps in Dawn of a New era for CNMI?

19 New CNMI governor buckles down to work

But, he says there will be no ‘overnight fixes

Politics

20 UN, Forum partners pushed on climate change

Marshalls wants a issue as a global security problem

21 The road to 2014 elections

6 Views from Auckland 7 We Say 12 Whispers 14 Pacific Update 38 Business Intelligence 42 RAMSI Update

Sorting out the issues

22 The plight of West Papua

The ‘dirty secret’ of the region

24 Temaru’s decolonisation fight back on

French Polynesia on UN decolonisation list

25 The Pacific Plan or the Pacific’s problem?

Morauta’s review team to get it right

26 Kiribati issues a bombshell

Wants more fishing days under US Treaty

Viewpoint

29 US-China relations–Be wary of rivalry: Roy 30 Why can’t Australia stay focused on the Pacific?

Business

32 New forestry battle in the Solomons

Asian loggers one step ahead of govt

33 Landowners likely to clash over PMIZ plans Call for open dialogue important

Islands Business, March 2013 3

Managing Director/Publisher Godfrey Scoullar Group Editor-in-Chief Laisa Taga Group Advertising & Marketing Manager Sharron Stretton Staff Writer Robert Matau Graphic Design Dick Lee Virendra Prasad Main Correspondents Australia Rowan Callick Nic Maclellan

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Niue Stafford Guest Papua New Guinea Baeau Tai P Sam Vulum Patrick Matbob P Peter Niesi Solomon Islands Evan Wasuka Alfred Sasako T Tonga Taina Kami-Enoka T V Vanuatu Bob Makin Islands Business is published monthly by Islands Business International Editorial & Advertising Offices Level III, 46 Gordon Street, PO Box 12718, Suva, Fiji Islands.

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Editor’s Notebook

Letter From Suva

BY LAISA TAGA, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Pacific should celebrate March 8—is International Women’s Day (IWD)—and it is celebrated throughout the world. For the Pacific, there is a lot more going for it this year and the March IWD should be a very good reason to celebrate our achievements.

First, we’ve scored a position on the UN Women Executive Board. Representing the Solomon Islands on the board is Helen Beck, Counsellor at the Solomon Islands Embassy in New York.

Her two-year appointment beginning January this year, is not only an achievement for the Solomon Islands but for the region as whole. She is the only Pacific islander on the executive board.

The UN Women Executive Board is made up of representatives from 41 countries around the world, who serve on a rotating basis.

The board members are selected on the following basis: 10 from Africa; 10 from Asia/Pacific; 4 from Eastern Europe; 6 from Latin America and the Caribbean; 5 from Western Europe; and 6 from contributing countries.

Helen Beck...on the The UN Women was UN Women executive established in 2010 as part board. Photo: www.iisd.ca of the UN reform—bringing together mandates and resources of four gender distinct part of the UN, namely: Division of the Advancement of Women, International Research and Training for the Advancement of Women Institute, Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women and UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

As Beck’s head in the Solomons, foreign secretary Joy Kere said when announcing her appointment, her ministry will work closely with the women’s ministry and the regional gender system to get the Pacific gender aspiration and challenges voiced in the executive board via its New York office.

Such an offer should not be taken lightly by the various islands governments and women’s organisations throughout the region. In fact, this is an opportunity not to be missed to push through Pacific women’s issues and create awareness at the UN level. How many other opportunities

like this would we have?

Beck’s appointment to the UN Women executive board is not the only reason to celebrate.

The Pacific also has another ally in Fiji’s Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, founder of FemLINKPACIFIC. Women advocate Bhagwan-Rolls has been included as part of a global civil society (GCSG) group to advise the UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet. Again, she is the only one from the Pacific appointed to the group, which will facilitate regular consultations and dialogue between civil society and the UN Women.

Members of the global group have proven track records in areas related to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and they bring diverse experience and expertise to the group.

Asked about her appointment, Bhagwan-Rolls said: “It is very humbling and somewhat daunting to be the sole Pacific islands rep on the global group.

But at another level, it is encouraging that we have S h a r o n B h a g w a n - our islands region on the Rolls...part of the civil radar and that this can pave society group advising the way for more appointMs Michelle Bachelet. ments from our region.

Photo: Sharon Bhagwan“This is a critical bridge Rolls to bringing the Pacific experience to issues I have been working on, including the media and communication, as well as peace and security. ” She urged women and Pacific governments to take advantage of their appointments.

“One of the reflections I shared through the PACWIN network last year after the first global Civil Society Advisory Group meeting is that there is a need to use whatever channels available including our networks at the UN headquarters—like Helen who is part of the official process and I through the civil society networks—to ensure Pacific experiences are heard when decisions are made—whether it is to progress discussions on how to strengthen the Commission on the Status of Women process or enhancing women’s rights engagement in the post-2015 agenda.

“Also there is a flurry of discussions about the various proposals for the 5th World Conference

on Women and we need to ensure we enhance Pacific women’s participation and access to any decision-making and discussions.

“As far as enhancing and moving the gender equality and women’s rights agenda forward in our region, we also, particularly within the civil society networks, need to think more strategically and not just rely on UN Women to represent our realities as it is still the smallest UN entity. We must call for the enhancing of the “whole of UN” approach to the gender equality agenda, especially at the regional and country level.

“We need to get better at calling for greater accountability to the institutional arrangements including funding commitments made to the gender equality agenda through the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995.

“At this stage, I would also like to encourage Pacific women’s movement sisters to also consider roles on regional and national UN civil society groups as it is important to engage not only in the early stages of UN Women’s progress but also not to lose sight of the broader aim of the GEAR campaign and that is to hold the “whole of the UN system/institutions more accountable to advancing women’s rights.

“We cannot simply wait to be asked an opinion—we need to share our thoughts, ideas and strategies and amplify our voices.”

A regional diplomat who closely follow international developments told Letter from Suva that Beck and Bhagwan-Rolls’ appointments are definitely great achievements for the Pacific and something to celebrate during IWD on March 8.

“It is something we should take advantage of and particularly for our women who think they don’t have a platform to raise their issues.

“We are now within the UN Women setup— what better platform to raise and highlight our Pacific issues. We can also use our membership to draw attention to our needs and issues and, of course, funding for projects that will provide tangible results for us. But we will need to work in concert so that we take full advantage of our membership,” he said.

The theme of this year’s IWD is “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women”. On March 8, UN Women will launch “One Woman: A Song for UN Women”, a musical celebration of women worldwide, featuring more than 20 artists from across the globe.

“One Woman” calls for change and celebrates acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who daily make extraordinary contributions to their countries and communities. It is the first theme song for a UN organisation.

Islands Business, March 2013 5

Column

Sydney Diary

BY DEV NADKARNI

Sydney’s ‘buried’ Pacific treasures

one can have access. But happily for indigenous visitors, the fee is waived and natives of Pacific islands countries who want to see their forebears’ creative works, they can view them for free.

I also discover that Fiji is classified under Polynesia among the collection racks. How so, I ask. “Yes, a bit politically sensitive, eh?” says an accompanying museum staffer. “But we’d better leave it at that.” I notice that there is no Fijian artist in the group—there were meant to be, but not unexpectedly, they had visa problems.

As I pore over this rather well preserved 88year old issue of the Fiji Times dated April 25, 1925, I wonder if the editorial staff that put it together could ever have had an inkling of the shape of things to come.

When the coordinator of Maketi Ples, the everything. It is indeed a rich, varied collection annual show of Pacific islands arts and crafts in and undoubtedly invaluable. Unfortunately, all Sydney, invites me to accompany about a dozen tagged with an alphanumeric museum code and Pacific islands artists to visit the Australian Muno description or date, though some have apseum, I’m delighted. Because she tells me the proximate dates of when a specific object came museum has one of the biggest collections of into the collection.

Pacific artifacts—some of it dating back hundreds Then there are things from Vanuatu, Microneof years. sia, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands as well as Fiji, Global warming on In my mind’s eye, I begin to think of the collecSamoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands. I discover hold, top expert admits tions at Te Papa displayed tastefully in Wellington that some of the toughest ancient reed armours Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Auckland Museum’s considerable collecwere made in Kiribati. I’d never known they were (IPCC) head honcho R.K. Pachauri is in the tion showcased in the huge, high ceilinged halls a warlike people who were sought after around country (in Melbourne) on a day’s whistle-stop of the splendid edifice, with excellent lighting and the region for their fighting skills. visit speaking on climate change, as he continuexplanatory plaques. And, of course, the many Suddenly, there’s a delightful moment in the ally increases his carbon footprint while interactive displays that are such an increasjetting across the world. ingly common feature of modern museums.

Rising temperatures have actually But I am decidedly underwhelmed when been on hold, he admits, alluding to the group is ushered into one of the three increasing scientific evidence that basement like levels of the Australian Muglobal temperatures have not risen in seum. I assume we’re being taken into the nearly two decades. Studies show they museum through a back entrance because won’t rise at least until 2017. we are a largish group. I am wrong. These Dr Pachauri tells an audience at three levels with rack upon storage rack hapDeakin University that people have the hazardly crammed with all sorts of artifacts right to question the science no matter and objets d’art is where we will be spending what their motives are. the next couple of hours, I gather.

But, says the scientist, that doesn’t This is where the Pacific collection of mean global temperatures are not risthe Australian Museum lies like buried ing—they have over the past 50 years treasure. “Unfortunately, there isn’t room and they will. He now gives more credit for displaying all this in the main galleries,” to natural factors for causing warming a museum staffer tells me. “They think not rather than stressing on anthropogenic too many people are interested in looking causes, contrary to Al Gore’s populistat this sort of Pacific stuff,” says another, alarmist messages. who later turns out to have a pretty intimate Reports of the most recent northern knowledge of all the Pacific stuff under her winter seeing record accumulation of care and where they came from—and a lot of passion, too. I wonder who “they” is. I Impressive...Pacific artists examine artifacts at the Australian Museum’s Pacific ice in the polar region hasn’t received collection in Sydney. Photo: Dev Nadkarni as much press as reports of the record decide not to ask. melts of last northern summer. It is Indeed, the main galleries as I later increasingly becoming clear that natural discover are full of dinosaur reconstrucfactors play a huge role in climate change though somber, night-at-the-museum type environment tions and other natural history stuff along with their effects might well be exacerbated by human when one of the accompanying artists discovers glimpses of Australia’s geological and paleontofactors. But by no means does anyone believe her own work in the labyrinthine racks of the logical phenomena and records. The three levels anymore that humans are the exclusive cause of collection and is clearly pleased to bits. She is all of storage that house all the Pacific artifacts are the so-called global warming. over it with child-like glee and poses endearingly loosely divided into Melanesia, Micronesia and In his address in Melbourne, IPCC’s high as her colleagues’ cameras go pop, pop, pop, Polynesia. A lot of the stuff is ancient and fragile. profile chief also said his organisation was yet capturing this memorable slice of life.

We are allowed to touch them albeit with gloved to finalise estimates of sea level rise owing to The museum has acquired some of the Pacific palms. OK to take pictures, we’re told and the artmelting ice sheets. With such unpredictability, artists’ work over the past couple of years, I am ists go about the narrow aisles wide-eyed, cameras it is unlikely we will get a definitive answer to told. Simple and unassuming, it scarcely bothers at the ready, looking for objects of interest. these continuing questions. None of which them that their works of art are stacked in a musty, A lion’s share of the collection comes from should detract us humans from doing whatever dark backroom that nobody visits.

Papua New Guinea, classified province-wise: bit we can do for the planet in no matter how How does one access the collection? I ask. there are weapons, armours, headgear, pots and small a manner.

Upon request and a payment of A$150 a pop, pans, masks, objects of rituals, textiles, fabrics— 6 Islands Business, March 2013

WESAY ‘...International funding agencies need to urgently stop fudging around policy wordings, cut the red tape and get the many layers of bureaucracy to make available committed funds for climate change mitigation and adaptation, especially to countries long identified as extremely vulnerable such as Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tokelau in the Pacific islands region’

T

he 2012 Pacific Environment and Climate Change Outlook Report, which catalogues the state of the environment and the effects wrought by climate change regionally and at individual Pacific Island countries, is now out.

It is well documented that the region as a whole is more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than many other parts of the world, owing to a number of reasons. But within the region, there are some nations that are far more vulnerable than others. Most of these tend to be classified under the Least Developed Countries (LDC) list and belong to the Small Islands States (SIS) grouping.

These islands countries and territories are particularly disadvantaged because of their physical, economic, demographic and situational features. It is fair to say they have very little going for them when it comes to facing up to the vagaries of climate change.

They neither have the resources, infrastructure, know-how nor the human capacity to deal with these slow but sure changes all by themselves.

Though at first instance it might seem that climate changeaffected small islands nations have to depend almost totally on external help for mitigation and adaptation initiatives, what is not obvious to the world’s experts is the native knowledge that is in the possession of indigenous people that has helped them tide over all sorts of natural calamities for the better part of a thousand years, in some cases even more than a millennium.

Islands communities have thrived in splendid isolation for centuries with the barest of outside contact and they have learned by instinct and by trial and error to conserve their resources, tide over protracted unfavourable times and deal with wild weather whenever it has ravaged their fragile ecosystems. More often than not they have bounced back and restored the equilibrium in their lives despite all odds.

This report, while calling for global and regional efforts to combat the effects of climate change around the region, also exhorts country governments, communities and even individuals to do their bit for the cause, which, indeed is as it should be. Almost every human activity that climate change affects—access to safe and nutritious food and drinking water; safe shelter and gainful livelihood, among others—can be affected positively or negatively by human actions small and big. The pursuit of economic growth through tourism; urbanisation and increased population in economically active nodes; lack of investment in infrastructure to meet increased human

demand; decline in human-oriented services such as health and education to name only a few, are factors that compound the effect of climate change on the islands.

This is unfortunately on top of the disadvantages already heaped on the islands because of their remote location; poor and highly unreliable shipping services; the dumping of cheap, unhealthy processed foods imported from overseas; poor governance and corruption in public life; rising unemployment … and the list extends to include many other factors.

Despite mega jamborees to discuss climate change remedies that have been held around the world, where talks have broken down on such absurd arguments as to how much countries need to cut emissions to restrict warming by half a degree, pledged funds for mitigation and adaptation for vulnerable islands countries have been painfully slow to be disbursed.

Pacific islands leaders have time and again brought this up in international forums but to little avail. There has been little in terms of funding that has been made available than for building a sea wall here and a water tank there.

There has been very little concerted effort to tackle the medium to long-term effects of climate change on matters that affect people most. It is therefore left to the impoverished governments and the arrangements with their aid funders to put in place programmes to counter the effects of climate change.

This report rightly exhorts people to do their bit at all levels.

There is no substitute to the idea of people helping themselves.

Putting to use native conservational knowledge is the surest way of making a difference. That’s because it is completely in the hands of the people themselves and not dependent on external resources, at least to some extent. At most, what is needed is guidance and a bit of modern knowledge and tools to help them achieve goals faster and more efficiently.

Addressing the most fundamental issues affected by climate change must receive all the priority. These are food and water security, adequate and safe shelter and a guarantee of livelihood to lead a financially independent life for individuals and families.

Addressing these would automatically get the ducks in line for tackling a number of related issues. Most knowledge for setting initiatives to tackle these issues could be found indigenously—and

The state of the islands’ environment

Islands Business, March 2013 7

WESAY not millions of dollars are required to make it happen.

While initiatives need to be bottom up rather than top down, nothing can be achieved without some level of funding. International funding agencies need to urgently stop fudging around policy wordings, cut the red tape and get the many layers of bureaucracy minimised to make available committed funds for climate change mitigation and adaptation, especially to countries long identified as extremely vulnerable such as Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tokelau in the Pacific islands region.

There is no reason whatsoever to delay the disbursement of funds for projects that have been identified as being effective in stemming the effects of climate change such as the building of physical barriers like seawalls to contain erosion and the influx of saline waters into agricultural lands.

Funds for initiatives that promote food security—guaranteed continual access to nutritious and safe food—which indeed is a challenge in distant atoll nations like the ones named, need to be addressed immediately. There is a range of low cost solutions available for this. All it needs is a little know-how and some funding.

Regional organisations have done quite well in the past few years in mobilising communities to come together to tackle many of the issues head on. There have been several working examples of adaptation practices around the region.

These initiatives must be strengthened with enough financial backing. If governments and funding agencies work at providing some baseline funding to help people to help themselves under the expert guidance of regional organisations working on these issues, much could be achieved.

‘...the fact remains that in order for a plan to succeed, it has to take on board the stark realities of the ethos and the environment it is to be implemented. It is self evident that people be put at the centre of the development process and strategies be designed by them and not by experts and academics sitting in far away ivory towers’

A

roundtable meeting to discuss development issues in the Pacific, particularly after the conclusion of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) programme in 2015, was held last month in the Timor-Leste capital of Dili.

Jointly hosted by the Government of Timor-Leste and the Port Vila, Vanuatu-based Pacific Institute of Public Policy, the conference aimed to set an agenda for post-2015 development initiatives.

Like most ‘global’ initiatives that are conceived in the hallowed, comfortable offices of multi disciplinary experts and academics, no matter how much ‘field input’ is solicited, collated and number crunched, the final strategy that comes out can be a little else than a one size fits all solution. In hindsight, most development observers and workers, especially in the diverse Pacific islands region, would agree that much more particularisation needed to be done, taking on board the concerns of individual countries.

An impression of such particularisation was sought to be conveyed to the world at large when the United Nations decided sometime down the track that people from within the countries at the grassroots levels would put together annual reports of countries’ MDGs. This might make for great media copy in terms of promoting empowerment of grassroots people, but the fact has remained that few of these grassroots people ever had significant inputs while the

8 Islands Business, March 2013

MDGs were set early in this century.

It is unsurprising that the overall results of MDG achievements throughout the world as in the Pacific islands appear to be so patchy.

In fact the Pacific islands region has been deemed a failure in MDG achievements.

“As a region, we have been labelled a failure in terms of meeting the MDGs. This raises concerns about the application of global goals at the regional and national level, particularly in areas over which Pacific islands countries have little or no control, such as carbon emissions. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to implementing our development aims,” the communiqué says.

The roundtable’s communiqué has rightly pointed out that while assessing progress, the emphasis has been more on quantity of progress achieved rather than the quality.

“We agreed the MDGs have played an important role in focusing our development efforts, facilitating dialogue and making our development strategies more results-orientated. However, the MDGs do not fully reflect our national development priorities and sometimes distort them by emphasising the quantity of outputs over the quality of outcomes,” the communiqué put out at the end of the roundtable, which had PNG stateswoman Dame Carol Kidu representing the Pacific islands, noted.

Also, a lot has changed in the world and the world’s environment

WESAY since the MDG programme began, particularly the effects of climate change and sea level rise that have impacted on the progress, which cannot be reflected in the yardsticks used to measure MDG achievement.

In that sense. the measuring parameters have People must been inflexible to account for real changes be centre of wrought by climate change effects. This is not to development say that issues relating to governance in islands administrations are not to be blamed. The reasons would be far more complex and varied and need thorough analyses before summarily writing off the whole region as a failure.

The roundtable has been justifiably critical of the MDG-goal setting rationale: inclusive economic growth, environmental and natural resource management, state effectiveness, peace and justice and aspects of social delivery.

“Our focus in these areas is on the human dimension of development, based on our own conceptions of poverty and well-being,” contends the communiqué. Expectedly, climate change and “owning our own problems to find our own solutions” emerged as key issues during the discussions.

The Pacific islands region is not alone in seeking a new post-2015

agenda. Almost the entire developing world, particularly the least developed countries, agree on the sentiments contained in the communiqué. The nations that attended the Dili conference comprised members of the G7 including Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Union of the Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Haiti, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste and Togo.

Present at the high level conference were the Under Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) Dr Noeleen Heyzer.

It is hoped these countries will have a far higher input in setting goals and work paths to achieve them in the post-2015 development agenda than they did in the previous exercise.

However globalised and homogenous the world might theoretically seem, the fact remains that in order for a plan to succeed, it has to take on board the stark realities of the ethos and the environment it is to be implemented.

It is self evident that people must be put at the centre of the development process and strategies be designed by them and not by experts and academics sitting in far away ivory towers.

‘There has been a tendency to treat the Pacific—more so the South Pacific—as a private backyard that is merely to be tended to on and off. In fact, the probability of looking at it reactively, especially when something unpleasant develops, is far higher. In such instances, the response often tends to be knee jerk of the ‘NIMBY’ (Not In My Back Yard) variety. We have seen this play out after every political crisis, be it in Melanesia or Polynesia’

A

recent doctoral thesis titled “Overseeing and Overlooking: Australian engagement with the Pacific islands 1988-2007” has come in for some media coverage around the wider region.

Its author Jonathan Shultz has been critical of the manner in which successive Australian governments have handled the country’s relationship with the region, citing poor policymaking, inconsistent and desultory engagement and falling short in developing a coherent vision.

While an academic thesis has its own measured ways of studying history, collating data on policy making down a timeline and making observations while developing its standpoints, its broad conclusion, namely that Australian policy toward the islands could have been a lot better over the decades, is nothing new to long-time observers

of the region. Most policy responses have been reactive to events happening in the islands. Few have been truly proactive, at least in the past couple of days.

There has been a tendency to treat the Pacific—more so the South Pacific—as a private backyard that is merely to be tended to on and off. Typically, it would be rare to look at any backyard proactively.

In fact, the probability of looking at it reactively, especially when something unpleasant develops, is far higher.

In such instances, the response often tends to be knee jerk of the ‘NIMBY’ (Not In My Back Yard) variety. We have seen this play out after every political crisis, be it in Melanesia or Polynesia. Instances are many: the Fiji coups, the violence in the Solomon Islands and Tonga, political crises in Papua New Guinea besides several others.

(Of course, both Australia and New Zealand have always been the Islands Business, March 2013 9

WESAY first to respond in terms of aid and rehabilitation initiatives following natural disasters: that humanitarian angle has never diminished over the decades. But that is not the point here.)

There is no doubt that both the ANZAC nations have fallen short of taking proactive measures in integrating with the region in areas of trade, what with accords like the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus languishing even after more than a decade of long drawn negotiations.

To such an extent have Australia and New Zealand taken for granted their relationship with the region as a whole and individual Pacific islands governments over the past two decades, that their influence has been completely overshadowed by the growing geopolitical power of China and other fast growing Asian nations.

While Fiji had good reason to power ahead with its “Look North” policy because of sanctions following the December 2006 military action, several other nations followed suit—notably Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and even Australia’s long taken for granted bastion Papua New Guinea.

In the past few years, western nations have been renewing their alliance for a greater, more coordinated presence in the Pacific, driven mainly by the United States, belatedly having realised that it had conceded a lot of ground to China in the world’s largest single geographical feature. The Pacific Ocean is seeing global competition not just for natural resources but also for geopolitical hegemony.

The writer suggests several remedial measures for Australia’s greater and more meaningful engagement—the reinstatement of a dedicated Australian minister for Pacific affairs, as was the case until a few years ago; greater engagement in economic development-driven initiatives; and rebuilding on the old goodwill, which indeed has been eroded by new mega-players in the field like China. These new players play by their own different set of rules, which many Pacific islands leaders find far more convenient to deal with owing to several reasons. And it will not be easy enticing them back with old world rules of engagement.

Australia and New Zealand have revamped the manner in which they disburse aid to the region, shifting the emphasis over the years from social to economic development but this has hardly made a difference in better integrating even the region’s bigger players in

Pacific: Aust’s private backyard?

increased trade. The trade imbalances continue to loom and progress on initiatives like seasonal labour movement has been patchy, with New Zealand doing far better than Australia on this account.

It is often cited that New Zealand has dealt with the Pacific region better than Australia. While that might be the case when it comes to select initiatives and programmes over the past couple of decades, in more recent years, New Zealand has slipped back perceptibly in its aid initiatives and support in the islands. The reorganisation of its aid set-up by the present government bringing it under its foreign affairs ministry is widely seen as a bad move by most Pacific islands leaders.

In fact, much of what the researcher identifies as broken with Australia’s Pacific policy making holds good for New Zealand.

This is so particularly since the present National government and its preceding one took over from nine years of Labour governments in 2008. Several Pacific Islands leaders, senior officials and reputed non government organisations that have been in the game for several decades find New Zealand’s policy towards the islands, or the lack of a coherent one, at best confusing or at worst opaque and completely muddled.

Geopolitical imperatives might well mean that both Australia and New Zealand will bring back specialist experienced officials dedicated to Pacific Affairs. But as far as Australia goes, this is unlikely to happen before the next election coming up later this year. But there are indications that a Liberal government, which Australia is widely tipped to have after the election by pundits of all persuasions, is likely to step up its Pacific engagement if not for anything else, in the name of regional security and increased cooperation with the United States. How much that will translate to economic development and integration with the region is something that will be hard to forecast. Similarly, there are indications that New Zealand is about to appoint a specialist Pacific diplomat to cater to the country’s affairs with the region. It will be interesting to see the details of the agenda that the new office will bring to the table. But as yet, there is nothing that Australia and New Zealand are seen to be doing to stem the swift drift of the region towards the north.

And as each year passes, their task will only get harder. Then, it’ll be a question of time before it becomes a lost cause.

• We Say is compiled and edited by Laisa Taga.

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Whispers Pacific Plan or Problem?

Interesting comments are now surfacing regarding the Pacific Plan, touted as a vision for Pacific development which was delivered by leaders in 2005. And the team reviewing the plan headed by former PNG Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta is getting it left, right and centre. One comment from a development practitioner, Rex Horoi said: There is no surprise to findings so far that there is a general lack of knowledge and ownership of the plan —not just amongst general audiences, but also by those tasked with its implementation. “The Forum leaders We’re listening...former PNG Prime Minister Sir Mereke Morauta (middle front row) with his team at the Australian National University came up with their dream in Canberra. Photo: Dr Satish Chand of the region (the Pacific Plan)—except the design of to evolve and into what, was never clear. It lofty vision attributed to the leaders, followed by this plan is flawed because it did not have the is much like navigating in the deep Pacific a cobbled together list of activities. The cobbling support of the public. Ordinary Pacific people Ocean without a bearing and a destination on together of the activities and the appendage of were not given the opportunity to dream their a tiny craft with an overloaded crew and many ‘regional integration’ post-2004 declaration was dreams along with our leaders.” Another comcaptains.” It will be interesting to see and hear driven by the many regional (CROP) agencies. ment from academic Dr Satish Chand: “The Sir Morauta’s version! (See story on page 25: The The plan lacks a clear starting point and fails to problem with the Pacific Plan is simply that it Pacific Plan or the Pacific’s problem?) articulate the destination. The plan was planned is not a plan. The so-called ‘plan’ comprises a

New ACP SG: Ghana’s former foreign minister Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni has been appointed as the Secretary-General of the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group of states to serve out the unexpired term of Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, who has been appointed to assume a more powerful position as the Special Peace Mediator for Dafur on behalf of the African Union Commission and the United Nations in New York. Dr Chambas’ term was to expire in 2015.  And at the WTO? Will New Zealand’s trade minister Tim Groser repeat history and become the second Kiwi to head the WTO (World Trade Organisation) following in the footsteps of former Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore? Or could it work against him? Well, that remains to be seen. As far as Whispers is concerned, the race for the top job is hotting up. He is one of 9 candidates vying for the top job—6 men and three women—first ever female candidates in the race. Current Director-General Pascal Lamy steps down in August. Eight of the nominees are from members self-designated in the WTO as developing countries: Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico in Latin America, Indonesia and South Korea in Asia, Ghana and Kenya in Africa and 12 Islands Business, March 2013

Jordan); the only developed country candidate is from New Zealand. The choice of DirectorGeneral—the first new one since 2005—is crucial because movement is urgently needed on many fronts: on the negotiating side, the Doha Round is well into its 12th year with no end in sight; questions abound on the vision and strategic direction for the multilateral trading system; and at the institutional level, reforms are required in order to ensure the WTO is fit for purpose. Addressing these challenges will require exceptional leadership.  Legislative monster lurking? A legislative monster is lurking in the office of the Fiji government's legal draftsman, according to a recent client briefing by a firm of Suva legal eagles. This is the 200-plus page Companies Decree, which the government is planning to release soon in a bid to reform Fiji's companies laws, which it says is outdated. Trouble is, say legal sources, the Fiji Companies Office can barely manage to enforce Fiji's existing 30-year-old Companies Act, which some say would be perfectly serviceable if it was made to work. The new decree, drafted by an Australian law firm at an undisclosed expense, will make private companies grossing more than

F$1 million in revenue file their accounts at the Fiji Companies Office, not a prospect relished by those in the Fiji business community concerned about their competitors getting to see their trading results. So far, the decree has been three years in the drafting. Watch this space!  Drivers, don’t get caught: Fiji drivers be warned. In March, the government is expected to begin introducing cameras at variation locations to capture images of road offences committed under the law. So if you’re not careful, you could be booked. However, there are exemptions under the law. Only vehicles exempted from paying fines are those belonging to the fire brigade, national ambulance service, Fiji police force, and vehicles used by the President and cabinet ministers including their motorcades and support vehicles; and also motor vehicles exempted by the Land Transport Authority CEO.  Investment hunt: Whispers hears the top brass of Fiji’s only superannuation fund have their eyes set globally to look at best options where they can invest their members funds and more

Whispers so now that Air Pacific is about to pay off its $100 million plus loan at over 8% interest rate, one of the best investments the super fund has had so far. The loan was to help Air Pacific (soon to be known as Fiji Airways) purchase three Airbus aircraft, with the first arriving in Fiji on March 19.

The super fund is hoping that another Air Pacific project could again turn up where it can invest members money. Still on that loan, Whispers has learnt that during the initial negotiations with the super fund, Air Pacific had pushed for it to be interest free.

Now that Air Pacific is going to roll over the loan early, another problem awaits the fund— where to stash the cash. It already has more than $400 million sitting in the bank and every month it gets over $F20 million in contribution from its members. Tough job it is looking for a place to invest the funds.

Word is that it has been looking at PNG and the possibility of finalising a deal with PNG’s Bemobile sometime this year. If the deal goes ahead, it will see Vodafone Fiji managing Bemobile on behalf of the owners—PNG Government (major shareholder), FNPF and other small shareholders. FNPF will invest capital to take a 41% stake in the venture with the PNG Government through the Independent Public Business Corporation owning 51%. The other 8% will be held by existing shareholders including Nasfund, Nabawan Super and PNG Sustainable Development Programme.  Vendors bumped off: Pacific vendors at the much-hyped Pacific Showcase on the Auckland waterfront were prevented from exhibiting their wares on one of the Saturdays because the Auckland Port took over the ‘Cloud’ to process extra cruise ship passengers that could not be handled by the regular terminal. The vendors, of course, were miffed though the New Zealand government underwrote much of the costs of their participation. Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully, who was also the Rugby World Cup Minister, is reportedly trying all sorts of things to justify the existence of the ‘Cloud’ structure, which was built as an events centre during the last Rugby World Cup and lies in disuse most of the time ever since. The Pacific Showcase ran for five Saturdays in February/March.  Mad at New Zealand: Some Pacific Islands heads of government are reportedly so upset with the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Ministry’s (MFAT) dealings with Pacific Islands institutions like the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, that at least one of them has written a letter complaining of it to the New Zealand Prime Minister, according to a source in MFAT. The ministry, which has been leaking like a sieve and has an ongoing enquiry into the leaks which is yet to be concluded, has seen budget

cuts and a number of old timers leave their positions. Senior diplomats have openly made their displeasure felt. With the result, relative greenhorns are involved in policymaking, which is what is thought to have caused a series of mishaps on policies relating to the islands region.

A source from one of the islands’ missions in Wellington says Prime Minister John Key has been miffed enough to order changes which are yet to become evident. Australia has also reportedly been unhappy with the Kiwis’ handling of Pacific affairs and has made it known to them at the highest level.  Rugby deal: A CEO of a cash-strapped Pacific islands rugby nation with sponsorship problems recently told a major telco company to 'sharpen its pens' because it needed a new deal, better than the one sealed by the union’s sales and marketing boss. When the CEO tried to secure an audience with the company’s boss while in the UK recently, he was told the CEO was busy meeting a top US Government official.  Casino update: What’s happening to Fiji’s F$400-million casino at Denarau? When we checked last month, no construction work had begun, only a security guard was guarding the site. Apparently, One Hundred Sands Limited, the crowd that is building the casino, has been given an extension. Construction work was to have started last year. But Fiji’s Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum gave them an extension and “if they do not meet the construction requirements within that period, then there would be consequences”. Apparently, the company has some issues with respect to financial arrangements. They are now expected to start in May, Sayed-Khaiyum said.  And in Samoa? Well, a Chinese company is one of two companies issued with licences to operate casinos in Samoa. Chengdu Exhibition and Tourism Group (ETG) from China and Aggie Grey’s Beach Resort at Mulifanua have been granted “conditional licences.”

According to the government, the Chinese group is proposing to build a “substantial hotel” at an undisclosed location in Upolu where the casino will be located. ETG is also looking at direct flights from China to Faleolo, which promises to attract a multitude of tourists to Samoa. Not all will be able to play at the casino. Only those holding foreign passports and are registered in a hotel are allowed to play in the casino. Negotiations are expected to be finalised by June 2013.

Advertising & Marketing Manager Sharron Stretton Advertising Executive Abigail Covert-Sokia Islands Business International Ltd. Level III, 46 Gordon Street PO Box 12718, Suva, Fiji Islands.

Tel: +679 330 3108. Fax: +679 330 1423.

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Islands Business, March 2013 13

Pacific Update

A Pacific phoenix rising and a bold new call

By Lisa Wiliams-Lahari

I

t’s been a moment two years in the making, but the rising of the PIANGO phoenix from the ashes of its own implosion in 2009 may have finally arrived.

The regional grouping of civil society national umbrella organisations has been conspicuous by its absence for the last few years as it re-grouped in survival mode and addressed some painful lessons from its past.

Key to its renewal has been the ownership by national umbrella organisations who view the regional secretariat as a crucial part of leveraging their own work into the Pacific and global development conversation.

Another x-factor in PIANGO’s rebirth is its new leadership duo—Chief Eexecutive Emele Duituturaga is the consummate development diplomat and one of a gifted handful of Pacific development professionals able to articulate regional realities on the global stage.

The faces of PIANGO…Executive Director Emele Duituturaga (left) and Board Chair Drew Havea. Photo: Lisa She and Tonga’s Drew Havea, who chairs PIWilliams-Lahari ANGO’s board, sum up the renewed focus and energy of PIANGO’s Pacific ownership: more consultation, more partnership, more transparency, more innovation, and more voice.

Already, doing more with far fewer resources than it once enjoyed has been the modus operandi also helps build PIANGO’s profile as a ‘learning looks more into the impact and not so much at of the last two years for PIANGO. In that time, it organisation’. the question over aid,” Duituturaga told the Pacific has managed to rebuild a leaner, tighter secretariat “We as PIANGO have been talking about if for Civil Society roundtable convened by PIANGO in and relationships with the Pacific Islands Forum, a number of years and we are going to launch it as February. the only agency that has a formalised, albeit probthe PIANGO code because we are a membership She says it’s time for civil society to look within lematic mechanism for consultation with civil soorganisation,” says Duituturaga. “It’s about fiduand “at our own effectiveness as development leadciety. ciary risk which can only be solved by an accounters” using tools such as a code of minimum stanIn its new ‘Rethinking Development’ strategic ability mechanism.” dards which provides firm guidelines on accountplan to 2015, launched Accountability is but last month, PIANGO one part of a list of burnalso committed to enforcing priorities facing the ing governance ‘code’ global civil society sector. from within which will The Pacific shares the uniexpand to cover all memversal challenge where the bers. passion for the cause and Of all its plans to do strategically, PIANGO’s The long-term hope?

3. Focus on empowerment, democratic owner- not the pay with the positake on ‘development effectiveness’ is probably That the code will go tions is what attracts indiship, and participation. the most unique feature of its new-look. The orregional and become a viduals to sign up.

4. Promote environmental sustainability. ganisation has spent some two years in conversa‘Pacific’ brand for transOften, key people take 5. Practice transparency and accountability. tions and outcomes statements around the globe parency, effectiveness, 6. Pursue equitable partnerships and solidarity their skills and profile into and more recently, the Pacific, of a global set of and accountability.

7. Create and share knowledge and commit to regional or UN developprinciples of civil society development effectiveThis push has helped ment work, resulting in mutual learning. ness, aka the Istanbul Principles. This Middle rebuild links with do8. Commit to realising positive sustainable an ebb and flow in civil Eastern capital city will be to civil society thinknors such as Germany’s society leadership which change. ers what Rio and Agenda 21 is to development Bread for the World and highlights a legacy gap beCivil society leaders rethinking pundits. Regional civil society roundtables conAusAID, who have not development- two years in the life of PIANGO tween those with the instivened in Nadi and Tonga in the last 12 months minced words when it The regional platform for national level um- tutional memory—or what have helped mirror the momentum and debate comes to reminding PIbrella-type organisations is taking on four key ar- there was of institutional in global civil society thinking about a set of eight ANGO of ‘fiduciary risk’. eas towards rethinking Pacific development in its memory—and the younger core principles at the heart of effective civil soThat pressure to keep energies of generation three-year plan to 2015: ciety: Australian taxpayers connext.

1. Strengthening civil society platforms.

1. Respect and promote human rights and sofident in their developThe challenge for the 2. Development effectiveness. cial justice. ment dollars has meant Pacific civil society leader3. Evidence-based policy advocacy.

2. Embody gender equality and equity.

PIANGO has taken on ship to rethink develop4. Pacific developmental leadership. board lessons from its ment that isn’t working, own past, and made and come up with apability. them central to its short term strategic plan and proaches that cut through the frameworks, rhetoTaking on accountability as a part of internal long-term sustainability. ric, funding, and development programmes to actugovernance without waiting for external pressures “There’s a lot of talk in the development comally deliver the ‘Pacific we want’ is at the core of to impose it demonstrates a commitment to the munity about aid effectiveness—civil society says PIANGO’s new strategic plan. new catchphrase of ‘development effectiveness’. It it’s more about development effectiveness which The call to rethink development is actually cap-

Towards a new Pacific—via Busan, Siem Reap, Istanbul and Tonga

14 Islands Business, March 2013

turing a mood that is very current, and more widespread than observers would think.

As PIANGO convened its regional roundtable on civil society ‘Rethinking Development’ and covered issues around the still-evolving process involved, a Nadi meeting led by the Development Alternatives for a New Era (DAWN) network issued its call for reshaping the context and debate around Sexual and Reproductive Health rights.

The Pacific Council of Churches heads into its five-yearly meeting this month in Honiara already trending a call to ‘Rethink Oceania’ with a focus on governance and leadership, peace and security, economic development and political reform, and cultural and social cohesion.

Across the spectrum, within the highest- level organisation covering the Pacific, Forum Secretariat staff and leaders are reviewing the Pacific Plan in a consultation exercise that is already dwarfing the initial public ownership of the process that gave birth to the plan itself.

For leading Pacific development practitioner Rex Horoi, whose Suva-based Pacific Foundation is a member of the Forum Secretariat civil society network, dubbed PRNGO, the momentum around rethinking, revisiting and reshaping debates around Pacific development is summed up in three words: it’s about time.

The former Ambassador of Solomon Islands to the United Nations spent eight years in New York, taking up his appointment as the world went to Rio in 1992 and gaining insights from immersion in the UN agenda and conferencing involving the developed and developing world.

He cites the snowballing impact of the 2008 global crisis on small islands economies as one reason why the Pacific needs to take a more pro-active and innovative response to its own future, and agrees with PIANGO’s bold call for reshaping and rethinking the Pacific we want.

As a timely example, rethinking development can take a lesson in consultation from the Pacific Plan, touted as a vision for Pacific development delivered by leaders in 2005.

There is no surprise to findings so far that there is a general lack of knowledge and ownership of the Plan—not just amongst general audiences, but also by those tasked with its implementation.

“The Forum leaders came up with their dream of the region (the Pacific Plan)—except that the design of this plan is flawed because it did not have the support of the public,” shared Horoi. “Ordinary Pacific people were not given the opportunity to dream their dreams along with our leaders.”

He says the challenge for anyone wanting to rethink Pacific development will be taking the process for doing so “back to the villages and communities throughout the Pacific Islands. Civil Society can do this differently from what the governments did with the Pacific Plan. Meaningful consultation and participation of communities is key to the process”.

Can PIANGO and other regional civil society organisations run with setting a Pacific agenda for development that feels real and relevant, and sets a map towards a future with the Pacific’s name on it?

Yes, says Horoi, but it will take good leadership and resources to do the job.

In its rebirth, PIANGO’s leadership has committed to the process of consultation and talanoa to drive and grow the conversation—many conversations, on the Pacific we want. The test, when it comes to tampering unlimited vision with limited resources, will be seen in the Pacific we get.

Tokelau’s Kalolo worried about sea level rise

By Robert Matau

tunate to have been part of the Parties to Nauru Agreement, a bloc of nations that are amongst ike many Pacific Islands leaders Tokelau’s the top in tuna sustainability and conservation head of Government or Ulu o Tokelau Kerimeasures. siano Kalolo is a worried man.

“We get a significant amount of money from Like many small islands nations, he fears his this and at the same time we have to look at havcountry, comprising three atolls—Atafu, Fakaofo ing facilities in other countries like Pago Pago or and Nukunonu—could disappear beneath the Samoa so we can process our fish there. oceans.

Whilst government remained the largest emHe understands that Tokelau’s islands are so ployer in Tokelau, their future economic plans small that climate change is visible and it would will look at developing small businesses and exbe their best bet to relocate to another island. ploring benefits from better communication since “Our people have strong beliefs and relocatthey are remote. ing is not a choice for them. However, I believe On the issue of transportation Kalolo told Isthe younger generation may lands Business that the New be more amenable to relocaZealand Government had aption,” Kalolo said. proved funding for the conAnother issue is self deterstruction of a new ferry for mination, which it has been Tokelau, which will cost $7 seeking through the United million.

Nations decolonisation proTokelauans depend entirely cess. on the current ferry, also sub“I think the issue has sidised by New Zealand, for been there for four years transport and supplies and for us to self determine have been waiting for a replaceand we’ve been given three ment since 2005. choices by the United NaKalolo says the new ferry tions—independence, free would be good for them as it association and integration— can carry 50 passengers plus and we are still working on cargo on the two-day boat trip those options. to their nearest point of con“We have held two refertact, which is Samoa. endums in 2006 and 2007 Located 500 kilometres but we failed to reach the north of Samoa, Tokelau is required majority. But we’re accessible only by boat from Kerisiano Kalolo...head of Tokelau now working on getting the Government. Photo: Islands Business Apia. right form of self determinaKalolo is also the Chanceltion that will be good for lor of the University of the us,” he said.

South Pacific (USP) and is at Tokelau is a non-self-governing territory and the forefront of efforts to get more of their stuhas been administered by New Zealand since dents into USP to benefit from the wide range of 1926. courses available there.

He has sought support for his students who Trust fund have faced problems in the past.

“I think we get $73 million from New Zealand “In Fiji, we need support for our students when and we also appreciate the assistance we get from they are away from home so we need someone to Australia.” counsel them and help them with their work beThe Tokelau International Trust Fund was escause they come here to a completely different way tablished in 2004 by the governments of Tokelau of life to Tokelau.” and New Zealand. Its aim is to support the longHe said with access to USPnet for Atafu, one of term financial sustainability of Tokelau by providthe three Tokelau atolls, at least 20 students were ing an additional source of revenue for budgetary benefitting from learning online. and development spending.

It is his aim to get as many students from TokeAustralia has also been making annual conlau for higher education and therefore a better tributions to the trust fund since 2005 and will life. But taking one step at a time, Kalolo ponders make a further contribution in 2012-13, subject how to drive (or rather sail) his kinsmen from the to budget outcomes. This support to the trust current problems the small island faces into betfund will enable the Tokelau Government to use ter times. At present a hot issue for the islanders the annual contributions to achieve long-term is working an eight-hour working day and getting financial viability and maintain services for the everyone out of the habits of old and into the new people of Tokelau. mode that will bring them up to par with internaAustralia has made A$8.2 million in contributional standards. tions to the Tokelau International Trust Fund Kalolo said they have found that not many since 2005. government services trickle down to benefit the With scarce resources, Tokelau’s main resource people and this was one area the government was remains tuna and Kalolo says they have been fortrying to address.

L

Islands Business, March 2013 15

Cover Report

Resigned..Benigno Fitial. Photos: Haidee Eugenio

Gov Benigno F it down, Eloy Ino s T

By Haidee V. Eugenio

he Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has turned another page in its political history when it formally installed a new governor and lieutenant-governor within five hours after Benigno R. Fitial resigned as governor on Feb. 20.

The resignation was issued just a little over two weeks before the March 7 start of his impeachment trial on 18 charges of corruption,

16 Islands Business, March 2013

commission of felony and neglect of duty.

This marked the first time a sitting governor in the CNMI has resigned from his post. It also the first time a governor has been impeached in the CNMI or in any U.S. insular area in the Pacific. “I have served in this office since January 2006 and count many accomplishments for the people who elected me,� Fitial said in his resignation letter, which he personally handed to his lieutenantgovernor, Eloy S. Inos, at around 9:40am on Feb. 20.

Some four hours later, Inos, 63, was sworn-in as the seventh

Steps in as governor...Eloy S Inos.

F itial steps o s steps in governor of the CNMI. The new lieutenant-governor is 42-year old Jude U. Hofschneider, who ascended to the position from being a Senate president, a post he held for just a month.

“Now more than ever is the time for our three branches of government, our business community and people of our islands to work together as we pave the way to a more successful and prosperous future,” he said.

Fitial said in his resignation letter that his “personal health and the best interests of the Commonwealth have led me to this decision”.

Dawn of a A R E W E N ?

I M N C for

In the interest of the Commonwealth “It is my hope that the elected leaders of our community can bring the Commonwealth back to prosperity and provide a secure future for our citizens,” he said.

His resignation comes less than two years before the expiration of his two-year term in January 2015.

Fitial’s successor, Inos, said he did not expect Fitial to do what he did “but the letter simply says the time has come for him to step down and it is in the best interest of the Commonwealth community Islands Business, March 2013

Cover Report that he did that because he wants to bring people together and so we can move forward.”

Inos said Fitial will not have a role in his administration because, among other things, the resigned governor has to take care of his personal health and spend more time with his family.

Fitial had taken an active role in regional chief executives summit and programs, and established strong ties with Micronesian leaders including those in Guam, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Sablan (Ind-MP), thanked Fitial “for deciding to save all of us the trouble from what would have been a lengthy trial at the Senate.

“I know this was not an easy decision for him to make but he decided that stepping down was the right thing to do. And for that, I am grateful,” the delegate said.

Tumultuous period House Speaker Joseph Deleon Guerrero, the main author of the resolutions to impeach Fitial, said the “tumultuous” period is something CNMI can put behind it and “move on.”

“Let’s move forward. I hope we can begin the process of healing now,” said the former House minority leader.

Last year, Fitial’s allies in the House easily blocked a resolution to impeach him.The defeat spawned a series of pro-impeachment rallies that

of Representatives, they introduced another resolution to impeach Fitial. This time around, they succeeded with a vote of 16-4 in almost all the 18 articles of impeachment.

“Today, we rewrite our political history and shape our political destiny,” House floor leader Ralph Demapan said when the first 13 of 18 impeachment articles were adopted by the House.

No overnight fixes The change in CNMI leadership less than two years before the next general election in November 2014 has come at a time when tourReady to fight ism arrivals are picking up. But more needs to be But while Fitial is only the second CNMI govdone in improving the overall economy, lowering ernor to win re-election and was initially touted as utilities costs and fixing the healthcare and penan “economy governor”, whatever achievements sion systems. his administration had were overshadowed by his The new CNMI governor, Inos, is a former impeachment by the House. finance secretary and was the one overseeing Fitial, however, said he was ready to fight the government finances impeachment at the when he was Fitial’s Senate trial which has lieutenant-governor. since been cancelled He said there will when he resigned. be “no overnight “Let me be clear. fixes” but his adminI am prepared to istration is committed present an aggresto work with other sive defense to the government officials allegations forwarded and people “to find to the Senate from the House of Represensible solutions” to sentatives. None of critical issues such as the allegations in the the economy, healthHouse report is an care, utilities and the impeachable offense,” troubled pension Fitial said in a stateagency. ment within hours of The resigned govhis resignation. ernor and his sucFi t i a l w a s i m cessor had decades peached on charges of friendship before related to an unauserving together in thorized release of the Executive Branch. a federal inmate to However, that regive the governor a lationship had been massage in his pristrained in recent vate residence during years over personal the wee hours of the and political issues. morning in January Inos is currently 2010; his signing of a the titular head of no-bid, 25-year diethe Covenant Party sel power purchase which Fitial formed agreement; and his for his first gubernaaward of a sole-source torial bid.

ARRA management Pro-impeachment rallies...mounted throughout the country calling for the impeachment of Benigno Fitial.

When Fitial recontract worth almost joined the Republican $400,000.

Party and regained the He was also impresidency, he wooed peached in connection with his failure to timely Covenant Party members to follow him.

Fitial’s allies countered with their own rallies supappoint for Senate confirmation key vacant posiBut many stayed loyal to the party he formed porting the governor and his Republican Party. tions such as a justice and police commissioner, and then later on abandoned. As a consequence, But CNMI voters, previously believed to be and his involvement in shielding a former attorhe removed Cabinet members who remained a “silent majority,” removed almost all of Fitial’s ney-general—now a fugitive from justice—from with the Covenant Party. candidates in the Nov. 6 mid-term elections, being served penal summons in connection Despite this, Inos thanked his predecessor for paving the way for most pro-impeachment candiwith criminal charges filed against him. Had his years of service to the CNMI people. dates to win and introduce another impeachment the impeachment trial not been cancelled, many Former Senate president Paul Manglona, resolution in January. expected it to drag on for weeks. whose defeat was partly blamed on Fitial’s After the November 2012 mid-term elections, It would take six affirmative votes in the staunch support of his opponent, said Fitial’s the term “public mandate” had often been used nine-member Senate to convict Fitial on one or resignation is “a new day for the CNMI.” to describe the public’s overwhelming support more charges. Moreover, if and when the CNMI “People are very hopeful and excited now that for impeachment.

Senate convicts him, for example, Fitial would the governor stepped down. I just wish he could Deleon Guerrero said the public’s message was become only the ninth United States governor to have done it a long time ago,” he said. that “corruption, obstruction of justice, abuse of be impeached and removed from office; the last “This is also a lesson for present and future power and the lack of transparency and accountwas Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich in 2009. leaders that when you hold public office, you ability will not be tolerated by the public.”

The CNMI’s non-voting delegate to the U.S. have to be accountable. This is the beginning of So when the previous minority bloc became House of Representatives, Gregorio Kilili C. a new era in the CNMI.” the new supermajority in the 20-member House 18 Islands Business, March 2013

Cover Report

New Governor Inos buckles down to work

leadership that’s important. It’s how the change in leadership will perform that is.”

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce, CNMI’s largest business organization with over 160 members, invited the new governor to be guest speaker at its March general membership meeting to hear directly from him his “approach” to the “tasks” ahead of him.

CNMI press secretary Angel Demapan said “for the most part, it (Inos’ economic agenda) is going to be a continuation of the initiatives we’ve undertaken.

Inos himself is not raising the revenue projec“The governor in his previous role was very

By Haidee V. Eugenio tion for the fiscal year 2014, which would remain much involved in a lot of the initiatives that we at US$114 million, the same as the current FY were doing already. He has not yet unveiled any With less than two years or up to January 2013 level. new initiatives that we would be looking at but 2015 to finish his term of resigned governor However, the tourism taskforce that Inos’ preright now we’re just continuing the work that the Benigno R. Fitial, newly-sworn-in Commondecessor created is exerting all efforts to improve administration has been doing. At the forefront wealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and maintain tourism sites. Regulatory agencies of that is of course the tourism taskforce and Governor Eloy S. Inos said his administration are also tasked to cut bureaucratic red tape for working with the Legislature and other elected will reprioritize and continue ongoing efforts to stakeholders and investors wanting to set up leaders to address the economic challenges we’re beef up the tourism economy rather than bring facing,” he said. in a whole new agenda on the table.

Inos, 63, has been seen by many Tourism is the only major inas a better alternative to Fitial, the dustry in the CNMI, which has first impeached and resigned govbeen receiving more United States ernor in the CNMI and in any U.S. funding than the Commonwealth insular area in the Pacific. could generate from taxes and fees.

Fitial became the subject of an “Obviously, I want to have a very increasingly growing disappointambitious agenda because…at least ment among the population, and for this term, I’ve got less than two that was also around the time when years to catch up with the many Inos was no longer seen as much issues and I don’t know if we have a part of Fitial’s decision-making enough time. So we try to reprioricircle except for those that had to do tize what we’re doing and there are with government finances. a lot of projects on the table right Inos was insulated for the most now. But I like…to concentrate on part from the public’s disapproval and finish and focus on tourism,” of Fitial.

Inos said after he was sworn in as Inos has an extensive business CNMI’s seventh governor. and financial background in the priThe CNMI’s main tourist marvate sector before Fitial appointed kets are Japan and Korea, with him finance secretary in 2006 and China and Russia as emerging later on his lieutenant-governor in markets.

2009. He was elected to serve as Taking off from where Fitial left lieutenant-governor in November off, Inos is also bent on prolonging 2009. When Fitial resigned on Feb. the lifespan of the pension agency 20, 2013, or days before the March or the NMI Retirement Fund, 7 start of his impeachment trial at improving the healthcare system the Senate, Inos became CNMI’s and lowering the cost of power seventh governor. and water rates. When he was still On immigration issue, Rene lieutenant-governor, Inos was alReyes, founding president of Mariready working to save the pension anas Advocates for Humanitarian agency and steer the utilities agency Affairs Ltd. or MAHAL, said an towards tapping renewable energy.

Inos administration will be more Despite a limited term to finish, receptive to the needs and rights Inos has ambitions to run for goverof long-term legal foreign workers, nor in the November 2014 general elections for a full four-year term. New Governor Inos...vows to listen to the people and work with other officials to make unlike his predecessor who didn’t support pathway to U.S. citizenship For observers of CNMI politics, CNMI a better place to live and visit. for foreign laborers.

Inos’s chances of winning that 2014 Days after he assumed his post, race will depend on how well he Inos started reorganizing the administration. He rids the government of corruption and improve new or improve on their existing tourism-related has also stopped “until further notice” governtransparency. This also means cleaning up the businesses. In the CNMI, just cleaning up tourist ment hiring of workers and salary increases. This “mess” left behind by the former governor whom spots requires regulatory agency permits. comes at a time when CNMI risks losing federal the House of Representatives impeached on 18 “That’s the US$24,000 question right now— funds because of “sequestration,” a series of autoarticles of corruption, commission of felony and how will the new administration work with busimatic, across-the-board cuts to U.S. government neglect of duty. ness,” Saipan Chamber of Commerce executive agencies totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years taking The House’s successful impeachment the director Richard Pierce told Islands Business. effect on March 1. second time around was largely a result of the “I have known and worked with the governor But with all the high hopes for the new adminmajority of CNMI voters’ quest for a corruptionfor nearly 30 years in the public and private secistration, Inos asks that people understand there free and more transparent government. tors. I can’t imagine anyone in government that will be “no overnight fixes”. But he vowed to Tourism arrivals have picked up but the CNMI I would trust in this new position more than I listen to the people and work with other officials government and private stakeholders remain would Mr Inos.” to make CNMI a better place to live and visit. cautiously optimistic about economic growth.

Pierce said “it’s not what brought the change in

But there will be no ‘overnight fixes’,he says

Islands Business, March 2013 19

Politics

MARSHALL ISLANDS

Waves Jenrok: During the highest tide period of the year in late January 2011, ocean water washed across the road and into houses in parts of Majuro Atoll. There was no storm associated with this flooding—only a high tide. Photo: Suzanne Chutaro

UN, Forum partners pushed on climate change

provide the security of our country is saying that it is not a security matter,” said deBrum.

He reminded the council that in 1986, it had approved the termination of the UN trusteeship affecting the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia.

“It seems ironic that the very agency whose approval was needed for my country to become a country again would consider my coming back to ask for help not relevant to their work,” he said.

DeBrum said climate change “is in fact a security issue, not just an economic, social or political issue.” But China, the Russian Federation and Guatemala are among Security Council members who oppose treating climate change as a council matter, saying the appropriate venue for the issue is the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The so-called “Group of 77” developing countries, of which the Marshall Islands was a member, has not yet supported this move to elevate climate change to the highest level at the UN. DeBrum said this shows that, “many of our own friends throughout the world do not Philip Mueller...idea of climate Tony deBrumm...petitioned realize the urgency of the problem.”

In the Pacific, Kiribati and Tuvalu have migration not acceptable. the UN to recognise climate Photos: Giff Johnson change as a global security generally been most active in pushing conissue. cern about climate change and sea level rise, with Kiribati recently looking at the option of up press conference, he called on the Security purchasing land in Fiji for wholesale migration.

Council to take up climate change as a threat to During the past several years, the Marshall international peace and security.

Islands has become increasingly engaged.

The Security Council “that we put faith in to

Marshalls wants issue a global security problem

By Giff Johnson As evidence of climate change mounts, increasing worry in the Pacific about the future, the Marshall Islands appealed to the United Nations Security Council in February to take up the issue as a global security problem.

While that effort faces formidable opposition in the form of China and Russia, the Marshall Islands, as host of this year’s Pacific Islands Forum meeting, is also ratcheting up rhetoric aimed at Forum donor partners, putting them on notice that the islands expect more than talk at the postForum dialogue in Majuro in September.

In mid-February, Marshall Islands Minister Tony deBrum petitioned the United Nations to recognize climate change as a potential hazard to the very survival of the Marshall Islands and other low-lying islands nations.

During meetings at the UN and a follow-

Key points from the draft US National Climate Change Assessment This US government report issued as a draft for public comments in January contains a chapter on Hawaii and the US-affiliated Pacific islands. Its main conclusions: • Ocean warming and acidification are producing changes in coastal and ocean ecosystems. Warmer seas are leading to increased coral bleaching events and disease outbreaks in coral reefs, and changed distribution patterns of tuna fisheries. Ocean acidification will lead to reduced calcification rates for corals and coralline algae. Both factors, combined with existing stresses, will strongly affect the fish community of coral reefs.

20 Islands Business, March 2013

• Freshwater supplies are already constrained and will be more limited on many Pacific Islands, especially low-lying islands. The quantity and quality of freshwater in aquifers and surface catchments will decline in response to warmer and drier conditions, coupled with increased occurrences of saltwater intrusion associated with sea level rise.

• Increasing temperatures and in some areas reduced rainfall will stress native Pacific Islands plant and animal populations and species, especially in high-elevation ecosystems with increasing exposure to invasive species, increasing the risk of extinctions.

• Rising sea levels, coupled with high water levels caused by tropical and extra- tropical storms, will incrementally increase coastal flooding and erosion, damaging coastal ecosystems, infrastructure, and agriculture, and negatively affecting tourism.

• Mounting threats to food and water security, infrastructure and public health and safety are expected to lead to increasing human migration from low to high elevation islands and continental sites. Under these circumstances, it will become increasingly difficult for Pacific Islanders to sustain the region’s many unique customs, beliefs and languages.

Politics

FIJI This started when Phillip Muller, now the country’s foreign minister, was ambassador to the UN and engaged in a number of high-profile activities, including co-sponsoring an international conference at Columbia University in New York on the question of legal rights of countries if they disappear due to sea level rise.

Two new United States government reports have fueled worry in the Marshall Islands. Muller and deBrum are saying the draft report of the US National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee is a “wake up call” requiring urgent action to address the impact of predicted sea level rise.

“Marshall Islands and other atoll nations “may be among the first to face the possibility of climate-induced human migration as sea level continues to rise,” said the report released in January.

“Changes to both coral and fish pose threats to communities, cultures, and ecosystems of the Pacific Islands both directly through their impact on food security and indirectly through their impact on economic sectors including fisheries and tourism. US scientists have confirmed what we have already been telling the world for a long time,” said deBrum. The US National Climate Assessment raises the specter of migration and the challenges it presents.

“Low islands have a different set of challenges (compared to Hawaii and other high islands).

Climate change related to migration, for example, is particularly relevant to the low islands communities in the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, and presents significant practical, cultural, and legal challenges.”

Muller said he believes “the idea of ‘climate migration’ is unacceptable, but it cannot be ignored by either Marshall Islands or the US.” In addition to the push at the United Nations, the Marshall Islands plans to put climate change front and center at this year’s annual meeting of leaders that will happen in Majuro in early September.

DeBrum puts donor partners on notice that the islands expect engagement on this issue.

“The Forum summit in Majuro has to make it clear that the Pacific, and the world, cannot keep nibbling at the edges of this issue,” deBrum said.

“We need political leadership, not sympathy.”

DeBrum said the UN climate negotiations in Doha last year recognized that present commitments to cut emissions are inadequate, but progress has been bottlenecked because major powers are in a “you go first” scenario of finger pointing.

Muller said this year’s Forum in Majuro will be an important stepping stone for the Pacific as it prepares for a global leaders meeting on climate change in 2014. Marshall Islands officials are looking for political engagement with the Pacific’s “Post-Forum Dialogue Partners” that include the United States, China, Taiwan, Japan, Australian and other nations.

Muller said these countries that are the Pacific’s major donors are also among the world’s largest emitters of harmful greenhouse gasses.

“Major powers around the world are interested in boosting ties with the Pacific region,” said deBrum. “It is time they see real leadership from the Pacific and match it with their own political aspirations to find a way to go beyond the emission cuts already on the table. If the major emitters cannot come to the table to do more, maybe they shouldn’t get off the plane.”

The road to 2014 elections Sorting out the issues need to regulate the use of radio frequencies, etc”.

Licensing “must not be controlled by government, political or commercial interests”.

Is Fiji now finally in transition It proposed to introduce a broadly-based Natowards a new government, after tional People’s Assembly, including all cabinet more than six years of military members, other parliamentarians and local govrule? Frustratingly for many, it’s still too soon ernment and civil society representatives, sitting to tell. annually to discuss general issues and on occasion Much controversy has been stirred up this year to elect the president. so far, within the country and overseas, about the The draft also proposed the re-establishment drafting of a new constitution and about the rules of a Great Council of Chiefs, which had been governing which parties may be eligible to parabolished by the military government, but this ticipate in an election under such a constitution. time as a civil society organisation rather than as The government had received widespread a political body as previously—following a large applause last year when it appointed one of number of commuthe world’s leading nity requests, acconstitutional excording to the comperts, Yash Ghai, to mission. chair the commisThe draft resion charged with quired the appointdrafting a new document by the presiment—which would dent of a caretaker be Fiji’s fourth since government six the country’s indemonths before the pendence from Britfirst poll under the ain in 1970. new constitution.

The commission Meeting interreceived more than im Prime Minis7,000 submissions ter Bainimarama’s from individuals, deadline of Septemgroups and organiber next year for an sations and held election would have meetings around the required him to step country. aside by March next Under the draft, year, unless he was 60 of the 71 parliainvited by the presimentary seats would dent to continue be for multi-member in power until the electoral districts, election. with the other 11 for But Commoparties, distributed PM Voreqe Bainimarama...taking Fiji to the 2014 elections. dore Bainimarama proportionally. In an Photo: Islands Business and President Ratu explanatory docuEpeli Nailatikau exment, the constitupressed their dissatisfaction with aspects of the tional commission said this “should do much to commission’s draft, in a public broadcast. take the heat out of ethnic politics, encouraging The government also criticised Professor political parties to broaden their appeal to all Ghai for arranging for the printing of copies of communities”. the draft. These copies were seized by police Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and the and proof pages burned in a dramatic incident at other leaders of the December 2006 coup would be provided immunity under that new constituwhich Professor Ghai was present. tion if they took an oath that, “I renounce any The next step, Commodore Bainimarama said, actions in my past (and) I solemnly and sincerely would be for him to appoint a Constituent Assubmit myself to democracy and the rule of law”. sembly that would consider a draft constitution, The draft restricted the role of the military to discuss it and make proposals for any changes on being “responsible for the defence and protection which it might agree. of the country from external threats at the request But it remained unclear by the end of Februof the government”. ary, which document the assembly would be exThe commission said people making submispected to discuss. The army had made a 100-page sions “frequently challenged (us) to produce a submission to the Constitutional Commission, coup-free constitution”. which failed to embrace all its proposals.

The draft constitution stipulated freedom of The draft to be set before the assembly might the press and ruled out licensing “except for the contain some or none of the commission’s work

By Rowan Callick

Islands Business, March 2013 21

Politics

The plight of West Papua The ‘dirty secret’ of the region

By Jason Brown Benny Wenda plinks away at the strings of his ukulele, painted in muted colours not unlike an Obama poster. Soft, early evening light filters through the wooden blinds as Wenda continues tuning his instrument, taking a breath from an endless tour by now two decade old.

Wenda is in Auckland, New Zealand, where news has just come through that the Speaker of Parliament is banning him from speaking about West Papua.

Banning Wenda had the opposite effect to that intended—limiting exposure for his message as a “freedom fighter” towards independence of West Papua, from Indonesia.

Across the room, his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, greets early arrivals. Later, she tells Radio New Zealand International: “Unfortunately for Indonesia, it’s counter-productive for them to cut off information.”

Instead of silence, local media pounced on the drama du jour, eagerly highlighting the fact that the new speaker had yet to have his first day ...From page 21 —certainly not all. And it might contain some of the military proposals. Or other elements introduced from other sources.

Commodore Bainimarama would ultimately decide. The door also appeared to lie open for members of the assembly to make their own fresh proposals.

The interim prime minister said he would await the conclusion of the findings of Mere Vuniwaqa, the registrar of political parties and acting Justice Secretary, as to which political parties might be eligible for registration, before finalising the membership of the Constituent Assembly.

He had said earlier that all parties that were formally registered would be represented in the assembly. The government issued a decree in late January giving political parties 28 days to meet stringent new rules for registration—including recruiting at least 5,000 registered members divided in a set ratio between the country’s four geographic divisions, and paying a F$5,005 fee.

Since the decree took effect, parties have not been allowed to receive funds from businesses, from foreign sources or from NGOs, and no individual can donate more than F$10,000 a year to a party. As well, they must have their accounts audited and published.

The 17 parties then registered—which had needed to have only 180 members each—were given 28 days to re-register or they would be committing an offence by continuing to claim to be parties. If all 17 were to have succeeded in 22 Islands Business, March 2013

WEST PAPUA on the job.

Notoriously parochial, the New Zealand media had until last month largely ignored the plight of West Papua, despite estimates of as many as half a million Melanesians, mainly Christians, killed by security forces from Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation.

Protestors outside the Pacific Islands Forum in 2011, for example, barely got a glimpse on national television news.

“This is an issue which basically is the dirty secret of the Pacific, that no one wants to talk about,” said Green MP Catherine Delahunty.

In Parliament, during Thursday question time, Delahunty challenged Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully to outline what advice he got and gave over the Wenda visit.

Said McCully: “What I was asked about was whether I thought it was a good fit with the policies of this government for National members to co-sponsor a meeting at which Wenda would be the guest speaker, and I expressed the view that it would not.”

McCully said he had been advised of Wenda’s visit by the New Zealand embassy in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia.

He went on to claim that “good progress” had been made on human rights issues in Indonesia, including West Papua.

Delahunty questioned what “confidence can the public have that he as Minister of Foreign Affairs will raise human rights issues in his dealings with Indonesia when he is willing to suppress the right of Papuans to speak in our Parliament?”

Probably not much.

West Papua is a deeply sensitive and murky issue for western powers, including Australia and New Zealand, who nervous about their northern

neighbour.

Indonesia has vast reserves for its military, planning to spend US$1.5 billion to upgrade its weaponry, including US$280 million for new tanks, possibly Leopards from Germany.

Western powers originally embraced Indonesia as an Asian bulwark against the spread of communism from China.

Now the role appears ready for reprisal with announcements from the US of a “pivot” back towards the Pacific in response to an increasingly influential presence by China across the Pacific Islands region.

Against this geopolitical background, Wenda recounts his early memories as a child, including the rape of an aunt by a member of the Indonesian military forces and the torture of an uncle, hanging him from his wrists and beating him.

“They told him that since he was a Christian, he would be hung up like a Christian,” says Wenda.

Arrested, tried and convicted in 2001 for a crime committed while he was out of the country, Wenda managed to escape from Indonesian forces.

Lawyer Robinson was in West Papua at the time of the trial as an exchange student and witnessed the legal team for Wenda walk out in protest at the rigged proceedings. Over a decade later, Robinson is still by his side, including helping him have an Interpol “red” alert lifted after Indonesia called for his arrest as a terrorist.

“Frankly it’s…”, she pauses to consider the right words …“outrageous that the ban has been put in place in a country with freely and democratically elected representatives.”

New Zealand, however, is not alone in shutting out the people of West Papua.

registering, they would have had to enlist in total almost 10 percent of Fiji’s entire population as registered members.

Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who is the Minister Responsible for Elections as well as the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Anti-Corruption, Public Enterprises, Industry, Investment, Tourism and Communications, said in announcing the long-anticipated new rules: “When applying to either re-register or form a new political party, you must set out the name of the proposed party in the English language and the symbol, abbreviations used and acronyms.”

The most successful party in recent history is the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua, whose title means, in Fijian, United Fiji Party. Its leader, Laisenia Qarase, the prime minister from whom Commodore Bainimarama seized power in December 2006, has been jailed for a year on corruption charges dating back 20 years.

The Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua at first renamed itself the Social Democratic Liberal Party—using the same abbreviation, SDL—because the decree banned the use of Fijian or any other non-English language in the title of a party. But an amendment to the decree was then promulgated that bars parties from using even the same initials as in their previous incarnation.

So it’s back to the drawing board for the party, to attempt to keep pace with moves effectively to ban it. It missed out on re-registration, so it must start from the beginning again. Vuniwaqa said it would be “mischievous” for a de-registered party to wish to retain its name, symbol, acro-

nym or abbreviation. The new amendment also makes clear that anyone holding office in a trade union or employer organisation is banned from participation in political parties—including via membership or via “publicly indicating support for or opposition to any proposed political party”.

In fact, only three of the 17 registered parties were able to, or chose to, attempt to re-register in the 28 days stipulated. The other 14 were therefore automatically de-registered.

If they wish to be able to participate in public life including elections, they must now form groupings with entirely new names and apply for registration under the new rules.

Vuniwaqa said at first one of the three that did apply for registration “did not fully meet the requirements,” and later explained that she had reported to police, information that members of one party had appeared to solicit membership in an illegal manner.

The applications are under review and will be determined by the end of March, although the public may raise complaints to which the applicant parties will be permitted to respond.

This would appear to set back any prospect of the Constituent Assembly being formed until April at the earliest.

The amendment to the political parties registration decree, ruled that directors, chief executives, editors and publishers of media organisations in Fiji could be jailed for up to five years or fined up to F$50,000 for referring to an organisation as a political party if it had not been formally registered as such.

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Politics

FRENCH POLYNESIA

Decolonisation discussion? President Oscar Temaru (right)with Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Tuiloma Neroni Slade.

Photo: Lisa Williams-Lahari

Temaru’s decolonisation fight back on French Polynesia on UN decolonisation list

By Jason Brown L eague of nations , prepare yourself to be door knocked.

From a distant possibility to a distinct probability, President Oscar Temaru looks set to drag French Polynesia, much of it kicking and screaming, into an independent future.

News last month of a motion to reinscribe the territory back onto the United Nations decolonisation committee sent shock waves through the most remote parts of the French “confetti empire”.

Expressions of alarm, genuine or otherwise, are unlikely to deter the current administration.

President Temaru has pursued reinscription with subdued but steely resolve long before first winning power on Saint Valentine’s day in 2005, to rapturous shouts of ‘Taui’—change!

He remained undeterred through seven years of constant no-confidence votes, shifting majorities in the assembly, no less than 13 changes of government, voter disenchantment, along with electoral law changes and endless interference from Paris.

Solomon Islands, Nauru and Tuvalu—all outside Polynesia—emerged last month as Pacific partners in seeking to table Resolution LR56, seeking a return of French Polynesia to the list of non self-governing states.

“Despite heavy lobbying from France, our cause has already gained sufficient support for this important step towards self determination to 24 Islands Business, March 2013

be taken,” read a statement on the site Maohinui.

In terms of history, the campaign by Temaru and his opposition party, Tavini Huiraatira, stretches back much longer than his presidency, the former nuclear worker pursuing options for independence.

Over nearly five decades, Temaru lobbied for the resolution in the face of the full might of the French state and its labyrinth security services, domestic and foreign.

His success now is especially galling for a legendary foe, the former all-powerful president Gaston Flosse, still stubbornly seeking power while suffering multiple corruption probes, a suspended jail sentence and disillusioned supporters.

Galling because Flosse was once considered a radical by France for suggesting even limited autonomy, grudgingly granted from 1945, just before Paris unilaterally withdrew French Polynesia from the United Nations committee on decolonisation.

Members from the orange-hued Flosse party, Tahoeraa Huiraatira, have redoubled shrill warnings against independence, speaking of “poverty” and other perils of self-government.

There are elements of truth in this, but Temaru’s critics cannot ignore the fact that their next door neighbours in the much smaller Cook Islands, self-governing since 1965, is currently attracting as many tourists as French Polynesia.

Economic figures for French Polynesia run at around US$5 billion in Gross Domestic Product—about 35% of that funded through aid.

Tourist numbers continue to drop, a decline unarrested since 2001, with thousands of job losses and dozens of business closures.

Fancy name changes and limited selfrule also cannot obscure the fact that France still controls immigration and justice, allowing a flood of foreign workers to come and go as they please on fat salaries, swaying local election results.

Much of the famed expense of French Polynesia stems from France, a nation of 60 million, forcing myriad of bureaucracies onto a population of just quarter a million, scattered over an ocean area bigger than all of western Europe.

Countless billions have surged through the territory, successive Flosse administrations dining out on over-inflated projects that saw uncounted millions channelled back to political parties in France via secret bank accounts.

One French MP once famously described French Polynesia as a “gigantic washing machine” for French money laundering.

Locally, critics sarcastically referred to Flosse, not as Monsieur Le President, but Mr 10 Percent.

Local and state graft was likely far worse than that.

In French Polynesia, an auditor resigned saying he could tolerate 10 %, but not 20, 30 and then 40% corruption.

Massive corruption, not national security, may even have been a factor behind the surprise decision to resume nuclear testing in 1996, in the face of global protest. By then, the need for physical testing had become much less necessary with massive advances in computerisation since testing first started three decades earlier. But the tests went ahead.

Only a year later, in 1997, former Pape’ete editor Jean-Pascal Couraud disappeared soon after a disgruntled judge nicknamed the “Paganini of the Photocopier” leaked him documents showing a secret bank account in Japan, under a codename for Flosse.

By-lining as JPK, but sacked by new owners of Les Nouvelles newspaper, Couraud had no outlet for the bombshell documents, in the days before the world wide web. A dossier of damning documents disappeared from an attic chest at the same time he did. To this day, a dozen or so other documents relating to Couraud still remain under lock and key in Paris—declared too sensitive to national security to release to magistrates investigating allegations of assassination.

What has not changed is the eternal game of politics in a former empire fighting superpower irrelevancy and European marginalisation.

Politics

PACIFIC ISLANDS FORUM

The Pacific Plan or the Pacific’s problem?

Morauta’s review team to get it right

By Dr Satish Chand

A review of the Pacific Plan headed by former PNG Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta is underway.

This review is aimed at building a “regional consensus on the future direction of the Plan and provide a platform for prioritising regional integration and cooperation efforts over the next decade”.

The review has a mammoth mandate including investigating governance and priority-setting arrangements; assess implementation of priorities; report on how performance is tracked; and specify the extent to which the current regional architecture best supports the strategic directions articulated in the Plan.

Morauta’s team has been doing their rounds, talking to politicians and policymakers from each of the 16 nations comprising the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). They are also holding discussions with staff of the many regional organisations and with academics. I participated in a meeting that was held at the Australian National University on February 12.

The Plan The Pacific Plan was initiated following the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting of 2004 that was held in Auckland. The leaders then came up with the vision for the region as one of “peace, harmony, security, and economic prosperity, so that all of its people can lead free and worthwhile lives” whilst the region is respected for “the quality of its governance, sustainable management of its resources, full observance of democratic values, and for its defence and promotion of human rights.” (Pacific Island Forum Leaders Vision: Auckland Declaration, 2004.)

The above was to be realised through “sustainable development predicated on economic growth” (FEMM Action Plan, 2004).

The Pacific Plan was endorsed by Leaders in Madang in 2005 as the master strategy for strengthening regional cooperation and integration. The Plan was reviewed and updated in 2009 and it continues to provide a framework for aligning and coordinating the work of CROP agencies.

So seven years on, how well have we progressed on the Plan? It would be difficult for anyone to give the Plan a pass mark on any one measure of progress as espoused in the vision of the leaders. Peace, harmony, and security have regressed in several member nations; the little light on economic prosperity has come from Papua New Guinea only; and, the ‘quality of governance’ remains a perennial problem in every Pacific Islands member.

Morauta and his team will be looking at the reasons for the failure of the Plan. Here, I offer my reasons with a view to seeing an improvement in the past performance.

The Problem The problem with the Pacific Plan is simply that it is not a plan. The so-called ‘Plan’ comprises of a lofty vision attributed to the leaders followed by a cobbled together list of activities.

The cobbling together of the activities and appendage of ‘regional integration’ post-2004 declaration was driven by the many regional (CROP) agencies: this, as explained next, was the key problem of the Plan and a major reason why it has failed to deliver.

The Plan lacks a clear starting point and fails to articulate the destination. The Plan was planned to evolve, and into what was never clear. It is much like navigating in the deep Pacific Ocean without a bearing and a destination on a tiny craft with an overloaded crew and many captains.

The various regional organisations were quick to pile up all of their existing and prospective pet projects under the Plan. These included projects such as the bulk buying of fuel, bulk buying of pharmaceuticals, creation of a regional sporting institute, and all else that could be imagined.

Virtually anything could be put under the Pacific plan given the lofty ideals espoused under the Leaders’ vision.

The Plan was for development. Regional integration was appended and rationalised as the means to achieving development. The assumption that regional integration would achieve ‘peace, harmony, security, and economic prosperity’ is flawed. The binding constraints to growth in the region are, in my view, domestic in the form of poor governance, political instability and high costs of doing business, not the lack of regional integration.

A consistent complaint about the Plan has been the lack of leadership. This is true and there is a very good reason for the above. Many have observed that the majority of the Pacific Islanders do not know of the Plan. The leaders recite the Plan at every Pacific Islands Forum Meeting but leave it at that before leaving for home.

The vision linked to the leaders was framed by Dr Senipisi Langi Kavaliku, a Tongan intellectual and close friend, who passed away in a tragic accident in 2008.

Dr Kavaliku told me that he drew inspiration for the vision from Professor Amartya Sen, and particularly Sen’s notion of ‘Development as Freedom’.

I came to know Dr Kavaliku during his tenure as chairman of the Commission on HIV/AIDS. Just a few days before the fatal accident Dr Kavaliku emailed the commissioners, of which I was one, that: “Our task (as commissioners) is to ensure that both Pacific governments and NGOs are supportive of our visions and objectives and that they are able to work together—coordination, cooperation and commitment—using each other’s strength to allow all people to lead free and worthwhile lives.” This underlined must

ring a bell to those reading the Leaders’ vision from PIF of 2004.

Muddled mandate and missing milestones The Pacific Plan draws its mandate from the Leaders’ vision. The leaders’ vision of the people leading ‘fair and worthwhile lives’ has its origins in development.

Tagging on trade integration to the Plan and rationalising the above as a driver for development is misplaced. PIFS (Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat), however, has used the imprimatur of the PIF-Leaders to rationalise its efforts for completion of the many regional trade agreements.

Unlike the Millennium Development Goals, the Pacific Plan has neither the benchmarks nor milestones to assess progress. Not surprisingly, assessing the effectiveness of the Plan is proving elusive. However, a lot of resources have been consumed by the Plan though the exact amount remains to be revealed.

How many of the leaders who signed off on the vision in Auckland in 2004 knew of the developmental intentions is not known but what is clear to me now is that few of our current leaders have a clue on the origins of the vision that underscores the ‘Pacific Plan’. And if the leaders don’t know of the above, then the public has every reason to remain ignorant.

Leaders on their return home have not been able to corral their officials to support the Plan.

Many bureaucrats responsible for national planning do not know of the Pacific Plan and some who do are completely hostile to it.

One in particular told me that development planning and trade negotiations were sovereign responsibilities that PIFS has no business interfering with. I concur as do some PIFS officials!

The problem with the Plan is that it is far from being a plan but a (little understood and largely imposed) vision that subsequently was captured by vested interests to tie in donor resources for their pet projects. Priorities, benchmarks and measures of progress were pummelled out in the process.

Lessons for Sir Mekere The review team has a lot of work to do in a very short period of time. They may begin by tracing the origins of the Leaders’ vision which will help explain why there is so little ownership of the Pacific Plan within the bureaucracies of the islands nations. Clarifying the role of the Plan will also help. Is the Plan a donor coordination document, or is it about regional co-operation?

It can’t be both!

It may be too much to ask the review team to present a cost benefit analysis of the Plan but a good start would be made if estimates were provided on the quantum of resources expanded on the Plan. Comparing this to the planned outlays as originally envisaged will also make for some interesting reading.

Finally, the Pacific Plan will benefit from a narrowing down of its mandate and an articulation of its mandate and milestones depicting progress.

The developmental goals could be left to the United Nations through its work on the MDGs. A plan on regional cooperation must focus on areas of comparative strength of PIF. Uncovering the strengths will require the review to reveal areas where, over the last decade, PIF has been effective.

Islands Business, March 2013 25

Politics

KIRIBATI

Kiribati drops a bombshell

will be increased from US$21million to US$63 million.

“If you look at the FSM and US Treaty in particular, the bulk of the contribution will come from our PAE (Party Allowable Effort) and yet we see no extra benefit when we could retain these days and sell for a much higher price to our potential bilateral partners,” Reiher said.

Reiher said there were also similar examples such as the persistent calls by PNA members for the closure of the Eastern High Seas, the FAD closure, the change from 50-50 hybrid formula in Under the US Treaty, American purse seine

By Robert Matau favour of one or two members alone, the increase fleet gets an average of 8,000 days for access to in the minimum VDS fee which would work PNA waters and another 300 days come from The future US Tuna (South against them mostly during the off-season, the non-PNA members.

Pacific Tuna Treaty) Treaty could proposed adjustment factor of 2.5 days for vesThe PNA bloc introduced Vessel Day Scheme be in jeopardy if Kiribati, one of sels of over 100 metres in length, the proposal (VDS), a system that is used to sustainably manthe largest tuna stockholders in the region, does to introduce the VDS for longline fishery, etc. age the world’s largest tuna fishery that is located not get the number of fishing days it wants.

“These are the essence of our fishing—if you in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean.

Kiribati Fisheries Minister Tinian Reiher made take these away, we will die. Every time these If Kiribati rejects the days they are seeking, the the call at the eight-nation Parties to Nauru issues are being discussed at the WCPFC side current treaty or any successor agreement face Agreement meeting in Palau last month on behalf meetings and at PNA and FFA technical and ana bleak future. It will mean the US like other of his nation. nual meetings, we make our position clear but nations will have to abide by national laws and Kiribati, with a limited land area (810 sq. km) unfortunately, on deaf ears. pay the current Vessel Day Scheme charge of and controlling a huge Exclusive Economic “We believe that we have been singled out Zone of approximately probably because we are 3.5 million sq km, pulled far east and distant away out its contribution of from the rest of our member days under the treaty and countries. asked for a better, more “When we established the equitable distribution PNA office, we did so on the of days. belief that it is a better forum PNA director Dr to service our needs and inTransform Aqorau said: terest. But maybe this animal “Kiribati’s decision will has grown much faster than definitely affect the we expected to find that it can Treaty. It means that if no longer live in the small we cannot find enough islands habitat. days, that is the end of “But the position taken the US Treaty. If there PNA Koos: The Taiwan-based Koo’s Fishing company has flagged all its purse seiners in the Marshall Islands, by the PNA officials on a is no treaty, US vessels from where it operates a small fleet including Koo’s 108, pictured. Photo: Giff Johnson number of issues which, in will have to fish under our opinion, are domestic in bilateral arrangements. nature and scope is indeed There will be no US Government grants, so some bias and in favour of a few members.

US$5000 or the new charge of US$6500 (as was countries where there is no fishing will not get Meanwhile, the PNA says they have renewed decided at the Palau meeting). any money. That are the implications. their commitment to strictly implement the VesIt will also put an end to the funds the US “However, the key message out of this is that sel Day Scheme. government and its fishing industry pay to the Kiribati now knows the value of its days and that They have also agreed to impose a new miniPacific Islands Forum Fisheries’ member nations is what VDS has done. It is a positive outcome mum benchmark fee by 2014 of $6,000 vessel a for development and aid. for the VDS”. day sold to foreign fishing partners.

Under the current negotiations, that money

It wants more fishing days under US Treaty

No dates set yet for Tuvalu by-election

By Robert Matau No date has been set for a by-election for the vacant Nukufetau Island seat on Tuvalu.

The seat was left vacant following the death of finance minister Lotoala Metia in Suva in December last year.

Secretary to Government Panapasi Nelesoni told Islands Business their lawyers were still working on details including when it will be held. The Tuvalu constitution gives the government of the day the power to decide when to hold the by-election.

The Nukufetau constituency has been a hot spot for Tuvalu elections since 2011 when Metia’s constituents from Nukufetau demanded for his resignation in a peaceful protest on 26 Islands Business, March 2013

the island. Members of the powerful council of elders or Falekaupule from his island wanted to meet Metia to persuade him to reconsider his allegiance to Prime Minister Willie Telavi in a move that would have shifted power from Telavi to Metia’s fellow Nukufetau MP Enele Sopoaga and the opposition group.

Since Telavi took over government in 2010 there have been two deaths in his cabinet.

The first being minister Isaia Italeli who died in July of the same year attending a meeting in Samoa.

He was succeeded by his wife Pelenike Isaia who beat Opposition favourite Leneuoti Matusi in a by-election by 62 votes to hand back the majority of 8 seats to Telavi, as opposed to the Opposition’s 7. This was then followed by the death of Metia.

Telavi’s camp is hoping the by-election will give them the numbers to retain power.

With another minister recovering from an illness while on duty in Cuba, the government now has equal number of seats with the opposition in parliament.

Opposition parliamentarian Taukelina Finikaso says it looks like the delay in announcing the by-election date is deliberate to try to ensure their (government) numbers are intact.

He also claimed that a number of projects on Nukufetau has been stopped by government including a water supply project that would address water problems for the villagers.

“Now that the elders of the island are clearly not going to support a government-backed candidate they have put a stop to all projects,” Finikaso claimed.

2013

1 2 TH PA C I F I C S C I E N C E INTER-CONGRESS July 08 - 12, 2013 The University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus, Suva, Fiji “Science for Human Security & Sustainable Development in the Pacific Islands & Rim” Rationale

According to the 1994 UN Human Development Report (UNHDR), ‘Human Security’ is defined from two aspects: ‘First, safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life –whether in homes, in jobs or in communities’.Threats on human security are a growing concern in the Pacific Islands and Rim countries and these include climate change, poor resource management and socioeconomic instability to name a few examples. Such threats will jeopardise much needed development within the Pacific Basin.

The 12th Pacific Science Association Inter-Congress will provide the platform for scientists, researchers, academics and interested participants to present and discuss on various issues relating to human security in the Pacific Islands and Rim. It is envisaged that identifying best practices will be highlighted, as well as comparing what has worked and what has not in the hope of finding plausible solutions to issues that will be discussed. Moreover, the Inter-Congress aims to forge and enhance sustainable networks and forums of scientists, researchers, policy makers, administrators and academics in the area of Human Security.

History

The Pacific Science Inter-Congress provides an interdisciplinary platform for scientists to discuss and review common concerns and priorities in the region. Since the first Inter-Congress in 1969 a total of 11 Inter-Congress has been hosted so far, with county of host ranging from.

• 1969-First Pacific Science Inter-Congress Malaysia

• 1973-Second Pacific Science Inter-Congress Mangilao, Guam

• 1977 - Third Pacific Science Inter-Congress Bali, Indonesia

• 1981-Fourth Pacific Science Inter-Congress Singapore

• 1985-Fifth Pacific Science Inter-Congress Manila, Philippines

• 1989-Sixth Pacific Science Inter-Congress Valparaiso, Chile

• 1993-Seventh Pacific Science Inter-Congress Okinawa, Japan

• 1997-Eighth Pacific Science Inter-Congress USP, Suva, Fiji

• 1998-Ninth Pacific Science Inter-Congress Taipei, China

• 2001-Tenth Pacific Science Inter-Congress Mangilao, Guam, USA

• 2009-Eleventh Pacific Science Inter-Congress Tahiti, French Polynesia

• 2012 – 12th Pacific Science Inter-Congress University of the Soutb Pacific, Laucala Campus

Themes

Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, & Resilient Societies

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) For Sustainable Development

Food, Water, Energy & Health

Contact

Conference Planner Anitelu Mata St John University of the South Pacific Research Office Email: stjohn_a@usp.ac.fj Phone: (679) 323 2268 Fax: (679) 323 1504

www.psi2013.usp.ac.fj

Society, Culture & Gender

Important Dates:

Governance, Economic Development & Public Policy 08 August 2012 26 October 2012 31 January 2013 31 March 2013 30 May 2013

Climate Change and Impacts

Oceans

Call for Abstracts Registration Opens Deadline for Submission of Abstracts Early Bird Registration Closes Confirmation of Acceptance of Abstracts Standard Registration Closes

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12th PSI

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Viewpoint

US-China relations—Be wary of rivalry: Roy

W

behaving irresponsibly and cooperate with it In addition, he said, China’s new leaders will ith China’s leadership in transition when it behaves responsibly.” be faced with a litany of internal difficulties that and incoming US Secretary of State “China is not the Soviet Union,” he said. “illustrate why it would still be foolish to postuJohn Kerry heading a new foreign “China’s rise has benefitted all of the countries late that the 21st century will belong to China”. policy team in the second Obama Administration, around it and as a result they don’t want a conThese include what even outgoing premier leaders in both countries must face a “frightening tainment policy; they want responsible behavior Wen Jiabao has characterized as an “unstable, array of domestic and foreign policy problems”

by China so they can expand economic and trade unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable” in managing their vital relationship, long-time relations, which already dwarf their relations economy, Roy said, along with a rapidly ageing senior US diplomat J. Stapleton Roy said in a with other countries. But when China behaves population, slowing economic growth and what Feb. 13 address at the East-West Center in Hawaii. badly, they want the United States to be present is known as the “middle income trap,” when a “No task is going to be more important than because they can’t deal with China on their own. rising economy loses the competitive advantage trying to arrest the current drift in US-China It’s a dynamic that skillful diplomacy should be of low-cost labor as it climbs the income scale. relations towards strategic rivalry,” he said. able to take advantage from.”

“Wages in China have been rising rapidly, es“If leaders in both countries fail to deal with With China now “locked in a web of disputes” pecially for skilled labor,” Roy said. “So they have this issue, there is a strong possibility that tensions with its neighbors over small but potentially to substitute something else, such as innovation will rise and undermine the benign climate that resource-rich islands in the region, Roy said, or efficiency.” has been so important in producing the Asian “the United States finds itself in the awkward Historically, he said, “over 100 countries have economic miracle—and to a significant degree, situation of trying to reassure our political miracle—over the past allies at the same time we try to 30 years.” restrain their behavior, because Roy, who served as US ambaswe don’t want tiny little islands sador to China from 1991 to 1995, in the western Pacific to end up said the two nations are “locked bringing us into a great-power in the traditional problem of an confrontation with China.” established power facing a rising The threat of such hostility power, and we know from historiis real, he said, and “these discal precedent that competitive facputes are having direct impact tors that emerge in such situations on US-China relations—but it’s often result in bloody wars.” an asymmetrical impact, because The good news, he said, is that Americans basically don’t care “leaders in both countries are about these islands. But in China, aware of the historical precedents it is an issue of great nationalist and are determined not to let hisimportance, as it is for Japan, the tory repeat itself.”

Philippines and other claimants.”

While top leaders on both sides Such issues, he said, illushave recognized the need to work trate the complexity of trying to together towards a stable balance manage this vitally important between cooperation and competition, Roy said, neither country President Obama...warned that no task is going to be more important than trying to arrest the relationship: “A stronger China will undoubtedly see itself as has been able to implement this current drift in US-China relations towards strategic rivalry. Photo: fitsnews.com and “it remains to be seen if it is again becoming a central regional even possible to establish this new player, but the United States reached the middle income trap, and 86 percent type of relationship”. intends to remain actively engaged in East Asia, failed to get out of it. They grow, then reach a Roy said opinion polls over the last couple where we have formal alliances and strategic ties certain level and stall out. China has to find ways of years have shown a dramatic increase in the throughout the region.” to avoid this, and that’s a big challenge.” percentage of Chinese citizens and officials who The question for leaders of both countries, Another huge issue, Roy said, is that “rising view relations with the US as characterized by Roy said, is whether they can find a solution to nationalism is pushing China towards a more hostility rather than cooperation. During the this conundrum. As of now, he said, “there is a assertive international style and enmeshing it in same period, he said, US polls indicate that “we disconnect between the high-level desire on both difficulties with a lot of its neighbors. don’t think of China in the same way”. sides not to have our relationship drift towards This has the potential to undermine the benign “This is something we need to be concerned rivalry and confrontation, and the way we’re international environment that has underpinned about,” he said, “because the tensions and pasactually behaving, is driving us in that direction.” the dramatic accomplishments China has made.” sions on the other side are stronger than they Open military conflict is unlikely and preventChina’s more assertive recent behavior is “both are on our side, and this requires careful manable, he said, but just the threat of it could cause typical and predictable for a rising power,” he said. agement.” a costly “military capabilities competition” for “But China is finding that when it expresses While incoming Chinese President Xi Jinping decades to come, at a time when the US is already this nationalism through more assertive behavior, and Premier Li Keqian have already declared their facing budget cuts. its neighbors all show solidarity with the US, interest in implementing further market reforms “Chinese and US declared strategic goals and which is not what China is trying to accomand reining in pervasive corruption, Roy said, their actions are not yet in conformity with each plish. And this is causing resentment in China “the Communist Party may lack the legitimacy other,” Roy said. because they find that they can’t use their growand will to force through the far-reaching reforms “In my mind, this is the central strategic ing power effectively as a result of the negative that are needed against the influence of special challenge in the US-China relationship, and if consequences.” interests, especially large state-owned businesses. we don’t address it forthrightly, it will be more This could actually prove to be a positive pheOne can reasonably doubt if a party corrupted difficult to manage in the future.” nomenon for the US, he said, “because if we’re by wealth at the highest level can carry out the • (The article from The East-West Wire, a news, comskillful enough to understand this dynamic, we kind of fundamental systemic reforms that are mentary, and analysis service provided by the East-West Center in Honolulu.) are in a position to constrain China when it’s necessary.”

Islands Business, March 2013

Viewpoint

Why can’t Australia stay focused on the Pacific?

By Dr Jonathan Schultz

F

fication, of Australian insensitivity and lack of attention. In Australia, the Pacific islands fall off the political and public agenda as media coverage reverts to stories of unrest and disaster.

Underlying this pattern is the weak level of institutionalisation of Australia’s relationship with the Pacific islands. That is, there is no part of the world in which Australia has such strong and abiding strategic, commercial and humanitarian interests that are so unevenly represented in its bureaucratic and governmental institutions.

This weak institutionalisation has a number of effects which contribute to the repeated cycles of engagement.

ollowing the 2007 Australian federal election, the new government moved rapidly to re-invigorate Australia’s engagement with the Pacific islands.

Visiting Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would enlarge its aid programme and host the yearly Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) heads of government meeting in 2009.

Later that year, the government broke the longstanding taboo against labour mobility for Pacific islanders by introducing the Pacific Seasonal Workers Pilot Scheme (PSWPS).

It normalised relations with PNG and Solomon Islands, which had become highly fractious in the final years of the Howard government.

Yet despite these promising beginnings, the PIF meeting was tainted by acrimony over the Australian government’s heavyhandedness in preparing an agreement on climate change and the PSWPS failed to meet expectations. Even the long-standing goal of concluding a regional agreement appears to have foundered.

The swing from early enthusiasm and optimism to disappointing outcomes and low expectations is less an indictment of the Labor government than the most recent iteration of a pattern that has repeated itself again and again since the 1980s.

Each time, Australia has re-engaged with its Pacific islands neighbours in the wake of some crisis (or perception of crisis). Extraconstitutional changes of government, analyses showing imminent economic or political collapse and even terrorist threats emanating from the Pacific have spurred ministers to turn their attention to the region. Seemingly Bob Carr...Australia’s foreign minister. Photo: US Studies Centre inevitable, each subsequent engagement has been derailed by events in the Pacific or competing Australian policy objectives.

Pacific islands leaders, often objecting to intrusion into their affairs, have resisted AustraFirst, it means that the stabilising effect that lian initiatives or acted in ways to which Austrainstitutions typically play in public policy is weak. lian policy-makers have struggled to respond.

Instead, foreign ministers are largely free to shape Alternatively, domestic factors such as the political Australian policy according to their inclinations imperative to keep asylum-seekers from reaching or whims.

Australian soil or defence interests in providing Conversely, when they turn their attention military support to governments despite egreelsewhere, policy is easily derailed, and tends gious violations of human rights, have driven to stagnate and rigidify rather than respond crepolicies that undermine Australia’s engagement. atively to changing circumstances.

In each case, once the momentum of the This in turn dovetails with the highly perreinvigorated engagement has been broken, sonalised nature of Australia’s relations with the expectations of the relationship return to their Pacific islands—the official relationship depends familiar low level. especially strongly on the tenor of the personal Pacific islanders complain, with some justirapport between Australian ministers and the

Pacific islands counterparts.

Second, it means there is a paucity of historical memory about Australia’s relationship with the Pacific islands. Successive ministers have assumed that because the Pacific islands are small in land mass and population, Australia’s relationship with them is simple. Each of them has learned that the Pacific islands’ particularities in fact render the management of Australia’s relationship with them more, not less, complicated.

Finally, both an effect of the weak institutionalisation and a cause of its continuation is the low status of Pacific islands desks within the Australian public service.

The undoubtedly high calibre of some bureaucrats notwithstanding, it is evident that Port Moresby, Honiara and Port Vila do not rank alongside Beijing, London or Washington in attracting ambitious and driven staff.

Australia’s difficulty in maintaining its focus is clearly detrimental to its strategic, economic and humanitarian interests in the Pacific islands.

Moreover, its independent relationships with the islands are destined to become both more difficult and more important as the US and China bolster their presence and influence in the region.

Breaking the repeated cycles of engagement will require the institutions responsible for the daily conduct of those relationships function more effectively than they have done.

A first step in this direction would be to raise the status of the Pacific islands among Australia’s foreign relations. Upgrading the post of Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Islands Affairs to that of a minister would increase its profile and bring greater resources.

Actively nurturing a cadre of bureaucrats with specialist knowledge of the region would help government departments become more effective in managing Australia’s Pacific relations.

Given the competing demands on the government’s attention and resources, it is unlikely such moves will become priorities in the immediate term. It is possible that pressure will build over time based on sober analysis of Australia’s foreign policy objectives.

However, given the experience of the last 30 years, it is more likely that only the emergence of a new crisis will drive a shift in Australia’s approach to the Pacific islands. The trick for advocates in Australia and in the Pacific will be to ensure the response to the next crisis will prevent any further crises.

....given the experience of the last 30 years, it is more likely that only the emergence of a new crisis will drive a shift in Australia’s approach to the Pacific islands. The trick for advocates in Australia and in the Pacific will be to ensure the response to the next crisis will prevent any further crises.

30 Islands Business, March 2013

Help make a world of difference Do you want to be part of a new generation of global leaders for development and contribute to Fiji’s economic growth? Then apply for an Australia Awards Scholarship for the opportunity to gain a qualification at a Regional or Australian University.

Applications are now open for the 2014 Australia Awards Scholarships (AAS) for study in Australia and the Australia Awards Pacific Scholarship (AAPS) for TVET study at USP or FNU provided under the Australian Government’s aid program for citizens of Fiji.

The Australia Awards Scholarships in Australia are for Undergraduate, Masters and PhD courses only. The Australia Awards Pacific Scholarships are for TVET courses only.

Scholarship awards will be based on academic merit, taking into account the academic attainment, work experience and relevance of proposed study to Fiji’s Human Resource Development needs in the broad areas of Health, Education, Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry, Governance, Climate Change, Disability and Economic Growth. Half of the awards are offered to women, and applications are welcome from people with disability and other marginalised groups.

A detailed list of the courses that will be supported for 2014 can be obtained from SPBEA or from the contacts below.

General Eligibility Criteria Applicants: •

Must be citizens of Fiji and not have access to places in Australian higher institutions on the basis of Australian citizenship, or Australian permanent residence status, or eligibility to hold a New Zealand passport or have permanent residence in New Zealand.

•

Must not hold dual Fiji citizenship.

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Must not be applying for a visa to live in Australia.

•

Not be married, engaged to, or a de facto of a person who holds, or is eligible to hold, Australian or New Zealand citizenship or permanent residency, at any of the application, selection or mobilisation phases.

•

Must not hold another scholarship simultaneously with an AAS or AAPS, nor should they have held an Australian Government scholarship in the preceding 12 months at the time of application.

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Applicants for AAS must be applying to commence a new course of study and not be seeking support for a course they have already commenced in Australia.

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Must be able to satisfy the admission requirements of the institution at which the award is to be undertaken.

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Must be able to satisfy all requirements of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship for an AusAID Temporary Visa (subclass 576).

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Must not transfer from a Fiji Government scholarship or any other scholarship during the tenure of that scholarship.

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Must be able to take up the award in the calendar year for which the award is offered.

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Must not be under any bonding or cost sharing arrangements.

Please note that further eligibility requirements apply for the different levels of study: TVET, Undergraduate, Masters and PhD. More information on eligibility criteria including priority areas of study requirements can be obtained from the Secretariat of the Pacific Board for Educational Assessment (SPBEA) on: Telephone No. +679 3378504 or +679 3378526 or email: scholarships@spbea.org.fj Information is also available on the SPBEA website: www.spbea.org.fj and the Australia High Commission website www.fiji.embassy.gov.au Applications close 5pm, 30th, April 2013.

How to apply You can apply online (preferred) at http://oasis.ausaid.gov.au For the Australia Awards.

For Hard Copy Applications contact SPBEA on Telephone No. 3378504 or 3378526 or email: scholarships@spbea.org.fj or pick up an application form from Level 5, Vanua House, Suva.

Applications for the Australia Awards Pacific Scholarships will be by hard-Copy only For more information contact: SPBEA on Tel: 3378504 or 3378526 or email: scholarships@spbea.org.fj

Business

New forestry battle in the Solomons Asian loggers one step ahead of govt

By Alfred Sasako

These companies normally have the same shareholders and directors. It was more or less an escape route, just in case the first company got into trouble with the law. In the event the first company got on the wrong side of the law, one of the companies owned by the same people would always come to the rescue.

Last year for example a Taiwanese company called Kaman Trading Ltd found itself in a bind for exporting tubi (black ebony), a prohibited species in round log form. A second company it established came to the rescue and the shipment was allowed to go.

The second thing is that Asian logging com-

Solomon Islands was on a downward spiral when an Australian-led intervention force landed in Honiara in 2003. The country was then dubbed “a failed state.” For good reasons.

Propelled by the so-called ethnic tension, which began four years earlier, this resourcesrich nation’s fragile economy had hit rock bottom. A Solomon Islands Alliance for Change (SIAC) government, led by the late Bartholomew Ulufa’alu, introduced a comprehensive policy and structural reform programme (PSRP), which among other things targetted stabilising public sector finance in a bid to restore donor and business confidence. It did.

Eighteen months on, the government was able to clear all arrears—a move which prompted institutional donors such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), amongst others, to inject financial assistance to help the new government shore up its internationally accepted policy package.

In a show of confidence in and support for the SIAC government policy initiatives, the United Kingdom for example “forgave” a $26.6 million debt owed by Solomon Islands.

Despite signs that everything was looking up, the political undercurrent was so deep and strong that Asian loggers...one step ahead of government in a new forestry battle SIAC was coming apart at the seams. Islands. Photo: Greenpeace

By June 2000, the government fell to a civil up rising which once panies know the ins and outs of the industry and again plunged the country back into economic they know where to pounce. For example, they abyss. would go to the so-called landowners, negotiate Calls for help fell on deaf ears until four years and sign a deal with them before approaching later. In June 2003, troops, police and civilians the government on formalities such as obtainfrom Pacific neighbours including Australia and ing logging licence, as well as complying with New Zealand descended on Honiara. other legal requirements. They have been very, While the intervention had stabilised law and very successful. order somewhat, other sectors of the economy This is why they do it in the first place. In the remained largely vulnerable and fragile. event the Ministry of Forests and Research is slow in granting logging licence, Asian loggers Unholy alliance in particular, would use their agreements with Today, a different battle is in full swing. And the landowners to start felling logs. it’s coming from an unholy alliance—Asian logIt is only when a log ship berths in the logging gers and resource owners on one side, and the area to pick up shipment that government is government on the other. By all counts, it seems informed about it. By then, the paradigm of the the unholy alliance is winning. law appears to have shifted to government versus The battle is over access to the lucrative forlandowners. And landowners always win the day. estry industry, which accounts for 17 percent of The other common problem that Asian logthe nation’s foreign exchange annual revenue. gers, mostly from Malaysia, create is they tend Loggers are winning because of two things. to log areas outside their concessions. And when First, they engage in a new form of diversification. they are found out, the blame is shifted to landThey would, for example register a number of owners to deal with. They always win. companies with the Foreign Investment Division A classic example of this practice took place of the Ministry of Commerce, Industries, Labour in February this year. An Asian logging company and Immigration.

32 Islands Business, March 2013

called in a log ship to pick up its shipment in Western Province. When the boat was loading, forestry, customs and police swooped in following a tip-off.

The company was found to have breached the Forestry Act by felling logs from an area outside its licensed concession. The boat was taken to Solomon Islands’ Western Province’s commercial centre of Noro where it was impounded at a cost of US$10,000 a day.

Somehow the company which was warned repeatedly with a threat to cancel its licence last year for similar breaches was allowed to export the shipment. It was reported that a senior official was paid SB$600,000 (approximately A$77, 000) in cash to intervene.

It isn’t clear whether the official’s request for doubling the commission was entertained.

Questions are being asked as to whether the mysterious release of the foreign boat without paying any fines was connected to the payment of the commission.

In January, a similar incident occurred at a logging camp in south Guadalcanal where the Ministry of Forests and Research threatened to cancel the company’s licence.

Senior officials said that was when ex-militants marched to the Prime Minister’s residence in Honiara demanding that the company be allowed to export the logs.

Illegal activities Insiders say a police contingent sent to the camp was chased out by armed ex-militants who were guarding it. A RAMSI team sent to the area did little to change the situation. In the end, the company was allowed to export the shipment.

“The forestry sector is now the playground for crooked loggers, helped in some instances by exmilitants and resource owners. And it is frightening,” one insider said. in Solomon A senior Ministry official said the government was working behind the scene with loggers to create chaos in the industry. He said one of the things the government under Prime Minister Lilo had done was to withdraw funding from the ministry’s annual work programme.

“The end result of this is that our officers cannot be on the site to report illegal activities on the ground. It is a well-planned strategy by the government. By withdrawing and diverting funding from us, the forestry industry becomes a playground for loggers and their political cohorts.

“You will find as we have seen in the cases so far that the outcome would always be the same—the loggers will always win because they are prepared to pay someone big bucks,” he said.

The officer’s observation seems to hold some water. The Solomon Islands’ Parliament last year approved some SB$12 million for the Ministry of Forests and Research’s Work Programme.

The government later raided the funding and shared it with politicians who literally controlled how the funds were spent. This meant that forestry officials could not carry out inspections in logging sites around the country.

“We are here just to collect our salaries every pay day. It is looking the same this year,” the officer said.

Business

Talking to government...the landowner faction now negotiating with Minister Maru. This faction is being criticised by the previous landowner umbrella companies set up under the Somare government. Photo: Patrick Matbo

Landowners likely to clash over PMIZ plans Call for open dialogue important

By Patrick Matbob PNG government’s determination to push ahead with the development of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) is likely to cause a clash amongst landowners if outstanding issues are not adequately addressed.

Minister for Trade, Commerce and Industry Richard Maru has been talking with a faction of the landowner group that has instigated court proceedings to halt the project, but has not included the landowner umbrella companies set up under the Somare regime.

The two umbrella companies, Rehamb and KIL, have questioned Maru’s meetings with the landowner faction represented by plaintiffs Frank Don, Francis Gem and Bager Wamm.

Chairpersons of Rehamb and KIL—Alfonse Miai and Rudolf Aiyu—want to know what sorts of benefits have been given by the government to the three plaintiffs.

The umbrella companies have threatened not to support the project if the government ignored their existence. They said that Maru had ignored them in a December meeting and only met with the plaintiffs. They have instead called for an open dialogue with all landowners.

The project, which the O’Neill government decided last year to develop as a general industrial zone to cater for other economic activities with tuna as the underwriter, has been stalled by a court case taken out by a faction of landowners opposing its development.

Maru has met with three plaintiffs and asked them to set aside the court case and renegotiate the PMIZ deal.

He has also arranged for the group to be taken to General Santos City in the Philippines to see how a similar special economic zone project

is run.

Maru believes the landowners have been misled by ‘environmentalists and greenies’ about the pollution that would be created by the marine park.

“We want to prove to them that there is no such thing. We want them to look at big marine parks, like the ones in the Philippines,” he said.

This will be a second trip by landowners to the Philippines. In 2009, another group of landowners was taken to the Philippines and the experience changed the views of all but one to support the project. The lone group member opposing the project, Gem, is one of the plaintiffs in the recent court case.

Meanwhile, Maru has announced that a French fishing company Sapmer-Piriou Joint Venture has been engaged to develop the project and will spend US$500 million to build a 300-metre long fisheries wharf, a value-added tuna processing facility, a 400-metre dry dock and shipyard.

He said the project was significant because it would allow duty-free access into the European Union market for PNG canned tuna and tuna loins and create 2,500 jobs.

One of the plaintiffs, Don, said recently that they were prepared to ‘shelve’ the court case if the project was renegotiated to ensure it benefitted all the people in the project area and not just a few landowner leaders.

He also said that they (plaintiffs) realised that the PMIZ land has become state land and therefore, the government had the right to develop it.

However, he said they were concerned the project would have a negative impact on the local people who still lived a subsistence lifestyle.

He said the people have to be empowered so that they can be able to live with and benefit from the changes that would affect them.

Islands Business, March 2013 33

Culture “regional languages” as part of France’s heritage.

However, this does not grant any specific rights to language users and France has failed to ratify the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages.

ALK Director Weniko Ihage…most Kanak languages exist in spoken form. Photo: Nic Maclellan

Talking in tongues New Caledonia promotes Kanak languages

By Nic Maclellan As a young teacher, Kanak poet and author Dewe Gorode encouraged her students to use their local language as well as French.

Today, as Minister for Culture and Citizenship in the Government of New Caledonia, Gorode is chair of the Académie des Langues Kanak (ALK)—an institution to protect and promote the Melanesian languages of New Caledonia.

The Pacific Ocean is home to almost 20 percent of the world’s languages, especially with the great diversity of indigenous languages across Melanesia. In New Caledonia, there are twentyeight Kanak languages, eleven dialects and one creole (Tayo), with an estimated 70,000 speakers from a total population of 254,000.

For the director of the Academy of Kanak Languages, Weniko Ihage, this diversity is an asset for society.

“There’s a panoply of 28 Kanak languages, each of them very different from the other,” Ihage told Islands Business at his office in Noumea.

“Most Kanak languages exist only in spoken form, so the mission of the ALK is to establish rules of usage and to help promote and develop all Kanak languages and dialects.”

While there are thousands of people fluent in four or five of the major Kanak languages, other smaller languages and dialects are endangered.

Colonisation has disrupted the transmission of language between generations and today many parents value fluency in French for their children, as a pre-requisite for advancement, jobs and 34 Islands Business, March 2013

higher education.

“The number of speakers varies from one island to another, from one area to another,” Ihage says. “There are four main languages: Drehu spoken on Lifou; Nengone spoken on Mare; Paicî around the town of Poindimie; and Ajië, which is spoken in the Houailou region.

“These four languages have the largest number of speakers, they’re also the languages taught in school, which senior students can study at the level of the baccalaureate, just as they might study other regional languages in France like Breton or Corsican.”

The usage of Kanak languages is tied to official French attitudes to cultural policy. As France joined the European Union in 1992, Article 2 of the French Constitution was changed to state for the first time that “the language of the Republic is French.”

France puts significant resources into promoting the French language through its education system, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) and institutions like the Alliance Française.

For colonised people within the French empire, however, the use of their own language is tied to broader questions of identity, culture and sovereignty.

Today, speakers of Breton, Occitan, Corsican and other tongues are campaigning for their languages to have equal status with French in the regions where they are spoken.

The French Constitution was revised again in 2008 to officially acknowledge the use of

Language and Kanak identity This debate over language and culture is also played out across the Pacific, where English and French are the key languages of education, government and administration.

As Kanaks were displaced from customary land during colonial settlement and conflict in New Caledonia, language use changed. Many missions and schools banned the use of vernacular languages, as part of the French “civilising mission”.

In spite of this, Melanesian languages are taking on new life after a renaissance of Kanak culture in the 1970s—symbolised by the Melanesia 2000 festival in 1975—and the independence revolt in the 1980s.

Four Kanak languages were first taught in high schools in 1992. However, real momentum came after the 1998 Noumea Accord, which stated there was a need to increase the use of Kanak languages in the school curriculum, the media and public life, as part of a broader recognition of Kanak identity.

From 2001, the issue of language policy was a key concern of the new Kanak Customary Senate, a body created under the Noumea Accord to advise on legislation that affects indigenous culture and identity (The 16-member Senate is made of two representatives from each of the eight customary regions around New Caledonia: Drehu, Drubea-kapumë, Paicî-cèmuhî, Ajië, Nengone, Iaai, Xârâcùù, and Hoot ma whaap).

Lobbying by the Senate and Culture Minister Gorode to create an agency to promote indigenous languages were successful in January 2007, when the New Caledonia Congress passed a legislation to create ALK as a public agency of the Government of New Caledonia.

The work really began the next year as Ihage was hired as director of the academy and the Government approved a budget to hire staff and expand operations to the regions. In only five years, the Academy has successfully decentralised its operations to eight branches around the country.

“From 2008 until today, we’ve managed to put in place eight sub-offices, which correspond to the eight customary and linguistic regions around the country,” notes Ihage.

“In each location, we have a staff member responsible for the office, who is a paid employee of the academy and who has technical expertise based on a university degree in Regional Languages, Literature and Cultures. There is also a Kanak academic who is chosen by the Customary Senate. The role of this local language expert is to validate the linguistic research we’re conducting on the ground.

“To give you an example—if we’re working in the tribes to gather information or local stories, it’s the role of this expert to check whether this information is sensitive or can be distributed to a wider public. This way, a decision can be taken as to whether things that are sacred in our culture should be archived or whether they can be published.”

The work of the regional staff is supported by a technical committee made up of linguists, researchers and retired teachers, drawing on the expertise of specialists like Jacqueline de la Fon-

tinelle, Jean-Claude Rivierre, Jacques Vernaudon and the Kanak linguist Drilë Léonard Sam. Ihage says the University of New Caledonia plays an important role: “At the university, there are courses that allow students leaving high school to continue their language studies—all the people running our offices around the country have graduated from this stream. Language students with a BAC+3 university degree can work with us and also teach the language in high schools around the three provinces.”

that it has been validated by customary leaders, we can work to train language teachers in the schools to teach this writing to their students.”

For Ihage, the ALK’s work to codify an oral language into one standard written version, using appropriate spelling and characters, will have practical uses in the classroom: “As the Loyalty Islands Province introduces these languages into schools, we’ve been working to provide some of the necessary materials for education.”

While students can access a Drehu-French dictionary, the availability of trained teachers and classroom materials poses different challenges in other parts of New Caledonia.

“Language teaching is quite different in the Loyalty Islands, because Mare and Lifou have just one language, and there are only two languages on Ouvea,” says Ihage.

“In contrast, if you head to the region of Hoot

Standards for education Under the Noumea Accord, authority for much of primary and secondary education has passed from Paris to Noumea, with local education authorities beginning to adapt the curriculum to local realities.

Schools are increasing their focus on English teaching as a contribution to New Caledonia’s regional integration. But the ALK is also in discussion with education authorities on how its expertise can assist with vernacular language teaching.

Before this can happen, however, a key task for the agency is to standardise the written form of Kanak languages.

The first written text of most Melanesian languages came as missionaries prepared versions of the Bible in the 19th cen- Kanak languages...across eight customary regions. Map courtesy of Académie des Langues Kanak tury. Later, work was done by anthropologists or experts from French research institutes like the CNRS. Ma Whaap in the far north of the main island, However, the version of Drehu language they have 11 languages, so this poses different written with the Latin alphabet by the London problems for classroom teaching.”

Missionary Society doesn’t represent the full complexity of the language (the alphabet used Books and radio for English and French has 26 letters, but modBeyond the education system, there are many ern linguists suggest the Drehu language needs signs of the resurgence of local languages.

42 vowels and consonants to accurately record Municipal authorities in the Northern and its sound).

Loyalty Islands Provinces are changing the spellIhage says that ALK researchers have initially ing of town names on street signs and public focussed on this language from the island of Lifou buildings, so the east coast town of Houailou is in the Loyalty Islands. now Waa Wi Luu in the Ajië language.

“Drehu has about 15,000 speakers—about In 2009, the ALK published its first book “Hna8,000 on Lifou and another 7,000 here in peti drehu qangone la qaan” (The history of the Noumea,” he says. island of Lifou and its inhabitants) by Xotretre “In the past, the Drehu language was first Lulu Qaeze. Other writers have begun to write written down by missionaries, but it’s also been in their vernacular with Gorode publishing short transcribed by researchers from the CNRS or stories in Paicî as well as French and English. written by the education authorities, so we have As well as organising academic conferences three versions that have variations. and research, the ALK has also developed more “Working with local customary authorities, the popular ways to promote Kanak languages. Over Academy of Kanak Languages has just proposed a the last year, Radio NC1 has broadcast “Hwan single, official style of writing the language. Now Pala” and “Terres de paroles”, two programmes

with short sessions in local languages, using material produced by ALK staff and collaborators.

The Northern Provincial government has prepared children’s books in local languages and the ALK website also features material for young children, such as bilingual children’s stories like “Maya and Jess” (a tale in French and Drehu about a crab and a snail living in the forest).

The introduction of standard scripts will take time to implement. For some older people in Protestant communities, who have been used to writing hymns in the style of 19th century pastors, the contemporary script takes some time to get used to!

In Kanak culture, the spoken word—la parole —holds a sacred value even in today’s digital world. But Ihage isn’t concerned about a threat to vernacular languages at a time when young people are increasingly using new slang for mobile phone texting or relying on French and English to access the web.

“There’s a classic tension between tradition and modernity, but I don’t think the Internet is a brake on language development,” he says.

“Our languages continue to be spoken in the tribes as well as here in Noumea, and it’s important that we continue to defend them, by encouraging mothers, parents, schools and others to utilise them. I don’t see the internet as a barrier to this process—it really depends on how you use it.”

The creation of the language institute in Noumea provides a model for other French collectivities.

The Government of Wallis and Futuna has recently invited Ihage to Mata Utu to discuss the creation of a similar institution to promote the Wallisian language.

Even so, the debate over New Caledonian citizenship and Kanak identity remains complex.

Some conservative politicians have opposed compulsory language teaching, especially in the Southern Province where Europeans are the majority. The debate continues as New Caledonia moves towards a decision on its political status after 2014.

“Although we’re well established as an agency, at the level of individual awareness, the struggle continues,” says Ihage.

“The work of respecting our languages is also the work of respecting our culture and identity as Kanaks.

This work is vital so that different communities in New Caledonia can better understand each other and we can live together in this land.”

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Islands Business, March 2013 35

Women

For a living...women working on their handicrafts on Tobal, Aur Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Photo: Ariela Zibiah

Keeping the promise on March 8 Let’s stop violence against women

By Ariela Zibiah It has been more than 100 years since a proposal that a celebration of and for women be held every year in every country on the same day was tabled at the second international conference of working women in Copenhagen by Clara Zetkin, as the leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party Women’s Office.

And this month, we will mark the occasion of International Women’s Day in March with various activities across the globe. The UN declares an International Women’s Day theme and for 2013 it is “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women (VAW)”.

Violence against women in the Pacific The United Nations Population Fund Pacific Sub-Regional Office (UNFPA PSRO) which works with 14 governments in the region has been involved in national prevalence studies to measure the magnitude and patterns of violence against women, as well as its consequences and risk factors.

The UNFPA supported studies have been implemented in Samoa (2000); Solomon Islands (2008); and Kiribati (2008). The same study methodology was also used by women NGOs in Vanuatu (2008); Tonga (2009); and Fiji (2010).

Currently, the UNFPA, with AusAID funding is supporting five more studies in the region.

The currently available finding from the region shows that so far wherever we looked, generally 2 out of 3 women report having ever experienced some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime (when it is measured, this refers to the period since they were 15 years old). This is double the often quoted figure of ‘1 out of 3 36 Islands Business, March 2013

women in the world’.

The findings show that in most countries many more women have experienced violence at the hands of partners or husbands compared to violence perpetrated by other people.

The Pacific region however is unique in that there are also a few countries where women report higher rates of violence by persons who are not partners.

In these countries more women report having been physically ‘punished’ by teachers, fathers and uncles than having experienced physical or sexual violence by a partner. This has been only rarely been documented anywhere in the world.

Other findings show that partner violence starts early in a relationship and young women are particularly at risk. Startling data affirm that between three per cent and eight per cent of women had their first sexual experience before the age 15 and between 23 percent and 50 percent before age 18.

The younger the first sexual experience, the more likely this first experience was forced, the studies found. Among women whose first sexual experience was before the age of 15, between 23 percent to 59 percent report that this was forced whereas among women who had their first intercourse after age 18, much less reported that it was forced.

The studies give many more results, such as on health consequences, while they also show that only very few women ever seek help or talk about what happened to them.

Having such data is very powerful because it represents evidence that informs us of the gravity of such situations. Data forms the basis for evidence-based policies and programmes. The countries that have data have accepted the findings and recommendations and policy changes

based on them are being implemented.

Government mobile teams In 2012, the UN Joint Presence Office in the Marshall Islands revived the practice of government mobile teams after a lapse of two decades due to lack of funding.

Beginning with three atolls (Arno, Aur and Mili), the exercise involves civil servants and non-government organisation representatives getting on a boat and visiting people too far from the capital to be fully informed of national and international developments which (potentially) affect their existence.

Topics covered in sessions conducted with villagers include food security, sustainable development, substance abuse and sexual and reproductive health. The exercise also affirmed for the UNFPA that as a vehicle for development, government mobile teams not only reached those otherwise unreachable but the nature of such teams facilitate an integrated approach to programme delivery.

The communities were also encouraged, as part of this new phase of mobile teams, to form village advisory taskforces on development.

These taskforces included representatives of faith-based organisations, the state through school teachers and mayors, young people and women. What is decided at this level is then communicated to the government for consideration.

Addressing VAW holistically What research informs us of issues like violence against women for example cannot be of much use if the programmes designed to deliver interventions do not reach those who need it.

Government mobile teams seem to be the best format to ensure those otherwise unreachable are reached by all government arms and selected NGOs which complement the services from the state.

As we observe International Women’s Day on March 8, we can celebrate progress in the struggle to eliminate violence against women and the never-ending search for effective development approaches. We must, however, not become complacent for there is much more to do. Let’s reflect on the theme as individuals who are proud to be part of this ocean of islands nations: let’s keep the promise to stop violence against women.

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Environment

Pacific environment and climate change outlook

Yes, there are many different efforts underway in Pacific Islands countries to tackle environmental degradation. But it is not enough. We must do more.

Information from the Pacific Environment and Climate Change Outlook emphasises the need to ‘raise the bar’ through collective actions that address the region’s environmental needs at all levels.

Strengthened environmental institutions and effective community involvement are key elements lifting our performance. region as water conservation practices are not The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional EnviBy David Sheppard* often practised. ronment Programme (SPREP) supports Pacific It is said that ‘knowledge is power’ and as According to the report, the rates of native governments and local communities to address we embark on a new voyage for 2013, we do so biodiversity decline and habitat loss in the region these environmental challenges. armed with the knowledge provided by a regional are among the highest in the world.

Our work supports practical environmental environment outlook report that will steer us For example, in our region, the IUCN Red programmes and aims to empower our Pacific towards stronger actions and commitments.

List notes that 60 percent of reptiles, 21 percent family to meet commitments made under mulThe Pacific Environment and Climate Change of mammal species and 13 percent of birds are tilateral environmental agreements, plans and Outlook Report 2012 clearly shows that the Paconsidered threatened. strategies. cific islands are increasingly being threatened in Invasive species are also a major issue with This requires effective partnerships, as well as terms of food, water and livelihood security and 80 percent of alien species in the Pacific being engagement and involvement of local communicalls on us all to step up and do more. invasive or potentially invasive, with considerties, regional agencies and development partners.

It is now evident that the current actions taken able impacts on economic development and SPREP will expand its work in 2013 on key by the Pacific are insufficient to meet the growing biodiversity. areas relevant to biodiversity conservation, cliWhile the situation may appear bleak, mate change, hazardous wastes, pollution and we do have Pacific-wide successes that many other areas. we can continue to strengthen and build Pacific islands and our people are under threat. on this year.

Our region must work together to address enThe use of Locally Managed Marine vironmental degradation and meet the growing Areas now involves over 500 communichallenges of climate change. ties in our region, which contribute to We call on all partners and stakeholders to work protection of important marine ecowith us to help address these challenges. systems as well as sustaining fisheries The Pacific Environment and Climate Change resources.

Outlook Report 2012 prepared by SPREP and While there has been severe loss of the United Nations Environment Programme mangrove forests, overall, the region has (UNEP) has provided us with the knowledge of seen a net gain in forest cover between our current situation in the region.

2000 and 2009.

It covers 21 countries and territories and The outlook report also notes that provides a detailed assessment of the state of the Pacific environment sharing the experiences of over 500 communities in this study.

Stripping the bark of invasive tree species in American Samoa.

It also lays out policy Photo: SPREP options for improving sustainable development in islands comchallenges posed by climate munities and suggests change and environmental answers to meet the degradation. problems faced in the The pressures of popularegion. tion growth and unsustainThis landmark report able patterns of consumpprovides some of the tion, production and coastal knowledge to help us development combined make the right deciwith climate change impacts sions. It is now in our pose major threats to the hands to take action. region’s food, water and Please join us as we livelihood security. navigate through 2013 At every point of our and beyond to help adjourney through 2013 and dress our region’s envibeyond, we will be faced Alien species...frequency distribution of alien species across the 21 PICTs, classified into three categories: ronment issues. with these challenges which introduced (no impacts or spread recorded), invasive and potentially invasive. Graph courtesy of SPREP Let’s work together we must address together. towards a successful The ‘Pacific Environment year. there are successful efforts in the Pacific region and Climate Change Outlook Report’ notes that A full copy of the report is available at: to create community-managed conservation areas land accounts for only two percent of the Pacific http://www.sprep.org/attachments/Publications/ which use indigenous knowledge to better manislands region and that water availability and its PECCO_lr.pdf (low resolution) and http://www. age and protect ecosystems as well as improving management is a key constraint to sustainable sprep.org/attachments/Publications/PECCO_ recycling and energy efficiency. development. hr.pdf (high resolution).

These techniques can be scaled up and serve as For example, leakage in water systems af• David Sheppard is the director-general of SPREP and is models for use throughout the Pacific. fects up to 50 percent of the water supply of the based in Apia, Samoa.

Not good news for the region

38 Islands Business, March 2013

Fisheries

Giant clams...heads of fisheries meet this month to talk about marine issues. Photo: SPC

Islands fisheries officials to meet To talk marine issues The 8th Pacific Heads of Fisheries Meeting is taking place March 4-8 in New Caledonia.

The meeting, convened by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), brings together heads of fisheries departments from Pacific Islands countries and territories (PICTs) to discuss not only the work of SPC’s Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems Division, but also fisheries-related issues of regional importance.

Notable topics on the agenda this year include management of sea cucumber fisheries and biosecurity for aquaculture.

The Pacific’s sea cucumber or beche-de-mer (as the tradeable product is known once it has been cleaned and dried) trade is the region’s second most valuable marine product trade after the tuna trade.

The trade has a long history and has been characterised nearly from the beginning by a boom and bust cycle, with the money to be made during periods of boom, leading people to overexploit the easy-to-harvest animals, thus leading to bust conditions as stocks are all but wiped out in certain locations.

A study of the beche-de-mer industries in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu,

Fiji and Tonga, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and undertaken by SPC, has revealed that more precautionary management of the fishery could result in stable revenues, year in and year out, that are equivalent to the average of recent harvests—eliminating the boom and bust cycle while ensuring the resource is sustainable.

A 10–20% gain in value could be realised by exercising greater care in processing. In addition, the study found that had this precautionary management approach been taken in the past, medium-run revenues from the fishery would have been double those actually achieved.

Currently, several factors contribute to lower overall revenues from the fishery. Serial overexploitation of resources means that the stocks of each species are below the size of stock that would yield the maximum sustainable yield. In addition, process management and the general quality of processing is not good.

Because fishers focus on harvesting the largest individuals of each species available to them, and most stocks have been over-exploited, there is a preponderance of smaller sized individuals in the populations of each species—which translates

into lower value.

The highest value species tend to be slow growers that are found on the fishing grounds in relatively low densities. Because the greater fishing effort tends to be focused on these higher value species, and the stocks of these species are not given sufficient time to recover, the average size of individuals available tends to steadily decrease over time, again leading to lower values.

As the availability of high value species decreases, so effort on lower value species increases—as a result the relative value of exports tends to decrease over time as the mix of species sold tends towards lower value species.

To implement the precautionary approach that it describes, the study makes specific recommendations aimed at better and more uniform enforcement of existing controls. Controls are deemed to be largely sufficient but inconsistently and ineffectively enforced.

Recommendations also focus on implementation of adaptive management that takes into account results of past management actions, as well as on strengthening availability and sharing of data for management and enforcement and building regional cooperation in managing the trade.

Biosecurity for Pacific aquaculture Aquatic animal diseases are a significant threat to the sustainability and productivity of aquaculture in the region, along with the potential threat of trans-boundary spread of diseases.

Capacity in aquatic biosecurity in the region is limited and uneven, and there is a need for better regional coordination in this area.

In response to this need, SPC and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) surveyed PICTs on their needs in the areas of aquatic animal health, aquatic species introductions and aquaculture statistics. Results of the survey were discussed in a workshop jointly convened by SPC and FAO in October 2012.

The survey and workshop identified several needs in order to improve aquatic biosecurity capacity in the region, including improved policy and planning, better monitoring and control and specialised infrastructure.

The survey and workshop identified guiding principles for the regional aquatic health programme that focus on areas such as international and regional harmonisation and ensuring that aquatic health management helps aquaculture make an economic contribution to PICT economies and contributes to environmental sustainability.

The survey and workshop also identified broad elements or categories for the programme and activities to manage the biosecurity risks relating to the introduction of aquatic species. A draft strategy based on these findings will be presented to the meeting.

• Article provided by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

Islands Business, March 2013 39

Business Intelligence

Disunity in Manila a wake-up call for PNA

By Giff Johnson

fishing nations’ long-line fishing fleets have not cut back enough on their fishing effort for bigeye. Scinvironmental and other marine advocacy entists studying fish stocks in the Pacific have raised groups criticised the Pacific’s regional fishthe warning flag that bigeye is being overfished. eries management organisation for not “The science is telling us to reduce fishing presadopting a tougher stance on conservation at its sure on bigeye,” he said. annual meeting in December.

“There are two choices: cut use of fish aggregaDespite this criticism, CEO of the Parties to tion devices (FADs) and reduce catches by longline the Nauru Agreement (PNA) said the results “are vessels. The fishing industry has to make a choice if not as bad as they were made out to be.” it wants to save bigeye.”

But for Dr Transform Aqorau, equally imporAqorau also praised the performance of PNA oftant were the consequences of disunity among ficials during the intense week of discussions and the eight-member PNA, which negotiations that characterize the showed at the Manila meeting. annual meeting of the Tuna ComHe said this was a wakeup call mission, a body that includes all for the islands that, since 2008, of the fishing nations and islands have been the driving factor in a countries as members. paradigm change in the fishing PNA members are Marshall Isindustry long controlled by dislands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Solomon tant water fishing nations.

Islands, Federated States of Micro“We got what we wanted on nesia, Palau, Nauru and Papua New skipjack (at the Manila meeting Guinea. of the Western and Central Pa“People have a lot of respect for cific Fisheries Commission, more our officials,” he said. commonly known as the Tuna Despite this, PNA’s inability to Commission),” Aqorau said. An agree on whether to increase FAD earlier Tuna Commission resoluclosures and the unwillingness of tion that expired last year did not some members to enforce fishing prescribe limits on fishing effort limits characterized 2012. It puts for skipjack, so it was left to in- Dr Transform Aqorau...disunity PNA countries on notice that withdividual licensing arrangements, in Manila a wake-up call for PNA. out unity and enforcement of fishPhoto: Giff Johnson he said. ing limits, the control these small But a new measure for 2013 islands nations currently enjoy over “brings everything under one umbrella,” he said. the fishing industry could be in jeopardy, Aqorau “It’s more certain and we know what the limits said. are. It limits purse seine skipjack effort to 2010 A key signal of a split within PNA was over the levels and it applies to all—the European Union, issue of extending the existing ban on FADs for United States, PNA and so forth.” a fourth month. Since 2011, PNA and the Tuna At the same time, the lack of action on bigeye Commission have applied a three-month—July-Septuna is a cause for concern, Aqorau said. tember—ban on using FADs. The big issue, he said, is that distant water Some PNA members wanted to increase the ban

E

to include October, while others wanted the additional month ban to apply only to distant water fishing nation vessels, not domestic ones.

At earlier Tuna Commission annual meetings, PNA presented a list of measures it had already unanimously adopted for “in-zone” tuna management for Tuna Commission approval. But last month’s meeting was different and exposed some PNA members to a result they didn’t want.

“Because not everyone in PNA wanted this to apply, it was left to the Tuna Commission to decide,” he said.

“And the Tuna Commission approved the fourth month of a FAD ban to apply to all, including PNA domestic vessels. It’s a telling lesson for us. The PNA must go in to the Tuna Commission with one voice. We don’t have leverage as individuals.” This FAD ban measure, however, is only for 2013, which gives countries the ability to revise their strategy for the next Tuna Commission meeting in December.

A bigger issue PNA will have to address sooner than later is enforcing agreed-to fishing limits.

PNA’s vessel day scheme (VDS) is now controlling the purse seine industry in the region, and the key to the VDS is that it is a system for selling “fishing days” not licensing a set number of fishing boats. Each year, PNA members agree to the number of fishing days that will be allowed and divide them among the eight members based on historical fishing patterns—which means countries such as Kiribati, Solomon Islands, FSM and PNG get more days as they encompass the richest fishing grounds.

Crucial to the success of VDS and to maintaining higher fishing day fees is holding fishing to the agreed-to limits. The way VDS is supposed to work—and did in 2011—is that when a PNA nation reaches its fishing day limit, it negotiates to buy excess fishing days from another member.

This day trading system means that even PNA members whose fishing grounds are not being fished in a given year can benefit from the VDS

Tender process delays new Fugalei market construction

By Merita Huch

I

t’s been eight months since the old Fugalei produce market had closed down. And there were plans a new premises would open in mid-year 2013.

But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen as the bidding process continues to drag on.

“We’ve had to review the bids and until the Evaluation Committee is satisfied, the process will have to be delayed,” says Malae’ulu Lose Niumata, Chief Executive Officer for Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), which runs all produce markets.

The Evaluation Committee includes members of the Attorney General’s Office, the ACC, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Works and Infrastructure.

The construction companies vying for the big job include two contractors from the People’s Republic of China.

40 Islands Business, March 2013

Several Chinese contractors are working on the main hospital buildings and the latest international convention centre was also built by another company from China. There are also several local companies bidding for the Fugalei job.

After announcing those bidding to construct the Fugalei Market at the end of last year, the Tautua Samoa announced its support behind the overseas contractors saying their offers were the best considering the task at hand.

There were also concerns raised about two members of the tenders board who are Members of Parliament and also Associate Ministers of Finance.

Both are owners of construction companies,also bidding for the construction of the new market.

Finance Minister Faumuina Tiatia Liuga, who was chair of the Tenders Board, when the matter was raised said they (2 MPs) were there to observe the process on behalf of the government.

Opposition Tautua Samoa says this should not be accepted because both Associate Ministers are also owners of some of the construction companies in the country, who also bidded for the Fugalei market construction work.

“This is a huge conflict of interest,” says Levaopolo Talatonu, a member of the Opposition Party.

Shadow Minister of Finance Afualo Dr Wood Salele says from the profiles provided of the companies bidding for this multi-million tala infrastructure, the Chinese construction companies were best to handle the job.

“We’re all for local construction workers being awarded these major government projects but if the Chinese contractors provide a cheaper service that would cut costs, then we’re asking government to consider that.

“It will be good to also have conditions where only the main engineers and financial management

SOEs a drag

A

By Davendra Sharma through trades. Because of the day limits, the value of “fishing days” has tripled over the last several years, increasing to a minimum of $5,000 per day starting last year.

But in 2012 there was no day trading largely because Kiribati did not close its fishing ground when it maxed out on its allotted fishing days and simply continue to allow fishing in its waters, according to Aqorau.

In 2011, the Solomons, PNG and Nauru all closed their waters when they hit their fishing day limits and then purchased excess days from the Marshall Islands, FSM and Palau to reopen their waters to fishing. But this trading did not happen last year.

“If the PNA members are not able to maintain limits on effort, the Tuna Commission members will come down hard on the (PNA) parties,” he said. “They may want to replace the VDS and if the VDS is replaced, it will remove our ability to control the industry.”

Aqorau said it was important that all PNA members keep within their agreed fishing limits and trade for excess days when they reach these limits.

If Kiribati had closed its waters late in 2012, it would have prompted trading of fishing days among PNA members, which is the way the VDS should work, he said. This would have benefited all parties, including Kiribati.

The experience of some disunity among members in 2012 should be a starting point for moving forward with renewed vigor in 2013, he said.

“PNA has a wonderful opportunity to rethink its strategy and work together again,” he said. “By not working together, there is a big risk to the PNA.” Aqorau said he believes there is “a strong appetite” among members to move forward in the spirit of unity that has characterized the PNA since its founding in 1982.

come from these Chinese contractors while the actual carpenters are selected amongst Samoan workers,” says Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi.

Leader of Opposition, Palusalue Faapo II says it’s government’s policy also to award the work to the lowest bidder.

“Not necessarily,” says ACC CEO Malae’ulu Lose Niumata who claims this is one of the reasons this process has taken some months now.”

At the time of the interview, Malaeulu says the evaluation committee has completed its review and will forward its recommendation to the Tenders Board, who will then review the evaluation committee’s recommendation, and then pass on its advice to Cabinet for their final decision.

“The only reason there’s a delay in the process we feel has to do with the involvement of Associate Ministers,” says Opposition MP Levaopolo Talatonu.

L

ow productivity in state-owned enterprises is inhibiting growth in the poor islands countries, a leading regional development assistance advocate has cautioned.

While privatisation of such entities may be just the key for such statutory corporations if they are to turn their operations into profitability, the Asian Development Bank says it also advocates increasing efficiencies and effectiveness as an alternative.

Following on a global trend where governments in large developed economies have moved to sell their public assets like banks, postal agencies, telephone, revenue collection and electricity joints, the ADB—which injects around A$90 million in the region every year—says the low-budget islands economies are being let down by some low-performing state-owned enterprises.

“We’re advocating corporatisation, we’re advocating increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the institutions because the challenge is if state-owned enterprises are operating ineffectively, they drag on limited resources that the government has,” said ADB vice-president Stephen Groff in his February visit of the region.

“If government has a chance in investing its limited revenues in high productivity areas and low productivity areas, if given the chance, all governments would invest in areas where the return for the activity is highest.”

Independent studies have shown that entities which are privatised can efficiently do business in the commercial sector due to free market competition.

In Australia over the 20 years, the federal and state governments have privatised the Commonwealth Bank, Australia Post, Telecom alongside transport and energy corporations—over time these entities have brought about lower competitive prices, improved quality in their products and services, wider choice of products, faster medium of delivery for products as well as lesser bureaucracy.

SOE failures in Fiji, PNG Papua New Guinea and Fiji have also followed suit and moved towards privatisation of key entities where natural monopolies have failed to deliver to the public as expected.

Under the interim government of Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, the Fijian Ministry of Public Enterprises has mooted the sale of Rewa Rice, Post Fiji and Food Processors and the government’s printing operations.

Permanent Secretary responsible Elizabeth Powell told overseas media that the Fiji government hoped to “maintain a level of control to ensure that national priorities are observed”.

She said some entities like the old National Bank of Fiji was more viable to be run by the private sector, where it was surrounded by competitive local and foreign-owned banks.

“By privatising, the goal is to ensure that you improve the efficiency of these operations, that there is improved profitability, therefore more jobs, thus alleviating poverty.

“Also increasing the efficiency of services that are delivered to the public of Fiji, lowering the supply costs, efficiently allocating resources, all of these things are part of the reasons why privatisation

makes the best sense in many situations, not all of them because of course in some of these operations the government has to maintain a level of interest because some of them have national significance,” Powell said.

But history has taught Fiji that not all privatisation plans can succeed as with the Government Shipyard and Public Slipways—which were among the first public enterprises to be privatised. The venture failed miserably and the government bought it back.

Papua New Guinea has also suffered in its bid to sell off to the private sector – since its independence in 1975 the economy of the largest island economy has transformed from a mostly private enterprise economy through to state capitalism and now gradually reverting back to private firms.

PNG’s public utilities of electricity, water, sewerage, transport (air and water), posts and telecommunications and banks are leading examples of privatisation ventures. In recent years, Port Moresby has also taken an active role in the mainly private sector investments like mining and energy projects as with the case of the new A$20 billion LNG outfit.

Drag on economy But Groff argues in his case for the islands that whilst some entities are better off maintained by central governments, others should be ventured off to the competitive and free market private sector.

“I think one problem when we talk about SOE reforms is people often equate SOE reforms with privatisation,” he said. “We’re not advocating privatisation in all instances.”

He argues that unless SOEs in the islands reformed and lifted their productivity levels to bring them on par with their private sector counter-parts, there is nothing to be gained.

“Problem is in many SOEs, productivity is very, very low. Return on investments is very, very low, which in turn drags on the economy in general because you take away scarce resources from education investments, health investments, and put them in some SOEs that are not functioning pretty good.”

As a way out for governments to stop incurring losses or depriving the public of better services, privatisation may be the desirable alternative.

“So you’re not translating the investments into better activity and better returns. Since many SOEs are involved in the provision of services, that is almost a double whammy because not only is the government going to spend its money instead on investing in infrastructure, you invest these resources in an SOE that is not only inefficient but also providing poor services at the end of the day.”

Groff said the people, who ultimately should be the beneficiaries of the revenue were instead getting a poor deal.

“They (people) are not getting the kind of services they need in order to function as effective members of society and contributing members of the economy,” he said.

State-run industries tend to be bureaucratic and run by the whims of the government of the day rather than with a profit motive.

The ADB finds that unless SOEs run by the islands governments progress towards efficiency, they would be burdening the governments as well as the people,” Groff noted.

Islands Business, March 2013 41

RAMSI Update

Children of Bubulake village... one of the communities in the Gold Ridge area on East Guadalcanal. Photo: RAMSI Public Affairs

Solomon Islanders take up leadership and law and order issues As RAMSI prepares to downsize, Solomon Islanders are taking responsibility for the welfare of their communities as Johnson Honimae found out during a series of community outreach meetings recently.

C

ommunities in the multi-million dollar Gold Ridge Mine area of East Guadalcanal were among some of the worst affected by the social unrest that led to the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) 10 years ago this July.

Although the mine has been back in operation for several years, the communities are now having to grapple with the changes coming to RAMSI. The Solomon Islands Government and RAMSI are together to ensure ordinary Solomon Islanders understand what is happening as RAMSI transitions.

Representatives of the Government, Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) and RAMSI are visiting communities, schools and provinces to explain what the new smaller, police-focused mission will look like.

At a recent series of meetings in villages around Gold Ridge, communities displayed a strong desire to build on the gains facilitated by RAMSI’s presence in the country over the past 10 years.

The transition of RAMSI should actually be seen as an opportunity for Solomon Islanders to take full responsibility for the leadership of their country according to the Solomon Islands Government Assistant Secretary responsible for RAMSI, Derek Manu’ari.

42 Islands Business, March 2013

“We Solomon Islanders must start to look after ourselves,” Manu’ari told the Bubulake community outreach meeting recently.

“RAMSI was never meant to stay forever. The government has discussed with RAMSI what areas the mission will need to continue and what areas we need to invite other donors to assist with.

Work will continue despite the RAMSI transition but we Solomon Islanders and communities must do our part.”

During the outreach discussions, villagers expressed some doubts over whether the local police would be able to sustain the work that the RAMSI Participating Police Force (PPF) has done in the past decade.

“After ten years of RAMSI, our lives are now slowly returning to normal. We have confidence in the deployment of RAMSI. But there is still a feeling of fear in our mind as this area hosts some of the major developments in this country,” said Titus Soba, a community leader of Obo Obo village.

“The withdrawal of RAMSI PPF will bring back fear to us. We need the presence of the RSIPF (Royal Solomon Islands Police Force) in our communities.”

During the community outreach meetings, the Gold Ridge chiefs and villagers raised concerns

about alcohol and substance abuse, including marijuana, and the issuing of liquor licences.

Guadalcanal’s new Provincial Police Commander, David Diosi, who recently took up one of the most challenging police posts in the country, said he had an ‘open door’ policy and encouraged the community leaders to visit him at the province’s newly completed police headquarters near the Honiara International Airport.

“Guadalcanal Province is the hub of the country’s biggest investment and development projects including the Guadalcanal Plains Palm Oil Limited and the Gold Ridge mine so there’s bound to be law and other issues,” PPC Diosi said. “But we, the police and the community, should work together to address these issues.”

The meeting ended in a positive note with communities agreeing to join forces with the provincial police to address law and order issues, instead of looking to other people to come in and solve their problems for them.

Such positive developments will go a long way in sustaining what RAMSI has done in the past decade in partnership with Solomon Islands, especially in addressing law and order issues in areas such as Gold Ridge.

It is planned that the military component of RAMSI, which has had a reduced role and low profile for several years now, will leave in the second half of 2013. However, RAMSI’s Participating Police Force will remain in Solomon Islands until June 2017. Today, they are focused on building the capacity of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force. This will continue to be their main job during the next four years.

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Islands Business, March 2013

Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) • •

Recruitment of:

Deputy Director-General, Programmes • Director, Applied Geoscience and Technology (Suva-based) Deputy Director-General, Operations and Management • Director, Land Resources (Suva-based) • Director, Public Health (Noumea-based)

SPC is seeking to appoint the above positions to its senior management team based at its headquarters • Director, Strategic Engagement, Policy and Planning (Noumea-based) in Noumea, New Caledonia. They report to the Director-General and lead and manage directorates with staff located in SPC offices in New Caledonia, Fiji, Federated States of Micronesia and Solomon SPC is seeking to appoint four dynamic Directors to lead the work of three of its divisions and its strategic engagement, Islands. policy and planning facility. Directors are part of SPC’s senior executive management team and are currently accountableDirector-General, to the Director-General. They share the following key result Deputy Programmes leads and areas: manages SPC’s entire technical

The work programme. The Programmes Directorate has an annual budget of around USD 85 million and 430 staff Provide vision, leadership, direction and management the division to maximise impacts of regionally Education, in seven 1.technical divisions (Applied Geoscience andofTechnology; Economic Development; delivered services to SPC member countries and territories.

Training and Human Development; Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems; Land Resources; 2. Contribute strongly to for SPC’sDevelopment) development, management and achievement of goals.

Public Health; and Statistics and in cross-divisional groups such as Climate Change.

3. Proactively drive policy innovation and manage change.

The Deputy Director-General, Operations and Management leads and manages SPC’s support Be responsible for the division’s resource mobilisation management of budget expenditure services 4.including administration; finance; HR; and ICT;careful library; publications; and translation and and reporting. interpretation. The role also supervises SPC’s offices in the Federated States of Micronesia and Solomon 5. Develop and maintain strategic, collaborative with clients and140 diverse stakeholders.

Islands. The directorate has an annual budgetprofessional of aroundrelationships USD 12 million and staff.

Key result areas include organisational (i) leadership, coordination and management; (ii) policy, Successful candidates will have qualifications and experience in relevant technical areas, experience in working in a development andenvironment, change management; (iii) work programme development anddiverse implementation; (iv) multi-sectoral and be skilled in leading and managing multi-disciplinary teams from cultural backgrounds. should include a strategic understanding development issues in Pacific Island countries financial securityAttributes and property; (v) governance; and (vi)ofrelations and advocacy. and territories, leadership and management skills, expertise in mobilising funding resources and ability to work

Successful candidates will have qualifications; business acumen; excellent interpersonal skills; collaboratively with partners fromrelevant regional and international organisations. commitment to development; expertise in strategic and operational leadership; and the skills to lead SPC is the Pacific Island region’s principal technical and scientific organisation. It delivers technical, scientific, research, geographically dispersed teams and work effectively in a bilingual and culturally diverse environment policy and training support to Pacific Island countries and territories in public health, geoscience, agriculture, forestry, with internal and external stakeholders. water resources, disaster management, fisheries, education (community, TVET, quality and standards for all school levels),

statistics, transport, energy, ICT, media, human rights, gender, youth and culture.

SPC delivers technical, scientific, research, policy and training support to Pacific Island countries and Established in 1947, SPC employs overforestry, 570 staff and is headquartered New Caledonia, with offices in Fiji, territories in fisheries, agriculture, water resources,in Noumea, geoscience, transport, energy, disaster risk Federated States of Micronesia and Solomon Islands.

It is a dynamic regional organisation, with a work programme that management, public health, statistics, education, human rights, gender, youth and culture. is currently undergoing review. SPC has 26 member countries and territories, including its founding members, Australia,

SPC has 26 New member and ofterritories including founding members, Australia, France, Zealandcountries and United States America, which contributeits a large proportion of its funding.

Other majorFrance, New development partners include the European Union, Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, United Nations Zealand and the United States of America, which contribute a large proportion of its funding.

Other major agencies, Asian Development Bank, World Bank and Global Environment Facility, to name a few.

SPC’s working development partners include the European Union, Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosislanguages and Malaria, are English and French.

United Nations agencies, Asian Development Bank, World Bank and Global Environment Facility, to name Applications be submitted in English English orand French.

The closing date for applications is Monday 25 June 2012. a few. SPC’s workingcan languages are French.

Applications can be submitted in English or French. The closing date for applications is 18 March 2013.

To obtain a position description, including key selection criteria and instructions for applying, please go to: www.spc.int/en/employment.html or contact Sally Clark Herrmann, Recruitment and Staff Development Officer,

For further indetails go to www.spc.int/en/employment.html or contact Sally Herrmann, HR Adviser, in confidence, at sallyh@spc.int or telephone (+ 687) 26 01 40. confidence (sallyh@spc.int or +687 26 01 40). www.spc.int

Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) • •

Recruitment of: Director, Statistics for Development Division (Noumea-based) • Director, Applied Geoscience and Technology (Suva-based) Director, North Pacific Regional Office (Pohnpei-based) • Director, Land Resources (Suva-based)

• Director, Public Health (Noumea-based)

SPC is seeking to appoint two directors to its executive team. SPC’s headquarters are in Noumea, New Caledonia, Director, Strategic Engagement, Policy and Planning (Noumea-based) and it also• has offices in Suva, Fiji; Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia; and Honiara, Solomon Islands.

The Director, Statistics for Development Division is based in Noumea and accountable to the Deputy DirectorSPC is seeking to appoint four dynamic Directors to lead the work of three of its divisions and its strategic engagement, General, Programmes for leadership and direction of the division. The division aims to strengthen the capacity policy and planning facility. Directors are part of SPC’s senior executive management team and are currently of national and regional statistical systems to provide policy-makers and analysts with demographic, economic accountable to the Director-General.

They share the following key result areas: and social indicators to support planning and decision making. The director manages an annual budget of around USD 4.2 million and a team of 20 staff in Noumea, Pohnpei and Suva.

1. Provide vision, leadership, direction and management of the division to maximise impacts of regionally

delivered services to SPC memberOffice countriesisand territories.

The Director, North Pacific Regional based in Pohnpei and accountable to the Deputy DirectorGeneral, Operations Management for leadership and management the office, which provides technical 2. Contributeand strongly to SPC’s development, management and achievement of of goals. and scientific services to SPC’s North Pacific members.

The office has a combined annual budget of around USD 3. Proactively drive policy innovation and manage change.

2.5 million and a multi-disciplinary team of 40 staff including some located in Marshall Islands and Palau. The 4. Be responsible for the division’s resource mobilisation and careful management of budget expenditure director has an important advocacy, marketing and resource mobilisation role in representing SPC in the region. and reporting.

Key result5.areas include: (i) provide vision, leadership, direction and management of SPC resources to maximise Develop and maintain strategic, collaborative professional relationships with clients and diverse stakeholders. impacts of regionally delivered services to SPC member countries and territories; (ii) contribute strongly to SPC’s development, management and achievement of goals; (iii) drive policy innovation and manage change; Successful candidates will have qualifications and experience in relevant technical areas, experience in working in a (iv) manage budget expenditure and reporting and resource mobilisation; and (v) manage collaborative multi-sectoral environment, and be skilled in leading and managing multi-disciplinary teams from diverse cultural relationships with stakeholders. backgrounds. Attributes should include a strategic understanding of development issues in Pacific Island countries

and territories, leadership management expertise in mobilising funding resources and abilityin to work Successful candidates will and have relevantskills, qualifications and experience, particularly a multi-sectoral collaboratively with partners from regional and international organisations. environment; skills in strategic thinking, policy development and mobilising funding; understanding of development the region’s region;principal excellent representational and interpersonal skills; and capacity to lead multiSPC is theissues Pacificin Island technical and scientific organisation.

It delivers technical, scientific, research, disciplinary teams andsupport work effectively in countries a bilingual culturally environment with forestry, a broad range of policy and training to Pacific Island and and territories in publicdiverse health, geoscience, agriculture, water resources, disaster management, fisheries, education (community, TVET, quality and standards for all school levels), stakeholders. statistics, transport, energy, ICT, media, human rights, gender, youth and culture.

SPC delivers technical, scientific, research, policy and training support to Pacific Island countries and territories in Established in 1947, SPC employs over 570 staff andgeoscience, is headquartered in Noumea, New Caledonia, in Fiji, fisheries, agriculture, forestry, water resources, transport, energy, disaster with risk offices management, public Federated States of Micronesia and Solomon Islands.

It is a dynamic regional organisation, with a work programme that health, statistics, education, human rights, gender, youth and culture. is currently undergoing review. SPC has 26 member countries and territories, including its founding members, Australia,

SPC hasFrance, 26 member countries and States territories including Australia, France,Other Newmajor Zealand and the New Zealand and United of America, whichfounding contribute amembers, large proportion of its funding.

United development States of America, whichthecontribute a large proportion of AIDS, its funding.

Other development partners include European Union, Global Fund to fight Tuberculosis andmajor Malaria, United Nationspartners Asian Development Bank, World and AIDS, Global Tuberculosis Environment Facility, to name aUnited few. SPC’s workingagencies, languages Asian includeagencies, the European Union, Global Fund Bank to fight and Malaria, Nations are English and World French.Bank and Global Environment Facility, to name a few. SPC’s working languages are English Development Bank, and French.

Applications can be submitted in English or French. The closing date for applications is Monday 25 June 2012.

Applications can be submitted in English or French. The closing date for applications is 22 March 2013.

For further details goa to www.spc.int/en/employment.html or contact Sally Herrmann, Adviser, To obtain position description, including key selection criteria and instructions for applying,HR please go to: in confidence (sallyh@spc.int or +687 26 01 40). www.spc.int/en/employment.html or contact Sally Clark Herrmann, Recruitment and Staff Development Officer, in confidence, at sallyh@spc.int or telephone (+ 687) 26 01 40.

www.spc.int

TRADE MARK CAUTIONARY NOTICE IN COOK ISLANDS Notice is hereby given that Nissan Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (also trading as Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.), of No. 2, Takara-cho, Kanagawa-ku,

Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa-ken, Japan, is the sole proprietor in Cook Islands and elsewhere of the following trade mark:

Used in respect of:Vehicles for locomotion by land, air, water or rail; Automobiles; Electric vehicles; Wagons; Trucks; Vans [vehicles]; Sport utility vehicles; Motor buses; Recreational vehicles (RV); Sports cars; Racing cars; Lorries; Fork lift trucks; Tractors including towing tractors; Trailers and semitrailers for vehicles; Parts of land, air and water vehicles; Apparatus for locomotion by land, air or water; Engines for land vehicles; Motors for land vehicles; Bodies for vehicles; Vehicle chassis; Transmissions, for land vehicles; Transmission parts of land vehicles; Transmission shafts for land vehicles; Gears for land vehicles; Clutches for land vehicles; Axles for vehicles; Suspension shock absorbers for vehicles; Shock absorbing springs for vehicles; Vehicle wheels; Tyres for vehicle wheels; Hubs for vehicle wheels; Adhesive rubber patches for repairing tyre inner tubes; Brakes for vehicles; Brake pads for automobiles; Windscreens; Wipers for vehicles; Vehicle bumpers; Steering for land vehicles; Horns for vehicles; Direction signals for vehicles; Vehicle seats; Safety belts for vehicle seats; Head-rests for vehicle seats; Reversing alarms for vehicles; Anti-theft devices for vehicles; Air bags [safety devices for automobiles]; Rearview mirrors; Tailboard lifts [parts of land vehicles]; Vehicle accessories; Spoilers for vehicles; Luggage carriers for vehicles; Mud-guards; Anti-skid chains; Vehicle covers [shaped]; Covers (Seat -) for vehicles; Air pumps [vehicle accessories]; Ski carriers for vehicles; Cigar lighters for automobiles; Safety seats for children; Space vehicles; Aeroplanes; Seaplanes; Aircraft; Carts; Motorcycles; Boats; Ferry boats; Ships; Yachts; Bicycles; Cycle bells; Cycle chains; Motors for cycles; Cycle saddles; Cycle mudguards– Class 12 DAVIES COLLISON CAVE Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys 1 Nicholson Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000, Australia Telephone: +61 3 9254 2777 • Facsimile: +61 3 9254 2770 E-mail: fbrittain@davies.com.au

TRADE MARK CAUTIONARY NOTICE IN MARSHALL ISLANDS Notice is hereby given that Nissan Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (also trading as Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.), of No. 2, Takara-cho, Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa-ken, Japan, is the sole proprietor in Marshall Islands and elsewhere of the following trade mark:

Used in respect of:Vehicles for locomotion by land, air, water or rail; Automobiles; Electric vehicles; Wagons; Trucks; Vans [vehicles]; Sport utility vehicles; Motor buses; Recreational vehicles (RV); Sports cars; Racing cars; Lorries; Fork lift trucks; Tractors including towing tractors; Trailers and semitrailers for vehicles; Parts of land, air and water vehicles; Apparatus for locomotion by land, air or water; Engines for land vehicles; Motors for land vehicles; Bodies for vehicles; Vehicle chassis; Transmissions, for land vehicles; Transmission parts of land vehicles; Transmission shafts for land vehicles; Gears for land vehicles; Clutches for land vehicles; Axles for vehicles; Suspension shock absorbers for vehicles; Shock absorbing springs for vehicles; Vehicle wheels; Tyres for vehicle wheels; Hubs for vehicle wheels; Adhesive rubber patches for repairing tyre inner tubes; Brakes for vehicles; Brake pads for automobiles; Windscreens; Wipers for vehicles; Vehicle bumpers; Steering for land vehicles; Horns for vehicles; Direction signals for vehicles; Vehicle seats; Safety belts for vehicle seats; Head-rests for vehicle seats; Reversing alarms for vehicles; Anti-theft devices for vehicles; Air bags [safety devices for automobiles]; Rearview mirrors; Tailboard lifts [parts of land vehicles]; Vehicle accessories; Spoilers for vehicles; Luggage carriers for vehicles; Mud-guards; Anti-skid chains; Vehicle covers [shaped]; Covers (Seat -) for vehicles; Air pumps [vehicle accessories]; Ski carriers for vehicles; Cigar lighters for automobiles; Safety seats for children; Space vehicles; Aeroplanes; Seaplanes; Aircraft; Carts; Motorcycles; Boats; Ferry boats; Ships; Yachts; Bicycles; Cycle bells; Cycle chains; Motors for cycles; Cycle saddles; Cycle mudguards– Class 12 DAVIES COLLISON CAVE Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys 1 Nicholson Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000, Australia Telephone: +61 3 9254 2777 • Facsimile: +61 3 9254 2770 E-mail: fbrittain@davies.com.au

Above right: Alvin Chand from Asco Motors Fiji 2012 Group Skills Contest Champion

INVESTING IN Champions The most important investment to a Company is it’s people. Toyota believes in only striving for the best and have invested heavily over the past twenty one years, in bringing future Service champions together to compete in the National Skills Competition. This competition brings the best of the best from the seven different South Pacific countries, to showcase their talent, their ability to work under pressure whilst delivering Quality Service. Fiji won the 2012 National Group Skills Competition...who will win in 2013?

Have your car serviced by Champions next time you are at Ela or Asco Motors Go to www.toyota.tsusho.com.au to find out who are our 2013 finalists

1411TTSPH

Papua New Guinea a Ph: (675) 322 9400 Solomon Islands Ph: (677) 30314

American an Samoa S Ph: (684) 633 4281 Samoa Ph: (685) 20800 Fiji Islands Ph: (679) 338 4888 Tonga Ph: (676) 23500 Vanuatu Ph: (678) 22341

Holding Company - Toyota Tsusho South Pacific Holdings Pty Ltd - www.toyota.tsusho.com.au