Letter From Majuro
Media Shocks & Global Games
Shooting The Messenger
A question for Vanuatu’s Government: Is it running a democracy or a police state? By organizing a pre-dawn police raid on the home of independent newspaper publisher Marc Neil-Jones and summarily deporting him, Vanuatu’s government has chosen to shoot the messenger, and itself in the process. Neil-Jones’ supposed "crime"? The government says the "Trading Post publisher has been investigating the government of Vanuatu in almost every activity" and publishing "negative and baseless reports". It sounds like a newspaper doing its job and a government unhappy about it.
The government’s complaint — "He seemed not to appreciate that Vanuatu’s culture must be respected even in media freedom" — demonstrates the travesty of its action. Hiding behind "culture" is an overused tactic to avoid scrutiny in the Pacific. This government comment means that Trading Post reports are embarrassing government leaders. A hundred years ago, one didn’t stand up in front of a crowd and point fingers at a leader to expose an error; today, for Pacific democracies to function properly, that’s exactly what the media, opposition politicians and the community are expected to do. Vanuatu’s deportation of Neil-Jones is an outrage for a country professing to be a democracy. But we take heart in a small fact: through years of enjoying freedoms in democratically-run nations, rank-and-file Pacific islanders have a heightened appreciation for their freedoms. It is this awareness among the rank-and-file that will judge the Vanuatu government’s action and, ultimately, with which Vanuatu leaders must reckon.
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On the international front, late last year, industrialized countries of the world thumbed their collective noses at the Earth’s environment by refusing to entertain even woefully limited controls on pollution emissions. Many Pacific island countries and advocacy groups had pinned their hopes on the international climate change conference in The Hague at the end of 2000 as a vehicle for finally gaining action on the agreements in principle for pollution reduction reached in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. But the major industrialized nations sent a strong message to the rest of the world with their refusal to move proactively to reduce the threat of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the Earth and will cause the sea level to rise. The message was clear: why should the most advanced, industrialized nations have to change their way of life or the way their businesses operate just to accommodate some environmental concerns. The irony, of course, is that while islands will experience the first and most severe affects of any sea level rise, industrialized nations will not be spared.
Fast-forward two months to mid-January. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of many of these same industrialized nations in Europe, North America and Asia, blacklists 33 developing countries as "tax-havens" with harmful tax practices. Included in the list are six Pacific island countries. "Harmful tax practices" is a misnomer. What the OECD means is tax competition "harmful" to OECD member nations. The problem, of course, stems from the fact that most of the OECD member nations have onerously high tax systems, which make off-shore areas attractive to companies from their lands because of lower tax regimes. For some of the smaller countries offering offshore corporate registration, the revenue generated represents a significant part of their national budgets. Dealing with illegal activities, as in money laundering, is one thing. To blacklist small countries because they have competitive tax regimes is, simply put, unfair. The industrialized world, which should be taking a hard look at its own problems closer to home, is trying to fob the problem off on the Pacific and other developing nations.
The difficulty that small islands have in battling clubs like OECD is that the playing field is far from level. The bigger countries have many weapons in their arsenal. One is the donor agencies, through which industrialized nations channel development aid and promote "reform" policies.
We think the secret is out. Despite all the rhetoric about free trade and market-based policies, the industrialized countries only like "competition" when they’re in control. Ditto for climate change: they are in charge, and see no reason to change course just because a few hundred million people are calling for it.
