Politics
No End In Sight For Problems In Hapi Isles
Bankruptcy, Assassination and Airport Closure
Early in August when police used razor wires to cordon off the offices of the Prime Minister and Treasury in downtown Honiara as a no-go zone, a resident complained to the local Solomon Star newspaper that it looked like a 'little Beirut'.
The comparison may be exaggerated somewhat, but for this resident and increasingly many others, the similarities between what this South Pacific island capital is going through and what its Middle Eastern counterpart experienced some years ago are simply too tempting to ignore. Both capitals are victims of civil wars, which took a heavy toll on their people and economies.
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For the Solomon Islands, the signs of a bankrupt economy are all there for everyone to see. The government seems incapable of generating revenue, let alone collecting existing revenue. It is bogged down by overspending. As this edition went to press, the country's only international airport, Henderson, in Honiara was closed indefinitely for non-payment of the airport's insurance cover. Both international and domestic flights were consequently grounded.
The closure comes amidst threats by civil servants working in the airport's immigration, customs and civil aviation divisions to go on strike for non-payment of salaries.
Teachers around the country are staying out of classes for similar reasons as well as government office workers.
Doctors and nurses are also complaining of non-payment of salaries and have scaled down services in hospitals and medical centres.
As if that was not enough, the country was jolted with news of the assassination of a cabinet minister on August 20. Father Augustine Quve, a Roman Catholic priest who left the pulpit for a stint in parliament, was said to have been gunned down when visiting his South Guadalcanal constituency. He was Sir Allan Kemakeza's Minister for Youth, Sports and Women Development.
Speaking on national radio ‹ Solomon Islands Broadcasting Commission (SIBC) ‹ Guadalcanal militant Harold Keke claimed responsibility for Quve's death. "The man has misused funds meant for the constituency and he has been dishonest with the people," Keke told SIBC.
Keke's power base, the Weathercoast, is part of the South Guadalcanal constituency. The killing is the second attributed to Keke this year. In June, 10 men from Malaita were massacred in the area where they had reportedly gone on a mission to arrest the rebel leader.
Politicians believe police bungled up its investigations of the June massacre and Kemakeza is still to deliver on his promise to institute a commission of inquiry into the killings.
The prime minister has, however, acted on one front. In Suva last month for the annual Pacific Islands Forum leaders' summit, he and his deputy, Synder Rini announced they would recruit a new police commissioner from Britain.
"I think we need people from the outside to come and oversee the maintenance of our law and order," Rini told reporters in Suva.
"They will be impartial because they do not support any group in the conflict."
Opposition party members are likely to applaud the move. They believe an efficient and independent police force is crucial for any economic recovery to take place.
Faced with depleted foreign reserves, mounting debt and a forever sliding Solomon Islands dollar, Kemakeza and his government are desperately seeking solutions.
An option is the adoption of the Australian dollar as the national currency and the matter was discussed with a visiting team from the International Monetary Fund last month, details of which could not be obtained by Islands Business.
Economists like the University of the South Pacific's T.K. Jayaraman, however, warn the country stands to lose more than it would gain from the move.
In its recent report on the Solomon Islands, the Pacific Islands Forum's Eminent Persons Group spoke of the government's admission that its finances were at crisis point. National debt level was last quoted at S$2 billion (US$260 million).
It ballooned when the previous government of Manasseh Sogavare took out an EXIM Bank loan of US$25 million and used the bulk of it, some US$15 million,ß as compensation payments for those who claimed they lost properties during the ethnic crisis.
Overwhelmed by the compensation claims, not to mention the physical threats suffered by Treasury workers, government moved to fence off their premises. With more spending, inflation shot up. From the single digit inflation rate of 8 percent in the mid-1980s, price levels rose to 10 percent in 2001. It is expected to hover around 12 percent this year.
The effects of the June 2000 coup gave the economy a negative growth of 14 percent that year, which widened to a negative 25 percent last year.
Government deficit, the Forum's Eminent Persons Group's report says, was around 8 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2001, and government exceeded its statutory limit on borrowing from the Central Bank in 2001, reaching 115 percent of GDP in December.
Government's weekly spending of between S$1million (US$130,000) to S$2million (US$260,000) is "unsustainable and needs to be controlled," the report points out.
Opposition leader Patterson Oti took a step further. The country's export sector has collapsed, he said. "It is plain and clear that the Kemakeza Government has no, if not, little ideas on what to do."
One of Kemakeza's predecessors and currently Premier of Guadalcanal, Ezekiel Alebua, was more frank in his assessment of the country's ills. "Our leaders are weak and afraid," Alebua says. "We all talk too much and do nothing."
The Eminent Persons Group's report, of course, cannot be as forthright and direct as Alebua.
The closest it came to this, however, was when it conveyed the feelings of some people in Honiara who felt that the 2001 election did not produce what the country urgently needed, a decisive and strong leadership to steer the Solomon Islands out of its current economic and political malaise.
