Whispers
Whispers
- Kemakeza’s SOS call to the UN
- Cold reception in the US
- Flosse’s declaring war
- So what’s going on in Suva?
Kemakeza’s SOS call: The Blue Berets…peacekeepers from the United Nations may be landing soon in another Pacific island nation. Solomon Islands’ besieged Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza has sent a formal note to the United Nations headquarters in New York, pleading with the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to send a force to his troubled nation.
The note is a follow-up to a verbal invitation he extended to the world body when he addressed the United General Assembly last year. Kemakeza believes an independent and highly professional force is the answer to keep his police force in check. Some members of the police force have become a force of their own, using high-powered arms to extort money from Honiara residents. Even Kemakeza and his former finance minister Laurie Chan had been threatened by these wayward extortionists.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
King’s antics: Papua New Guinea’s tourism industry, daily combating international doubts about the complete desirability of holidaying in the country aroused in part by the antics of so many of its politicians, is assessing the value of an expenditure of 6207 Kina of the Tourism Promotion Authority’s budget by culture and tourism minister Alois King.
He and his mates, males and females, left the bill, as a charge to the Tourism Promotion Authority, after a party at a Port Moresby Hotel that caused other guests to complain and the resignation of one of the hotel’s staff, who said she’d been threatened by one Alois King. The police said they were checking out another complaint from a person who said King had threatened him at a rugby club.
Cold reception in the US: Pacific Islands leaders are likely to receive a dishearteningly cold reception at the United States State Department in Washington, is the whisper from a veteran American specialist in Pacific Island affairs. He says nowadays they are told very bluntly that since the islands are of no consequence to the United States national interests they have zilch, or thereabouts, priority in the priority list of United States foreign affairs. Except of course for clinging to their Kwajalein weapon testing range. The Americans count on such obedient allies as the Australians, and less obedient friends as the New Zealanders, for keeping the region in order. This is no great revelation, just confirmation of what’s been clear for some time. Increasingly, the word is, Pacific Islanders feel that their only point of serious communications with the United States is through the Pacific Islands Development Programme office at the East-West Centre in Hawaii.
Nauru signs up again? Australia’s Pacific Solution won’t be history for some time yet. Don’t be surprised if Nauru signs up to be re-stocked with another heap of wandering Asians unwanted by Canberra—perhaps as many as a thousand more. Naturally, the Nauruans will want more money for their hosting service. What they’ve been collecting for entertaining the present dwindling crowd is just about all that keeps Nauru financially afloat.
Cooks getting careless: Now that the horrors of the 1990s economic burnout is fading in the Cook Islands, they’re getting careless there again. The Cook Islands Audit Office reports “irregularities” in the affairs of the Prime Minister’s office where, it says, there have been “unusual management practices” and “factors conducive to collusion and conflict of interest” in the performance of the chief of staff, Eddie Drollet.
As a director of the Cook Islands Investment Corporation, it says, Drollet was involved in okaying the lease of the ex-CIANGO building to IEL, a private company owned by one Eddie Drollet, with no public tender procedures carried out. Cook Islands Investment Corporation board minutes show the chief of staff was part of the decision-making process and was aware of the lease and with the building being fixed up with government labour approved by Drollet.
Deploring ATR move: French Polynesia’s opposition politicians are deploring the territorial government’s decision to equip itself with a US$17-million ATR-42 aeroplane. The government says the plane isn’t for status but for swanning around. Due for delivery in May, it will save money, the government explains, by replacing aeroplanes hired for swanning around and looking for people lost, stolen or astray in remote places.
Fiji’s paying the price: It seems Fiji is paying the price for not backing one of its own. With former Fiji military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini now out of the Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) in the United Nations, Fiji has lost a crucial and well respected lobbyist.
As a result, observers say the country has missed out on key appointments in the world body. Biggest casualty could be none other than Tarakinikini’s former commander, now acting Rear Admiral Frank Bainimarama, the man who advised the Fiji Government not to sanction United Nations requests to extend Tarakinikini’s appointment as a DPKO senior adviser.
Bainimarama had wanted to be UN Force commander in Kuwait. His interview for the position in New York late last month almost triggered a diplomatic row between his government and the world body.
Bainimarama was almost late for his interview, prompting the Fiji mission to complain that there seemed to be a conspiracy against its applicant. Fiji’s protest note was quietly withdrawn following clarifications from the DPKO office.
Meanwhile, there is mounting rivalry over the choice of Bainimarama’s replacement when he leaves the army as he is expected to do sometime this year.
Culture to the rescue: Pacific Islanders are ever more likely to resort to their culture for rescue, or for a handy excuse, when tripped by things Western, like law. In Port Vila, the government is still seething over a unilateral decision by President John Bani, a priest, to free former prime minister Barak Sope from jail after only three months of a three-year jail sentence for fraud perpetrated while in office as prime minister. The Port Vila-published Trading Post reported that Bani came under pressure for the release from tribal chiefs who complained that Sope was a victim of “Western” laws out of tune with “traditional and custom values”.
The government plans to amend Vanuatu’s constitution to restrict the scope of presidential discretion to grant pardons. It wasn’t just custom that brought Sope’s early release, a prominent ni-Vanuatu businessman relates. It seems Bani and Sope are long-time mates.
More aeroplane news: Air Nauru is scratching around for a cheaper replacement for the hired jet it uses now. And from March Air Pacific hopes to be flying a couple of 400 series Boeing 747 jumbos it’s hiring from Singapore Airlines, although sadly without those Singapore girls.
Women power: Still in the Cook Islands, women have taken a giant step forward with the renaming of the women’s division of the government as the “Division of Gender Development.” The division’s director, Nga Teao explained to the Cook Islands News that the change meant that women would be working with men, although it was true to say that a lot of women felt they could do a lot better without men.
On the move: Interesting what civil servants are up to when they’re overseas attending meetings. One top civil servant from Niue who was in Fiji attending a meeting funded by an international organisation was sighted in one of the local hotels early in the morning walking around full cut with his shirt hanging out. Reports from the hotel said the senior civil servant had been up all night partying.
Flosse’s declaring war: Drive and drink in French Polynesia at your own peril from now on. Right at the top of French Polynesia’s government priorities this year is a war on drunk driving and reckless driving. Declaring war, President Gaston Flosse lamented in addressing the territorial assembly: “We have twice as many fatal accidents as France. We are among the most fatal countries in the world.”
The 291 people killed on the territory’s roads in the past five years was “unbearable and, by the way, incurred annual costs of 2500 million Pacific Francs (about US$97.76 million) a year.” The causes are known: speed, alcohol, drugs, non-respect of the highway code, risky behaviour out of mindlessness or challenge.
“Young people drive without insurance and licence. Cyclists and motorcyclists zigzag between car lines during peak hours and at night without lights, helmets and sometimes against the current of traffic,” Flosse said.
French Polynesia’s road deaths have ranged from a high of 63 in 1997 to 50 in 2000. That’s about the same score as Fiji, but then Fiji has nearly four times more people.
So what’s going on in Suva? One of Suva’s long-time visitors recalls with nostalgia the simplicity of life as it was once accommodated in the old Garrick, Metropole, Melbourne and GPH hotels and recoils from the style and cost of some of the entertainment now on offer. He reports that he was led in all innocence to the interior of one downtown establishment, where he was expected to pay F$600 for a bottle of whisky and no less than F$2000 for a room outfitted with an imported strumpet. Proprietors of Suva’s more respectable dives report the flourishing of new competition for them. Well, not quite head-on competition perhaps, since some of the proprietors operate what could be described as ethnically exclusive standards geared to servicing certain elements of the fishing boat trade.
No to poker machines: Juan Babauta, the new governor of the Northern Marianas, has a dim view of the desirability of the 1302 licenced poker machines, up from just 259 in 1998.
He feels they have a “devastating impact” on the lives of local families and “ripping the hearts of the people. It is time for us as a community to pull together and say no to this industry—no more, enough is enough,” he declared. “I would like to phase out the poker machines and the industry in totality.”
The boss of one of the biggest pokie operators sniffed: “I only wish the governor would have been truthful about his real agenda during the election campaign. Had he disclosed it, maybe the outcome of the election would have been different.”
