Whispers
Whispers
Chirac’s summit: President Gaston Flosse was in Suva late in February for the delivery of water tanks and food contributed by French Polynesia to victims of a January hurricane.
He confirmed to Islands Business that the making-friends-and-influencing-people meeting with Jacques Chirac, islands prime ministers and prezzies are being invited to attend in Papeete will occur July 23-26, with first individual meetings between Chirac and his guests and then a "summit" with them. It appears that invitations have gone to 14 Pacific Islands Forum small islands countries but not to two other certain bigger ones.
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The July event will happen about a month before the 2003 Pacific Islands Forum meeting to be held this year in New Zealand at, it is whispered Auckland, in August, which will be a relief to victims of previous Forum meetings at Rotorua.
Was the July meeting do timed and organised just to annoy the Australians and Kiwis? Islands Business put it to Flosse. “Non, non, non!” was the predictable reply. “There is no hidden motive behind the visit of Chirac.”
The meeting is Chirac’s idea, according to Flosse, who is Chiirac’s great buddy and who has been angling to get him to the Pacific for years. Asked about France’s long term role in the Pacific, he told Islands Business: “The three French territories are like aircraft carriers for the presence of France in the Pacific, and for Europe too.”
Nauru’s political remedy? Adjustments to Nauru’s constitution are being floated as a partial remedy for its political problems. The role of president, who is now chief executive as well as head of state, would be split with the president having the job of resolving constitutional differences by being empowered to dissolve parliament and order elections.
In February, as this edition of Islands Business went to press, Nauru’s 18-member parliament remained unable to elect a Speaker and with the latest government unable to get a budget approved. If the deadlock continues, the life of parliament will automatically expire on April 8. But only a Speaker can issue writs for an election.
The government resorted to backdating cheques to 2002 to get its hands on cash for day-to-day administration. Telecommunications were disrupted in mid-February when a backup system failed.
There was alarm about the health of President Bernard Dowiyogo, who is diabetic, following an emergency surgery on February 9.
East/West air dilemma: What’s the Pacific’s contribution to international air travel development? Amazing! Ignoramus! The world’s first codeshare flight was operated by Air Pacific and Qantas in 1980. That bombshell of a morsel was dropped by Air Pacific’s chief executive John Campbell, in a talk about why it’s easy for travellers to fly north-south, or south-north in the Pacific, but a trifle harder to fly east-west or west-east. You’re not quite sure what a codeshare is? Well, every airline’s codesharing nowadays so as to keep in business. It’s when you board an aeroplane brandishing, say an American Airlines ticket and find the plane is run by, say, Air Iraq, and it’s not a hijack.
Palau coal pressure: Palau prides itself on being ever so pristine. This is why folks who know say they are appalled that Palau is crumbling to intense Chinese pressure to buy a coal-fired power station. Even the most advanced coal cooker, we are assured, will cloak Palau with coal dust fallout and cook up a morass of other horrible technical problems that will make Palauans wish they’d gone nuclear or, best of all, stuck with reliable old diesel chuggers.
Identity crisis: One of Oceania’s last colonies, American Samoa, has been plunged into an identity crisis. Its governor, Tauese Sunia says the United Nations decolonisation committee won’t take it off its list of 16 colonies until the Americans discuss the territory with it. The Americans won’t do that because they claim American Samoa to be an “integral part” of the United States. To talk to the United Nations would be to admit it was just a colony, Sunia says. The United States grabbed the eastern bit of Samoa in 1900 for its fine harbour in a deal with European colonial powers busy grabbing other bits of Pacific property. Americans don’t regard themselves as ever being colonialists, a point some of the last Hawaiians and Chamorros might contest.
Stiff expenses bill: Australian regional diplomats have been dealt another shattering defeat in their efforts to instill elements of accountability, etcetera, into the conduct of regional affairs. They had foolishly hoped to hound out the secret of a stiff expenses bill presented with great success by a senior regional bureaucrat. When they begged Pacific Islands colleagues for support in confronting the dastardly claimant over the matter, they got met with a cold wall of solidarity constructed in that, uh, you know, Pacific Way.
Bonus car: When is a F$150,000 car really no longer one? Ask the chap in Fiji who won what he was told was a F$150,000 Mercedes with a bonus ticket issued to customers as a Christmas sales promotion by a local retail chain. After advertising the dated model for F$150,000, the local Mercedes agents, dropped the price to under F$100,000. Still no taker, not until the retail store came to its rescue.
Pacific rivalry: Regional civil aviation co-operation is warming up in another instance of that Pacific Way. Running its new ATR 72 prop-jet between Tarawa and Fiji, Air Kiribati would like to pick up and set down passengers on the Tuvalu-Fiji leg of the trip.
Tuvalu won’t let it to protect the business of Air Fiji, which it partly owns and which operates several times a week to Tuvalu.
When Air Kiribati recently picked up six roving experts of some sort to fly them from Fiji to a job at Funafuti it was ordered, on arrival at Funafuti, to carry them to Tarawa. Which it did. And then flew them back to Fiji.
All in the name of science: Pacific Islanders respect their elders, right? Well, there is a different story going among academics looking at the problem of ciguatera or fish poisoning.
Dr Lora F. Fleming, Associate Professor of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Miami’s School of Medicine, recently published a paper in which she said there were people in the Pacific who conducted a “simple biopsy” on fish by feeding the suspect fish to pets or old people. Asked where this was actually occurring and for actual examples of ‘Granny Murder’, she backed out quickly, saying that she had “heard anecdotal stories from our colleagues in the South Pacific” about this, adding, “but I cannot think of a documented reference”. Nothing like libelling a whole race of people in the name of science.
Time’s up for Bonriki: Remember the imposing hole that appeared dramatically in the runway at Bonriki after the Chinese finished building it? An updater is that the runway had a 10-year design life and it’s now Year Nine. Kiribati has been warned that at the rate the runway is being smashed up by Boeing 737 jet and now even lighter ATR 72 landings it won’t make it to Year Ten. Something needs to be done fast.
Waiting to explode: Tonga was shattered to learn that it isn’t as stable as it maintains it is. Peering into the depths around Tonga, visiting scientists discovered that lurking offshore are a whole lot of previously unknown active volcanoes, all waiting to blow up, perhaps tomorrow, or next year, or in a thousand years, or whenever, although not necessarily all together.
New Thai visa requirement: Citizens of Pacific Islands countries since late December are now required to have visas to travel to Thailand, unlike in the past when one could obtain a visa on arrival.
Thailand is a common destination for Pacific Islanders with ESCAP and other meetings in Bangkok. It seems our governments—at least Fiji—have failed to inform either their citizens or travel agencies regarding the new visa requirement. A number of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Samoan citizens have apparently been stranded as a result. One Fiji citizen travelled from London to Bangkok and had to spend 26 uncomfortable hours (in dirty clothes) at the airport transit lounge before being deported.
