Pacific Notes
Pacific Notes
NAURU
Nauru President Dies in D.C.
 |
|
|
|
In March, Nauru’s president Bernard Dowiyogo died in an American hospital in Washington D.C. after undergoing emergency heart surgery. The 57-year-old president collapsed while on a trip to the American capital. His mission had been to plead with the Bush administration for Nauru to be removed from the international money-laundering blacklist.
The late president, who had held the office a total of six times since the 1970s, had a turbulent time as leader of the virtually bankrupt central Pacific nation. He had ousted former president Rene Harris in January in a tense leadership struggle, only two months before his death. As well as the continuing domestic political battles and money problems, Nauru is facing intense pressure internationally over its offshore banking and alleged money-laundering schemes.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Dowiyogo had signed executive orders to not renew offshore banking licences or issue further “investor passports.” The Bush Administration is miffed over possible terrorist links to Nauru’s existing tax schemes and money laundering by organized crime. The U.S. fears terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda could use Nauru to launder funds. The U.S. threatened to impose tough financial sanctions and repossess Air Nauru’s only aircraft.
The Sydney Morning Herald said a Nauru delegation was earlier warned of retaliatory measures over its existing schemes when it appeared before a congressional committee in Washington. Secretary of State Colin Powell also wrote to President Dowiyogo raising concerns about terrorism in relation to the country’s off-shore banks and passport operations. Nauru, once wealthy from phosphate mining, is these days on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of years of mismanagement, waste and corruption. The increased U.S. concern follows confirmation that two men with so-called Nauru investor passports were members of a group the Americans list as a terrorist organization.
The Herald said thousands of passports have been provided to foreign clients over the past six years at an average cost of US$20,000 each. In the last year, large numbers of Nauru residency documents have also been sold in efforts to raise cash. Russian organized crime figures have been major customers of Nauru’s existing off-shore banking operations, allegedly laundering tens of billions of dollars. They utilize some of the 400 registered banks which only have post office boxes on the island.
President Dowiyogo’s executive order provided for the establishment of a taskforce on money laundering and the sharing of information with othe countries and intelligence organizations. It pledged to “fully investigate and commence legal actions arising from any illegal activities that have previously occurred involving the Republic of Nauru Banks, Corporations and Passports.”
What will happen to the reform initiative now is anyone’s guess.
—PINA Nius and Radio Australia
Tito Tempts Tong
After two months of vigorous campaigning, Kiribati’s President Tebururo Tito has been returned to office for a third term, the maximum permitted under the constitution. Tito received 14,160 votes in a three way contest, with his strongest rival candidate, Taberannang Timeon, a former cabinet secretary, only 547 votes behind. Bakeua Bakeua Tekita, the third contestant, received 348 votes. However, the president of Kiribati does not necessarily control the largest political party. At present, following general elections last December, a parliamentary majority is held by the opposition BTK party, with 27 MPs, compared with the ruling party’s 15. But one of the staunch opposition leaders, Dr. Harry Tong, has already crossed to Tito’s side, accepting a cabinet post as minister of health. Whether Tito has the numbers to get a budget passed will become known after the new session of parliament begins on March 24.
—Norman Douglas and Giff Johnson
Peace Activist’s Killer Jailed
A 35-year-old police sergeant has been taken into custody and accused of the Feb. 10 murder of Solomon Islands peace activist Sir Frederick Soaki. Soaki had gone to the Malaitan capital of Auki to continue meetings in an effort to bring peace to the strife-torn province. He was dining with friends when he was gunned down.
In an interview with Radio Australia, Superintendent of Police Jackson Ofu confirmed that the suspect was in custody and added that his department’s investigations had also identified two possible accomplices who are now on the run. The names of the suspects were withheld pending formal charging. Ofu said the man they had in custody was not talking and, because of this, investigators still have no firm conclusions about motivation. The policeman in custody is said to have been the one who pulled the trigger, the two on the lam, who are civilians, are considered accomplices. At press time, investigators from Honiara were still in Auki working on the case.
—Radio Australia
GovGuam’s Financial Meltdown
When Guam Governor Felix Camacho took office on Jan. 6, he and the newly-seated 27th Guam Legislature inherited a government financial crisis. The uncertainty of even paying employees was illustrated six weeks into the new administration when, following the Feb. 14 payday, the front page headline of the Pacific Daily News announced that the government had found the cash to issue paychecks to Department of Education workers.
The economic decline in Guam and decrease in government revenues are the result of military downsizing during the 1990s and the drop-off in tourism resulting from the prolonged Asian economic crisis, typhoons Paka, Chataan and Pongsona and the 1997 Korean Air Line crash. From fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2002 alone, money paid into the Government’s general fund declined 24.4 percent, private sector employment dropped 7 percent and visitor arrivals dove 21 percent. Former Governor Carl Gutierrez warned of the crisis in Feb. 2002 when he proposed a 10 percent pay cut for all government employees, an increase in the island’s gross receipts tax and an increase in government fees. But distrust between the former governor and the previous legislature as well as political indecision prevented the problem from being addressed in any meaningful way.
With immediate action necessitated by the shortage of cash on hand, Camacho outlined his financial plans on Feb. 10 that included government layoffs, pay cuts and tax hikes. On Feb. 19, Lieutenant Governor Kaleo Moylan announced that a 20 percent reduction in the work hours, and pay, of 4,600 of the government’s 12,600 workers would begin the following week.
Meanwhile, the legislature met for long hours to formulate and pass a budget bill to cover the last seven months of fiscal year 2003. That bill had to be passed and signed into law by the governor by the end of February to avert a government shutdown.
The new law was signed by Camacho on Feb. 28 at 10:25 p.m. It contained both revenue-generating and cost-cutting measures and still was expected to result in a deficit of $100 million, said Camacho. All the Republican senators and Democrat Senator Rory Respicio voted against the bill which passed by one vote.
The measures in the bill attracting the most attention were an increase in the gross receipts tax from 4 percent to 6 percent and a 10 percent reduction in payroll appropriations. Also included were provisions to cut back retirement benefits for government retirees, reduction in employees’ leave accumulation, a mandate to privatize some government operations specifically school maintenance and cafeteria service, increases in taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and an increase in vehicle registration fees. All cuts and fee increases received criticism from some quarters. The loudest protests came from the business sector over the effect of the gross receipts tax increase on businesses already stressed in a troubled economy. Government employees, particularly Department of Education cafeteria workers and maintenance personnel objected to possible privatization of their jobs.
Meanwhile, the governor said in a Mar. 5 address that he had signed the budget law to avoid a government shutdown, though he did not have the time to review it as he would have liked. He expressed concern that the law is not a balanced budget. He also said he will appoint a panel to study Guam taxes and plans to eliminate the gross receipts tax in favor of a sales tax. The next step of the governor’s plan is to borrow $120 million. “Without an additional, immediate cash infusion, we will not be able to avoid compromising the critical services of health, safety and education,” he said.
Republican Senator Jesse Lujan announced plans to introduce legislation to roll back the gross receipts tax increase. A Democrat, Senator Frank Aguon unveiled a plan to require private companies taking over government work give former employees “the right of first refusal.”
News surfaces daily about agencies coping with the budget shortfall. Layoffs are scheduled to begin at Guam Memorial Hospital. In the school system, qualified central office personnel were transferred into classrooms and Nerissa Bretania-Shafer, the interim superintendent, volunteered to cut her own salary by half. The water, power and phone agencies are owed millions by other government agencies and have threatened to cut service. Health insurance companies say they will discontinue employee coverage if they are not paid.
In other bad news for the Guam economy, millions of dollars in federal relief aid may be lost since some damaged government facilities were not insured. FEMA had told the government to insure the buildings after Typhoon Paka in 1997. Asiana airlines confirmed on March 7 that it would discontinue service to Guam from Korea. The federal Office of Management and Budget disapproved the Pentagon’s request for $337 million in construction projects to repair typhoon damage and increase typhoon protection at Guam bases.
—Frank Whitman
Serious Sex Charges Brought Against Pitcairn Islanders
A number of male Pitcairn Islanders are expected to be charged in early April with the sexual assault of young women on the remote island. Allegations, the first of which were made in 1999, are said to include the sexual abuse of a girl aged seven. The charges will be laid by public prosecutor for New Zealand and Pitcairn, Simon Moore, following lengthy police investigations. Accompanying Moore to the Island will be Paul Dacre, Auckland-based lawyer and public defender for Pitcairn. Some male Pitcairners living in New Zealand may also be charged, although the prosecutor would not specify the numbers or exact nature of the charges. Pitcairn Island, one of the few remaining British territories, is administered from New Zealand. A Pitcairn-born resident of Auckland described the allegations as a “stigma” on the entire Pitcairn community and “quite devastating for all of us”.
A spokesman for the NZ-based Governor of Pitcairn said that the exact venue and date for the trial had not yet been set. In late 2003 legislation was passed to allow the trial(s) to take place in New Zealand. Responding to complaints concerning possible further delays of the trials, public prosecutor Moore said that he was proceeding as quickly as he could, but did not want to visit Pitcairn before April, as the cruise ship season was at its peak until then, and souvenirs sold to tourists by the Islanders were an essential source of income. The current population of Pitcairn, some 5,000 km (3,106 miles) east of New Zealand is a little over 40. The Islanders are traditionally Seventh Day Adventists.
—Norman Douglas
“Biggest Human Trafficking Conviction”
Owner of Daewoosa Samoa, Kil Soo Lee was found guilty on Feb. 14 of 18 counts for the enslaving of more than 200 Vietnamese and Chinese workers at his now-closed garment factory in American Samoa. A Honolulu federal jury also found Lee not guilty on four charges including bribery.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft described it as the largest human trafficking case every investigated and prosecuted by the federal government. Lee’s two co-defendants, Virginia Soliai and Robert Atimalala were acquitted of all charges against them. Lee will be sentenced on July 21 and his attorney plans to appeal the verdict thereafter.
Lee’s attorney, assistant federal public defender Alexander Silvert, says he is disappointed with the verdict, but he respects the jury system. Silvert said each count can bring 20 years in jail, but under federal sentencing guidelines, Lee is looking at 15 to 20 years in jail. There is no probation in the federal system.
Lee is the third person convicted in this case. Former Daewoosa workers Nuuuli Ioane and Sialavaa Fagaima pled guilty to federal charges in August 2001. The two will be sentenced on June 30.
Ashcroft said in a Department of Justice press release that “human trafficking is more than just a serious violation of the law; it is an affront to human dignity.” He added that the Justice Department is committed to protecting the victims of trafficking and to bringing to justice all those who violate the civil rights of their victims.
The guilty verdict, says Ashcroft, “is a victory in the largest human trafficking case ever investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the Department of Justice. The defendants in this case exploited over 200 Vietnamese and Chinese workers in what amounted to nothing less than modern day slavery. We are pleased with the jury’s verdict and we thank them for their careful deliberation in this case.”
“Justice has been done!” declared Congressman Faleomavaega Eni. “According to the findings of the court as such, this man deserves to go to jail. The Daewoosa case, has also shown our people and leaders issues that we now realize are the kind of things, we do not want to be involved with,” he says. “Hopefully this is a good lesson for us, not to repeat a situation, where foreign investors and businesses are brought into the territory, without thoroughly checking out their background.”
The Daewoosa fiasco has already forced the Tauese Administration to be more vigilant when granting approval to garment companies that want to do business in the territory, especially companies with foreign investors.
—Fili Sagapolutele
Owners Slam $2.3 B 63-Year Kwaj Deal
Powerful traditional leaders from Kwajalein Atoll are giving an emphatic thumbs down to a proposed $2.3 billion, 63-year extension of United States use of the Kwajalein missile testing range. While the United States and Marshall Islands governments have reached basic agreement on a new deal that would allow U.S. missile testing to continue through 2066, the backing of the landowners is an essential missing element that can derail the pact.
 |
|
|
The ink was barely dry on the agreement initialed by Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Gerald Zackios and U.S. chief negotiator Albert Short in late January before the Kwajalein Negotiation Commission—a landowners’ group that is headed by the main traditional and elected leaders from Kwajalein—rejected the terms of the proposed pact as unacceptable. Kwajalein leaders complain that they were excluded from the final round of discussions that led to the initialing of the new agreement, a contention government negotiator Robert Muller denies.
In response to government leaders’ efforts to sell the new pact at home, Senator Imata Kabua—a former President and the ranking traditional chief at Kwajalein—weighed in with an unequivocal statement opposing not only the proposed Kwajalein extension but also the terms of a new Compact of Free Association that is expected to go into effect October 1.
“I do not support the draft Compact and its poorly negotiated sub-agreements,” Kabua said in a statement published in the Marshall Islands Journal. “The (Kwajalein agreement) signed by the Marshall Islands and the USA in Honolulu has made a joke of the Marshall Islands, its negotiators, and the negotiation process. The entire country, I believe, will suffer from this so-called ‘new deal’ with the United States, and, as a responsible Iroij (chief), I cannot in good conscience support it.”
The Kwajalein Negotiation Commission is seeking $19.1 million in annual rental payments, plus U.S. funding for a trust fund for future generations if the U.S. ends its military use of Kwajalein. Currently, landowners are receiving $11.3 million annually in rent, which is adjusted for two-thirds of the value of inflation, and $1.9 million for development projects on Ebeye, funds that have not been inflation-adjusted since the first Compact started in 1986. The agreement signed in January would hike the annual rent payments to $15 million annually beginning October 1, and then in 2014 increase that to $18 million per year. In addition, the U.S. is proposing to increase the $1.9 million development funding to about $5 million annually and adjust it for inflation. The proposed agreement also provides that if the U.S. terminates the agreement before 2066, it would have to pay a one-time departure fee equal from one-to-three times the annual rental in effect at the time of termination, depending on in what year the termination occurs.
Kwajalein Negotiation Commission chairman Senator Christopher Loeak says that landowners have been forced to make repeated concessions and for the past 17 years have suffered with inadequate rental payments. Until the Compact and Kwajalein extension deal is formally approved by both governments, “there is still room to attempt to accomplish the only mandate it has from the landowners and people of Kwajalein—$19.1 million for land payments and a workable trust fund to take care of later generations if and when the United States opts to leave Kwajalein,” says Kwajalein Negotiation Commission secretary Senator Justin deBrum.
U.S. use of the missile range—officially known as the Reagan Test Site—is assured through 2016 under the current agreement with the Marshall Islands and “land use agreements” with individual landowners that were signed in the mid-1980s. For any new deal to work, landowners will have to approve new LUAs for the extension to 2066. Without this, government officials acknowledge, the new Kwajalein pact cannot be implemented.
—Giff Johnson
Veterans Falcam and Fritz Lose in Dogfight Election Campaigns
The top jobs in the Federated States of Micronesia will change hands, following the Mar. 4 election defeat of President Leo Falcam, of Pohnpei, and FSM Congress Speaker Jack Fritz, of Chuuk. Vice President Redley Killion knocked off Fritz in a dogfight for Chuuk’s one four-year seat, 14,525 votes to 13,252, and could well have the inside track for the presidency.
 |
|
|
Falcam came in last in a three-way race, with his archrival, incumbent Senator Resio Moses winning Pohnpei’s four-year seat. Moses beat Falcam in a race for Pohnpei State governor in 1983 and then Falcam turned the tables in 1994, defeating Moses for Pohnpei’s four-year FSM Congress seat. In the early March national election, Falcam was even outpolled by a political unknown, Mohner Esiel, who was labor and immigration chief for the FSM during Falcam’s tenure as president.
In the FSM’s system, only winners of the four-year seats—there is just one for each of the four states—can ascend to the two top executive branch posts. With Pohnpei Senator Peter Christian, a 24-year Congress veteran who easily won re-election, poised to take over as speaker of the FSM Congress, Killion appears headed for the presidency.
Although it was no secret that Falcam, before his election defeat, wanted a second term as president, word around Palikir for the past year is that it’s Chuuk’s turn for the presidency. An unwritten agreement has seen the presidency rotated among the states, and with first President Tosiwo Nakayama the last Chuukese to hold the post, from 1979 to 1987, Chuuk would seem overdue for the nod.
 |
|
|
Killion, who spent the last term as vice president, and Joseph Urusemal of Yap, the floor leader of the Congress and a 16-year incumbent, would appear the prime candidates for the top jobs. Pohnpei’s Moses, of course, has a resume that fits the job: a district administrator during the Trust Territory, a member of the old Congress of Micronesia, a two-term governor of Pohnpei, secretary of Foreign Affairs, ambassador to the United Nations and six-year incumbent in the Congress. But he, and Kosrae’s four-year newcomer Alik Alik—who defeated former president Jacob Nena—are not expected to have the inside track to the top post. Alik has been the FSM ambassador to Japan and other countries.
If Killion gets one of the two top positions, expect to see Fritz return to the Congress in a special election later this year. For the record, other winners include: Chuuk’s incumbents Henry Asugar and Roosevelt Kansou, and newcomers Sabino Asor, Twitier Aritos and Moses Nelson; Pohnpei’s incumbents Halbert Dohsis and Dion G. Neth; Kosrae’s incumbent Vice Speaker Claud Phillip and Yap’s incumbent Isaac Figir.
—Giff Johnson
