Upfront
Requiem For Nauru
Hope in Palau and a Chastened Chuuk
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As if Nauru needed any more bad news, its president, Bernard Dowiyogo died while in Washington, D.C. last month. He had just wrested the presidency from Rene Harris after a long Parliamentary stand-off in which no one was sure who was in charge of the collapsing country for almost a month. Dowiyogo, who was diabetic, died at age 57. Sadly, this is not an unusual end for Nauruans these days as the “diseases of modernization” take their relentless toll.
The U.S. government agreed to fly Dowiyogo’s body back to Nauru for burial, since it is unlikely the country could have afforded the effort itself. Nauru, with finances and reputation ruined by off-shore money laundering and passport scams, has squandered its once-considerable wealth on bad investments that have siphoned off the country’s treasury. These days, all this has serious security implications, at least for the threat-obsessed Bush administration, which worries that terrorists might have used Nauru’s compromised sovereignty to route dirty money and sinister human operatives around the world.
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In another part of the Pacific, former Federated States of Micronesia president John Haglelgam speaks out on page 32 about another failed state, Chuuk, one of the four states that make up the FSM. Haglelgam knows of what he speaks, and he speaks with more honesty than many outsiders. He expressed the frustration of many other Micronesian leaders who we have heard (off the record) complain that the irresponsibility and neglect of Chuukese leaders has damaged all of FSM’s reputation and, in some senses, impaired the Compact II negotiations with the U.S. this year.
Continuing the disheartening news, our Notes section has a piece from our Guam correspondent detailing the harsh realities of a governmental and private-sector financial meltdown there. And a small item in our Business Briefs section confirms the deep worry Bank of Hawaii has about its Guam loan portfolio.
Our special country section in this issue looks at the unfolding history of one of the most interesting and successful countries in the region, Palau. With a bright and youngish president, Palau is making strides in the ever-difficult task of balancing the need for economic development with the imperatives to preserve Palauan’s unique culture and environment.
We also take a look again at environmental issues this month. The transition piece between the Palau section and environment is about a group of young adults in Palau who have taken their own initiative to preserve their country from environmental damage and to protect the rare dugong from extinction. Also, we look at how Japanese aid expertise has helped Samoa to reconfigure its solid waste landfill into a low-tech, yet state-of-the-art facility.
Finally, if the political news is depressing, at least the region always has wonderful personality and arts news that saves the day. Check out our story about Hawaii and Pacific school kids’ art exchange on page 33. It is the words of Charles Dickens that keep coming to mind as I look at this month’s snapshot of the Pacific’s history. “It was the best of times and the worst of times.”
Scott Whitney can be reached at: scottw@pacificbasin.net
