Cover Report
And...A New Party Is Born On Ambae
The focus: Stimulating growth in rural areas
After spotting Ambae from Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu's largest island, the novelist James Mitchener described it as resembling the imaginary island heaven of Bali Hai.
Ambae, still little unchanged from Mitchener's observation 60 years ago, is now the origin of a new political entity, the People's Action Party, (PAP).
- ADVERTISEMENT -
It intends to win some parliamentary seats in the 2006 elections.
 |
|
|
Most of Vanuatu's political parties are little more than one-man shows with little or no permanent structure behind them.
PAP has produced a constitution and manifesto having visible substance, while its leader, Harold Qualao, who runs Qualao Consulting Ltd, visibly has the credentials of a civil and highway engineer and, around Port Vila, has a well regarded professional and business reputation.
After 10 years with the public works department Qualao moved into politics in 1987-91 as a Vanua'aku Party (VP) parliamentarian.
His erratic, reshuffle-minded prime minister, Father Walter Lini, moved him from post to post as minister for energy, telecommunications, posts, tourism, civil aviation and lastly, education.
Qualao says despite the short time he had with each portfolio, he felt he has managed to secure some advances such as privatising the telecommunications service, taking shares for the government in Vanuatu's controversial French business controlled power and water utility and getting Air Vanuatu on track as a viable national airline.
After politics he went into his successful engineering business. Over the years since then, he's become disillusioned with Vanuatu's slow pace of growth and the attitudes of successive political leaders.
The trouble with government leaders, he says, is that they are tightly bound into Port Vila's bureaucracy and town life. He thinks they should spend far more time at, as he puts it, the "coal face", meaning being out there to stimulate growth in rural areas, where 80 percent of Vanuatu's people live.
"We have a little (party) base at Ambae and we have people expressing interest throughout the country and contacting us.
"We saw things that we did not like, so we started to talk about it last year. Most of us are Ambae people."
After 23 years of independence Vanuatu has hardly moved, he says.
"A lot of people are still living the way they were living before independence. And as far as I can see a lot of them are still living like that, and will live like that for the next decade.
"We are not taking development to the 80 percent of the population who live in rural areas, so the net result is that they are dragging everyone down.
"We have 20 percent of the population in Port Vila and Santo trying to carry the weight of 80 percent of the population."
Apart from the building of the 70-room Iririki Island resort in Port Vila Harbour, he says, the country's one and only boom, ignited when the former colonial government established Port Vila as a tax haven 30 years ago, hasn't been replicated.
"We need something like that to happen, but it is not going to happen today.
"As far as tourism goes, we need to get our people involved further down the line so that everyone is doing something to make it happen.
"If you get each one to produce US$250 a year or $500 or $1000, that would make a difference.
"If you create investment only in Port Vila and Santo, people from the rural areas will rush to Port Vila and Santo."
The core of PAP's thinking, he says, is to concentrate on outer islands development "so they stay where they are and not come here.
"It is a country of only 200,000 people and if you can't provide for that, then you really have a problem.
"Vanuatu is 80 little islands and our geography is not one that can be exploited like Fiji or Singapore.
"What we have to do is build our own people from within and not expect help from outside, because to outsiders it is not really attractive."
Qualao says government cupboards are full of unimplemented plans.
"We have a lot of good ideas but we need to follow through. All the government does is put tax up and eventually you will kill everything.
"We are not marketing what we are; we are marketing what we think we are.
"There is too much emphasis on administration and not enough at the coal face."
