Whispers
Whispers
Not all that glitters is gold: Casual visitors to the Solomons will find little of local origin on offer, apart from the exceptional fine carvings and some other handicrafts. An exception is gold. On the first morning of your arrival, don't be surprised by a telephone call to your hotel from someone offering to sell gold washed from the Gold Ridge deposit in central Guadalcanal. Be wary, it could be foolish to take up the offer. The sale of brass filings has been lifted to a fine art by some Solomon Islanders, whose victims, a well-informed Honiara resident says, include a government cabinet minister who invested S$70,000 in a small pot of the stuff. He was too embarrassed, later, to consider filing for some legal counteraction after discovering how he'd been had.
Vanuatu's eels for export: How many Pacific islanders are unaware of a certain slippery resource? In Vanuatu, an entrepreneur had latched on to the fact that Efate's rivers are full of eels for which landowners are happy to accept $1.50 per eel for on-shipment to Singapore or Hong Kong live, where they fetch $35 a kilo. He has a market for 1000 kilos a month with inquiries from other anxious importers flooding in. Most of Vanuatu's 80 other islands are surely similarly endowed, as are those perhaps of the Solomons, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.
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Keke's reign of terror: How widespread is Harold Keke's reign of terror? By mid-May the former Solomon Islands police motor mechanic was rumoured to have murdered at least 50 people on the wild, windy and wet Weathercoast of Guadalcanal, his home district and a base where he established himself as a district commander of Guadalcanalese engaged for two years in a small but nasty war against settlers from neighbouring Malaita island. One confirmed victim was a churchman/government cabinet minister who ventured bravely into Keke's parish hoping to talk him into surrender. Solomon Islands police are engaged nervously in trying to bring him to account. Andrew Te'e, another Guadalcanal commander, insists that Keke's score is far lower than 50; less than half of that probably, and that his influence, however frightful, is restricted to only a small area beyond his village. His following is reportedly dwindling, either because he's killed off some of it, while others have escaped his "bouts of insanity". He was a "nice chap," one of his nieces told Islands Business. "But under pressure he'd fly off the handle." A veteran Solomon Islands journalist has no doubt about Keke's fate: "He'll kill himself."
"Meet you at Harry's": Now you may so meet in the air conditioned Harry Bauer's Lounge opened in the departures hall at Vanuatu's Bauer Field Airport. You can down a beer, or wine and finger food while waiting for a flight and in due course watch BBC or CNN news and access the Internet. Mind you, casual access will cost 2000 Vatu (US$16.50). Frequent fliers can fork out 15,000 vatu (US$123) annual membership, including "some purchasing privileges". Bauer Field's Harry was an American fighter pilot who won himself a medal by flying from the airport 60 years ago to attack the Japanese in the Solomon Islands and, one day, did not return.
Chinese only brothel: Fiji police now admit what plaintive locals have known for ages. Added to the list of more than 40 busy local Suva brothels is an exclusive "Chinese only" line of establishment outfitted with folks flown in from China on four-month visitor permits available on arrival in Fiji and catering mainly for the crew of more than 200 Asian fishing boats operating out of Suva port, not to mention the burgeoning assembly of Chinese mainland business folks now also established in town. It's said that the sex workers (once called prostitutes) are met on arrival at Nadi Airport by "handlers" who charge them a US$4000 "handling fee". There's rumour of organised crime connections, Chinese connections that is. The police are said to be trying to end the trade; trouble is that some policemen are thought to be compromised by association with it. Apart from offending work permit laws, not to mention those covering brothel keeping, the trade surely breaches the Fiji constitution, which happens to ban racial discrimination. Mind you, the rates charged by this exclusive new service industry are rather high, by local standards.
Cash upfront for Royal Tongan: Intelligence from Auckland is that Royal Tongan's expensive but lightly loaded leased Boeing 757 jet is nowadays being asked for cash upfront by fuel suppliers. Other intelligence is that the airline's owners, a certain government, is prepared to sell national assets like fishing rights to keep the jet flying.
An island date with Chirac: The South Pacific's social event of the year, if not the century, is set for Papeete in July, when French Polynesia's President Gaston Flosse is praying his good friend Jacques Chirac will keep a date to turn up all the way from Paris to meet Pacific Islands governments leaders. France is reportedly supplying an Airbus to hop around the region to pick the guests up and carry them to what intelligence intimates will be an extraordinarily lavish couple of days, with no expenses spared. There is mounting speculation about whether the event is being geared to impress by simply overwhelming the guests with the scale of the hospitality, or to achieve some serious lasting political objective intended to cement the respectability of France's presence in the Pacific.
And what about the Forum? And, having hit Papeete along with President Chirac, what mood will Pacific Islands Forum leaders be in when, a few days later, they assemble in Auckland for this year's summit? More intelligence from Auckland is that Auckland will be rather a let down. This is what cynics allege is behind the motive of the partying in Papeete. Guests will be holed up in one of Auckland's larger pubs and hold their retreat session in the nearby governor-general's pad. While many Forumiters are mightily relieved that it's not going to be held again at Rotorua, the agenda for Auckland is said to be somewhat mundane.
Security scare: Pacific leaders who took up Japan's invitation for a two-day summit in the country's southernmost island of Okinawa were impressed with the way the nation religiously sticks to productivity and efficiency. But the free trip and Japan's insistence on sending islands leaders all in one bus and in a chartered aircraft have raised serious questions about security. Many islands officials, including journalists, shudder when they considered the ramification of such a decision after the leaders' chartered aircraft, a Boeing 767, encountered heavy turbulence on the return flight to Tokyo from Okinawa. Also, leaders who had to overnight in the Japanese capital after the flight, it seemed lost their VIP status the moment the summit ended. On arrival at Narita Airport, these leaders had to be bundled into the same bus as their officials and journalists, and had to sort out their own luggage!
A loaded lunch? Be sure of who's paying your lunch...that's what Pacific journalists learnt when they took up an all expenses-paid trip to cover the Pacific leaders' summit with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan last month. A group of them were enjoying tuna lunch at an exclusive hotel in Tokyo when a fellow scribe wanted to mix pleasure with work and made the cardinal sin of wanting to know the type of activity their host of the day specialises in. The response came quickly: it's a long story. Cutting that story short, their host was a representative of the Overseas Reprocessing Committee, which incidentally, is the agency that organises shipment of nuclear wastes through Pacific waters!
True confessions: Here's one from Port Vila where an expatriate entrepreneur confessed that he deeply repented that he'd ever had anything to do with sucking penurious local households dry of money for groceries, school fees, and quite a few other simple necessities of life by helping to run a poker machine business. "It's an addiction like drugs," he related. "The attitude is Œwe've got them hooked so let's push the price up'. It's stripping cash out of poor homes and kids out of school. It's dark evil; it is a huge social injustice." Apparently one of Port Vila's busiest pokie dens, Club Vanuatu, rakes in up to 2.5 million Vatu (about US$17,800) a day from its array of gambling machines and makes a profit of 15 million Vatu (about US$107,000) a month from it. In Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, the pokies wreak social havoc; what happens at home when a minor civil servant blows all his pay on the pokies on pay day? In Fiji, the Fiji Rugby Union, with an appalling but now vastly improved record of handling money, is begging the government to make an exception and let it "invest" in lines of pokies. These were banned by the former colonial government about 40 years ago.
Fiji TV on the spotlight: Ouch! Fiji Television, a public company profitting vastly but begging for a 10-year monopoly, got a rude shock in May when it received an F$1.21 million tax demand from the tax office. Its "clear understanding" was that it has a 15-year tax exemption from 1994, it reported to the local stock exchange, in accordance with the listing rules. Naturally, news like that just might impact negatively on share prices. At a board meeting, chairman Hari Punja, one of the country's most if not the most successful businessmen, is said to have spent quite some time explaining to some reluctant fellow directors the ethical and legal necessity of briefing the stock exchange about the tax demand, which will be challenged legally. Fiji TV's case for the 10-year ride it hopes for is that it will be able to afford to spend a small amount of its profits on extending its programmes to the few remaining people living in the outer islands of Lau, where indigenous culture remains strong. How that will survive under attack from the foreign soapy and smash-and-bash stuff Fiji TV is saturated with is a question that could soon become apparent. The whisper is that the cost of deculturalising Lau will on present trends be recovered in about six weeks. No wonder it wants a monopoly.
And still on Fiji TV...its parent company Yasana Holdings, a company set up and owned by the provinces in Fiji including Rotuma, has decided that owning just television is not enough. So it has, it's been reported, bought shares in one of the country's biggest supermarket chains, R B Patel. Interesting to know how much dividends the provinces are getting?
