We Say 3

Tradition is to be treasured. But it should not be exploited as an excuse and smokescreen for people who prostitute it by making it an excuse

Palau's highest chief used a baseball bat to attack an American lawyer who was chairing a public meeting. That was the response of Yutaka Gibbons, an arrogant and violent person, when he was asked several times to leave a meeting he was presumably disrupting.

He smashed one of the arms of lawyer Matthew Johnson, who said he was fortunate not to have been injured fatally.

Gibbons was later fined US$1000 and directed to perform community service after being convicted on one assault charge. He agreed to pay Johnson's medical costs.

On another charge, he was sentenced to 12 months jail. Matthews rightly thought the term should have been five years.

After petitions against Gibbons' jail sentence from 4000 of the 16,000 Palauans, the country's president, Tommy Remengesau, weakly pardoned the chief. He was worried about the risk of a riot by supporters if their big chief were to be put behind bars.

The president said the pardon was a balance between preserving tradition and dispensing justice, and anyway Gibbons was "remorseful." Being remorseful, or making a show of it, and paying a US$1000 fine and agreeing to do a bit of community service and putting on a show of "graciously" paying your victim's medical costs is an easy way of keeping out of jail.

One Palauan senator, Joshua Koshiba, was disgusted. Letting Gibbons off made Palau look like a banana republic, with one set of rules for the poor and weak, and another set for the rich and powerful, he said. Senator Koshiba was absolutely right. It's good to know that some Palauans have a sense of proportion and are not the pitiful slaves of outmoded tradition. Gibbons should have been thrown in jail and the key to his cell lost for five years.

A chief is supposed to lead by example. A chief who believes he is free to wander around and assault people with a baseball bat as his traditional right needs to be fired back to the Stone Age, which obviously is where the Gibbons' mentality is planted.

Throughout the Pacific Islands there are quite a number of people of high traditional rank or financial status who claim that they have the privilege of having a God-given traditional right to freely attack people with baseball bats.

They also tend to be imbued with a belief that they have an unchallengeable right to indulge in massive corruption, thievery, extortion and a host of other misdoings for which lesser mortals than they are liable to be arrested, tried and, if convicted, sent to jail. In Fiji, certain of the chiefly hierarchy believe they and their followers should be immune from being punished for treason.

In Papua New Guinea, major political figures famously notorious for their corruption believe themselves to be immune from the law. Others of their ilk are to be spotted in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Some Samoans, Tongan and Cook Islands leaders have feudal ideas about stretching, distorting, amending and abusing tradition to better their interest at the expense of those unwilling to abuse old and honourable codes of conduct.

Ditto in Nauru and Kiribati. Ditto nearly everywhere in the Pacific, in fact. It's part of the reason for the messes so many islands countries are sinking in.

Tradition is to be treasured. But it should not be exploited as an excuse and smokescreen for people who prostitute it by making it an excuse for letting Gibbons off the hook.

Come to think of it, in Palau what's so traditional about using such an alien artifact as a baseball bat as a club? Gibbons should be dumped in jail for a long time and be stripped of his rank as well.

Appropriate punishment for serious offenders is a fine old tradition to support.