‘Pacific countries’ abject action in the whaling episode has exposed the vulnerability of the fragile unity of its political class to the deft, cash-fuelled manoeuvrings of far-removed super powers’


Events at last month’s International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting at St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean emphatically bared the pathetic fact that the Pacific Islands community is as fractious as it is fickle.

Let us, in this instance, step outside the raging debate for and against whaling as argued by the pro-whaling and anti-whaling nations and try to see why some Pacific Islands countries voted the way they did at the IWC from the perspective of the common Pacific Islands citizen.

For a community that is bound by one big ocean, a common ocean-loving culture that goes back thousands of years, and a collective modern-day fear of inundation because of rising sea level, this fractiousness is indeed hard to fathom.

But is the entire Pacific community to blame for the fractiousness? We think not.

What can be the ostensible reason for turning against a deeply revered, almost sacred symbol that has taken centre stage in all Pacific art, culture, commerce and human relations for thousands of years? Why has this most lovable subject of folklore of people inhabiting half the globe’s surface suddenly been jettisoned so unceremoniously?

This is completely at variance with the otherwise fiercely proud attitude of defending Pacific cultural mores when they are perceived to be threatened: something that is vociferously demonstrated time and again by Pacific islanders—whether it be in their attitude to land issues or their supreme devotion to family and respect for clan hierarchy.

Why, then, have the whales been sacrificed so very heartlessly?

Global conservation organisation WWF’s opinion poll in 10 Pacific nations in the run-up to the St. Kitts meet showed that a majority of the people of the islands were against the removal of the moratorium on whaling.

According to WWF’s communiqué, in answer to the question “Do you think your country should vote for or against a return to commercial whaling?” the Marshall Islands rejected returning to whaling by 64%; Tuvalu by 64%; Kiribati by 47% (14% don’t know); Palau by 76%; and the Solomon Islands by 72%.

Yet the governments these people put in power threw their feelings to the winds and voted to bring back commercial whaling, in what increasingly is beginning to look like a very sneaky manner.

Moreover, all these governments had assured conservation-minded nations like New Zealand that they would support the ban on whaling when they were personally approached at the very top ministerial level just weeks before the meeting, correctly reflecting the mass sentiment in their countries as was indicated in the WWF poll.

What caused them to change their minds? The elected leaders of the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, and the Marshall Islands owe an urgent explanation to their people of why they voted against their will, most certainly against the unwritten but widely accepted, time-tested norms and conventions of the Pacific Way.

Many of these nations are known to have received large dollops of aid from Japan, though both donor and recipients have always hastened to add that aid was not conditional to voting in favour of Japan.

In a statement smacking of intellectual dishonesty after the voting, Tuvalu’s prime minister was quoted as saying that his country believed in sustainable whale management and that Japan was the only nation that offered scientific research on the subject (to point out just one of Japan’s so-called ‘scientific’ finding: its contention that whales are disrupting the food chain because of excessive over feeding has been widely criticised and discredited by scientific circles at the IWC meet).

The $22 million Tuvalu received in aid last year was unconditional to the atoll micro-nation’s vote, it said.

Adding insult to injury, the Solomon Islands’ premier claimed complete ignorance on how his representative had voted. He was quoted by news agencies as saying that it was news to him that his country had voted in favour of Japan.

If that is indeed the case, the Prime Minister must investigate forthwith and bring to book the one individual who betrayed the anti-whaling stand of an overwhelming majority of the Solomon Islands people. What was the motivation for that individual to vote pro-whaling? The people must know.

All this doublespeak has not just damaged relations with long-standing, staunch allies like New Zealand, but has also made their dealings look highly suspect.

At a time when some Pacific islands countries are winning accolades from the world over for their work in conservation projects at community levels, these Pacific countries’ abject action in the whaling episode has exposed the vulnerability of the fragile unity of its political class to the deft, cash-fuelled manoeuvrings of far-removed super powers.

Quite clearly, it is not the Pacific Islands community that is fractious. Indeed they have been firmly united on the whaling issue. It is their leaders that let them down so badly. Just like they let down their cultures’ very own icon—and nature’s largest-ever living creature.