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PACIFIC PLAN or Pacific 2020?; BLACK JESUS on the run; A FOREIGNER to foreign affairs; DIPLOMATIC STORM brewing in Honiara?
Pacific Plan or Pacific 2020?
Concerns are being expressed in Wellington about the grandly named Pacific 2020 plan launched last month by Howard’s sidekick, Alexander Downer. Seems the 2020 plan mentions the previously paramount Pacific Plan only once. Once! Backroom boys and girls in the windy city are worried that months and years of careful consultations with the Pacific Islands Forum countries are going to go down the drain in a moment of Bush-style go-it-aloneism. Canberra is signalling it’s sick of all the talk about “sustainable” development” and wants to build support for “sustained” development instead. Expert opinion has been canvassed from a hand-picked list of free marketeer sympathisers. Translate that as more dollars for big Ozzie businesses, headed by the same people who write fat cheques for the ruling party in Australia. Or so it...seems...what with the multi-million dollar wheat deal for Iraq paybacks joining a long list of scandals?
Diplomatic storm brewing?
Honiara can be an exciting place of work as scores of expatriates are learning very quickly now that RAMSI, the Australian-led helping a friend mission, is likely to be granted a fresh lease of life in parliament this month. Just ask the Kiwi diplomat, who in his eagerness to take up his posting recently, literally, threw out the occupant of a hotel room that had been assigned to him. Only one problem, the occupant happens to be a senior government minister in Prime Minister Mannaseh Sogavare’s cabinet! The poor government minister was apparently trying to secure his government-assigned housing only to return to the downtown upmarket hotel to find all his belongings—private and public—out on full display in the hotel’s verandah! The most recent whisper was that Wellington was on damage control mode, trying to avert a diplomatic storm created by an over-enthusiastic if not supercilious envoy.
A foreigner to foreign affairs?
The normally rigid line between the foreign affairs and defence portfolios seems to be getting very fuzzy in New Zealand’s labour government. In an interview with ISLANDS BUSINESS a few issues back, New Zealand’s Defence Minister Phil Goff steered clear of any issue with even the slightest whiff of foreign affairs since that was the domain of NZ First’s leader Winston Peters, in his new avatar as minister in charge of that portfolio. But Goff seems to be very much in the thick of foreign affairs as he always has been in previous governments.
While Peters’ Australian counterpart personally attended to the Solomons’ and East Timor crises, it was New Zealand’s defence minister who seemed to be doing that job. He got to the Solomons first (Peters’ office was reported in the media as stating he would visit the Solomons after things calmed down). When the Dili crisis erupted, Peters was meant to go there first. But Goff, who was attending a conference in Singapore, accepted his Australian counterpart’s offer of a ride to East Timor, which is believed to have miffed Peters when he learnt about it. At that time, Peters was away criss-crossing the Pacific leading delegations, opening new offices in Vanuatu and attending a conference in Japan. Official statements about both the Honiara and Dili crises came from either Prime Minister Helen Clark or Defence Minister Goff—not Foreign Affairs’ Peters. But now, the government seems to have taken the first step towards making Peters less of a foreigner to foreign affairs having drafted Goff’s knowledgeable and efficient former press attaché to work for him (Peters) since last month.
China ruffled:
The founder of this column must be beside himself up there in the pearly bar that three months after his Chopstick Diplomacy cover story, the Chinese are still fuming. It seems banning Whispers’ website in mainland China is not enough for Beijing’s web police. A writer for this magazine was invited to attend an interview with the Chinese envoy in their seaside embassy in Suva last month, only to be given a dressing down about the cover story. It’s so typical of RKR that even in his absence, the powers that he religiously cover and derive much delight in commenting on in the islands over the last three decades are still being ruffled by his writings.
Reality TV check:
Advocates of globalisation may not consider the frothier aspects of the modern economy worth debating—reality TV for example. But residents on Aitutaki in the Cook Islands would like some answers as to why they have been promised so much and delivered so little. Falling over themselves to welcome the Survivor Series, at least two local MPs signed confidential contracts with the TV production group not long after it finished looting the locals in Vanuatu. Landowners on this new slice of paradise got paid a grand total of $75,000. That’s in New Zealand dollars—otherwise known as the Pacific Peso—where Survivor makes its many millions in American dollars. An embarrassed government chipped in with an equally paltry offer of NZ$100,000 as “compensation.” A few key locals got fat—mostly well deserved contracts—but the rest were offered NZ$5.20 an hour. That’s 20 cents above the minimum wage in the Cook Islands. Survivor commands something like 100,000 times that amount per 30-second TV ad spot. Equally absurd ratios befitting an aspect of western civilisation that bears as its motto: outwit, outplay, outlast. Cook Islands locals are now being warned by their counterparts in Vanuatu to watch out for hordes of whining, equally exploitive backpackers seeking out Survivor sites during their travels.
Economy’s sleepless nights:
If a central bank refers to local consumption as being “uncomfortably high”, which the Reserve Bank of Fiji said in its April economic review, it must be a sign that its policymakers are having sleepless nights over an economy that appears to be ticking out unwelcome sounds. These include an under-performing export sector, depleting foreign reserves, escalating import bill driven by high fuel costs and a population that helps very little by spending as if there’s a clear blue sky ahead. It comes as no surprise therefore to hear of a letter being sent by the policymakers last month to all commercial banks, telling them to cut down on lending to some sectors. Top on the list, according to one who sighted the letter, is Fiji’s ballooning real estate market.
Powerless before God:
Last month’s half-day power outage in Auckland brought out the choicest of expletives, particularly from the city’s well heeled. While the mayor denounced the situation as being right out of a Third World country, another prominent citizen loudly asked, “Which way are we headed—Sydney or Suva?” The Labour Government came under fire for twiddling its thumbs for the six years it has been in power while Auckland’s fate hung by a worn out wire. The government and the power companies blamed it on the terrible storm that caused that wire to snap. As the blame game raged on, it was the small businesspeople that were badly let down by God the Almighty—quite literally.
The business lobby group at first estimated its loss at NZ$50 million and then quickly doubled it to NZ$100 million. But when scores of small businesspeople turned to their insurance companies for compensation as the lights flickered back on, they were rather shocked to be firmly told the power outage was “an act of God” and, as such, not covered by any insurance policy, learns WHISPERS!
Shot in the foot:
Tonga’s pro-democracy MPs scored a spectacular own goal last month and the embarrassment had been acute ever since. Aging non-resident King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV was, as he usually is these days, reclining at his Auckland residency and so despatched millionaire daughter Princess Pilolevu to open Parliament on June 1. Eight MPs claimed it was illegal and went to the Supreme Court to win an injunction against any more sittings. Surprisingly, they won the injunction and suddenly the politicians lost the one stage they had; Parliament. As it happened, the government didn’t exactly mind and they got on with the business of preparing the government’s budget free from the meddling of commoner politicians. Suddenly, the penny dropped and the MPs realised they had shot themselves in the foot. “There has been no defence from government and we suspect that they want to play for time with the Budget,” commoner politician ‘Akilisi Pohiva said. He feared the budget would be passed in one day with little debate, “and to blame us for any extra expenses that government will acquire because of the case”.
Black Jesus on the run:
A cargo cult leader in PNG known as “Black Jesus” who has followers as young as eight years old, is on the run from the police. Police and prison officers went into the mountains in the northern province of Madang to flush out the cult but were met with strong resistance from cult warriors carrying guns, spears and bush knives, police said. But they were able to arrest his warriors and 30 “flower girls” allegedly exploited by him for sex. Eight officers would have been overrun by the warriors during a half-hour clash if another seven-man police unit had not arrived in time.
Top brass peeved:
One of Fiji’s top tourism executives is understood to be casting his net regionally. He is going after the top job at a regional outfit and it is creating a stir there. The current top brass at the regional organisation, who is also reapplying for the job, is demanding that one of the interviewing panelists, understood to be close to the Fiji executive, should rule himself out. Questions are also being raised as to who approved the appointment of a new recruit at the regional organisation. He is understood to be very highly qualified.
Field’s new book:
American Samoa is not likely to welcome journalist Michael Field’s latest book—Black Saturday. A new account of the Mau killings in Samoa in 1929, and of New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark’s apology in 2002, Field questions why Samoa won independence but American Samoa—which had a Mau movement too—did not.
Field explains: “American Samoa today is something of a tragedy, a welfare waif with little prospect of ever being taken seriously in the world. It remains on a diminishing United Nations list of colonies but with little hope of any kind of self-government or independence...”
Oz soccer islands’ link:
Australia has been loud in criticising New Zealand for its Pacific islanders in the All Blacks and the Silver Ferns. But they went quiet during football’s World Cup when the “Australian player” Tim Cahill scored two goals in the opening game against Japan. They cheered that in Samoa where Cahill had actually begun his international soccer career playing for the Under-20 side. The son of a Samoan mother, he was 14 at the time—and then the Australians nabbed him. His aunt Frances Vialli said, “we are really proud of him.”
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