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Double win for Tong’s Government
By Samisoni Pareti
Signs are good that Anote Tong—London School of Economics-trained President of Kiribati—is gunning for another four-year term in office.
Easily re-taking his parliamentary seat in the republic’s general election on August 22, Tong is the country’s most likely choice for president.
Voters will decide this in the presidential round of voting scheduled sometime next month.
Tong—according to Kiribati’s Election Commission—amassed a record 92% of all votes cast in his constituency of Maiana Island.
State radio BPA was also reporting that most members of his cabinet won re-election, although some needed to go for the second round of voting scheduled on August 30.
Only one cabinet member, Tong’s minister for trade and commerce, failed to win endorsement in the first round of voting.
Under Kiribati’s alternate system of voting, candidates go into another round of voting if they fail to secure 50% plus one votes from their constituencies.
While Tong easily surpassed this, his older brother and veteran politician Dr Harry Tong couldn’t secure the required numbers.
The older Tong, who is the unofficial Leader of Opposition, is scheduled to go for the second round of voting, as well as his former nemesis now an opposition colleague, Teburoro Tito.
Both men are hoping to retain their seats in what is believed to be Kiribati’s most densely populated constituency—South Tarawa.
Election Commission officials say over 10,000 voters are registered in this constituency. It has three seats in Kiribati’s 44-seat Maneaba ni Maungatabu (parliament).
Tito has served the maximum number of terms allowed under the constitution as president of Kiribati (as does Kiribati’s founding president, Ieremaia Tabai, who was re-elected as an MP in the August poll), so the loose grouping of opposition MPs will have to submit a name too to contest the presidential election.
If the older Tong secures a seat in South Tarawa, Kiribati may see a tussle for the high office by two siblings of Chinese ethnicity.
Although the family house still stands beside the main sandy road in Betio Atoll on South Tarawa, politics—close aides say—has put the two brothers hardly on talking terms.
Dr Tong usually pushes the view that his younger brother is a bad economist and will only run the island’s economy down.
Voters—as shown by the recent general election—do not share that view.
Indeed, the younger Tong went into the August poll with a significant win in Kiribati’s Court of Appeal, overturning a previous declaration by its Chief Justice that the Tong Administration had broken the law through loans it had obtained from the local commercial bank.
In its ruling of July 30, 2007, the three-member Court of Appeal comprising Hardie Boys, Tompkins and Paterson agreed with the submissions by Solicitor-General David Lambourne that the Chief Justice erred when he ruled that:
• The government was wrong in using the Government Borrowing and Guarantee Ordinance of 1973 as authority for its bank loan from the ANZ Bank and the payment of interest accrued when this has been superseded by the “newer” Public Finance (Control and Audit) Ordinance of 1976.
• The 1973 Ordinance also contradicted the Constitutional requirement whereby the payment of interest of the loan should have been noted as expenditure in the government’s appropriation bill that goes before the Maneaba every year.
The Court of Appeal judges believed the state’s submission that the so called “newer” Ordinance of 1976 was actually a “re-enactment” of a 1971 piece of legislation.
The Chief Justice’s assumption of the legal principle of “leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant” (later laws abrogate earlier contrary laws) therefore does not stand, the Court of Appeal ruled.
In other words, the three-judge panel believed the Tong Government was perfectly following the law in using the 1973 Borrowing and Guarantee Ordinance as the basis for uplifting the loan and paying interest.
That law says the President of Kiribati “may raise loans within or outside Kiribati, acting in accordance with cabinet’s advice”.
“This is not an untrammeled authority, for there is cabinet control and the money borrowed may be used only for purposes approved in relation thereto by the Maneaba ni Maungatabu,” said the Court of Appeal ruling.
On the Chief Justice’s second declaration that the state was wrong in not disclosing interest payment as an expenditure in the appropriation bill it submits to the Maneaba, the Appeals Court took a different view.
It upheld the state’s arguments that the Chief Justice “failed to appreciate the difference between budget estimates and an appropriation act.”
The higher court ruled that payment of interest on the overdraft need not be included in the appropriation bill because of it being a “statutory expenditure.”
The Court of Appeal judges said: “It is common practice for certain kinds of expenditure to be excluded from the necessity for an annual appropriation.
“Examples are to be found in sections 104 (pensions) and 113 (principal officers of state) of the Constitution. The reason is obvious. There are certain commitments a state or government undertakes which should not be open to the possibility of political interference in the normal process of the consideration of an appropriation act.
“As government borrowing creates a contractual obligation on the state, these same considerations apply to it.
“It follows that the challenge to the legality of the governments actions cannot be sustained. The appeal is therefore allowed. The declarations made in the High Court are set aside.
“Quite properly, Lambourne did not ask for costs, this being a matter of public importance.”
Pacific Solution costs $1 billion
The Australian Government’s “Pacific Solution” for asylum seekers, designed to discourage arrivals by processing them offshore, has cost more than A$1 billion (US$828 million) over five years, according to a new report.
The cost was high, the impact on the asylum seekers was negative and it did not discourage people from coming to Australia, says the report, A Price Too High: Australia’s Approach to Asylum Seekers.
The report, prepared by Oxfam and A Just Australia, which oppose the offshore-processing scheme, calculated it cost more than A$500,000 (US$414,000) per Australian to process fewer than 1700 asylum seekers in Nauru, Manus and Christmas Island.
Sydney Morning Herald said by comparison, the cost of holding asylum seekers in a mainland centre, based on the Department of Immigration estimates, was 3.5 percent of the running costs of the Pacific Solution.
The report found it cost $1830 (US$1516) a day to keep someone on Christmas Island compared with $238 (US$197) a day at Sydney’s Villawood detention centre.
In calculating the A$1 billion (US$828 million) cost, the authors included navy interception, detention centre infrastructure and running costs, aid packages to Pacific governments, transport and health services.
“The Pacific Solution is neither value for money nor humane,” said Andrew Hewett, head of Oxfam Australia.
Since the Pacific Solution began in 2001, development aid to Nauru has increased five-fold compared to the 1990s. But the aid programme is tied to strict conditions, with Nauru committing to implementing a range of economic, governance and law and justice reforms.
The agreement between Australia and Nauru for the Pacific Solution states that “should Nauru fail to meet these reform commitments, the level of development assistance provided by Australia may be reduced.”
Under the Pacific Solution, Australia has filled many in-line positions in Nauru’s administration, and an Australian police officer serves as police commissioner.
Under a 2004 agreement, the head of the Australian police in Nauru is responsible to the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), comes under Australian disciplinary laws and procedures, and shall not be subject to “the jurisdiction of any Nauruan disciplinary authority, court or tribunal.”
For 2005 - 07, the aid programme budgeted A$6.6 million for the police development programme, but only A$2.1 million for health programmes.
‘A Price Too High’ also found that:
• Manus Island has been empty since 2004 but is maintained at an annual cost of A$2 million in readiness for new asylum seekers.
• It costs A$1830 per detainee a day to keep someone on Christmas Island compared to A$238 per detainee a day at Sydney’s Villawood detention centre.
• Evidence of multiple asylum seeker mental health problems including self harm as well as attempted suicide as a result of prolonged isolation in offshore detention centres, where access to mental health services such as counselling and psycho-social support are limited or non-existent.
• A lack of hospital infrastructure in offshore processing centres leading to the unnecessary death of a 26-year old asylum seeker with no known physical and mental problems on Nauru in 2002.
Scotty returned to power
The people of Nauru have given their reformist government another solid majority in the central Pacific country’s national election. President Ludwig Scotty (pictured) and all his senior ministers have been returned, according to Radio Australia.
Only three of the eighteen seats in the Nauru Parliament changed hands, and two of those who lost were in the Opposition. President Scotty called the election several months early saying he was seeking endorsement for the policies which Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has praised for returning order to government administration on Nauru.
The Scotty Government’s strongest critic, the former president Rene Harris, won his seat. But he is the sole remaining member of the government he led just over four years ago.
Party hopping law
The Cook Islands government has passed a controversial anti-party hopping bill by a two thirds majority of 16 votes to 5. (2 MPs—Teariki Heather, Teina Bishop, did not vote).
The long awaited decision has come amidst some confusion and it appears there may still be uncertainties as to the impact this will have on MPs and political parties in relation to the Electoral Act 2004. The anti-party hopping amendments have been included as part of the Electoral Act 2004, under Part 9A: Party Integrity.
What it means is that no new government can be formed outside of Parliament, therefore restricting the way in which the Prime Minister can be removed from office, an issue that has been the centre of much debate due to political party instability resulting in the forming of coalition partnerships over the past six years.
RAMSI law gets a review
The Solomon Islands parliament has started the ball rolling by taking the first steps towards reviewing the Australian-led peacekeeping mission. Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has accused the mission of having a pro-Canberra bias.
Sogavare introduced a parliamentary motion to review a law that allowed the regional mission, known as RAMSI, into the country in 2003 to help end communal violence.
Parliament approved the motion and Sogavare said it will begin its review at its next sitting in November.
RAMSI must not be seen in the future “as an occupation force”, Sogavare told MPs. “The review is to correct some discrepancies of the facilitation act to ensure a level playing field,” he said.
Sogavare, who has been involved in a spate of diplomatic disagreements with Canberra, threatened to expel Australian personnel from the mission when he took power in the country last year.
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