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Why Tokelau’s referendum failed
New Zealand’s Pacific colony of Tokelau looks like paradise but as MICHAEL FIELD reports, it’s in torment about a pastor’s past.
It was 36 degrees when Iosua Faamaoni began to hector his audience inside the airless meeting room. A big man, dressed in white with a bold blood red cross on his tie, chilled all. Speaking in Tokelauan, with veins in his neck pumping, he provided his own brief translation, but it bore little relation to what he said.
Full of anger and blame, he spoke of loving one’s neighbour, like it was a necessary evil rather than a pleasure.
Faamaoni is a pastor of the Congregational Christian Church on Atafu, Tokelau’s northern atoll.
A day before, the referendum on self-government had failed. Tokelau stays with New Zealand.
The United Nations is left to ponder its agenda of decolonising the unviable.
Confidential reports by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) and the UN, written on a small hot boat sailing back to Samoa, say the referendum failed because of Faamaoni, his sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl and deepening tensions.
One senior official confessed he wanted to quote Abraham Lincoln to Tokelauans but figured it would hurt too much: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Tokelau has been a New Zealand colony for 81 years. After Samoa’s 1968 independence, Tokelau slipped into MFAT’s embarrassed care. Otherwise, liberal diplomats looked like pukka sahibs, annually accounting for their imperialism at the UN.
It got worse as the world ran out of colonies and New Zealand was one of four imperial nations andTokelau one of 16 listed colonies. As the others were places like the Falklands, Gibraltar and American Samoa, Tokelau had promise and Syria and Cuba kept calling on New Zealand to liberate the Tokelauans.
Tokelauans were far less keen. When a UN supervised referendum became inevitable, Tokelau’s chiefs insisted that self-government could only happen if more than two thirds of voters approved it.
In February last year, Tokelau had its first referendum, marked with colourful welcomes, music and dancing. The small team of UN officials, diplomats and reporters were weighed down with fans, hats, necklaces and hand-crafted model canoes. Atafu’s faipule or representative, Kuresa Nasau, had spoken against self government, supported by the pastor.
That produced 60 percent support for self-government.
Each atoll holds the title of Ulu or Head for a year and this time it was Nasau’s turn. Now he supported self-government. He predicted an 80 percent vote for self-government; “may be even as high as 95 percent”.
But Faamaoni lurked in the equation.
Lady Naomi is a Samoan ferry pressed into doing a two-day voyage north, out of Samoa. Last year, we’d sailed in the backwash of a cyclone, producing epic sea-sickness. This time the empty Pacific was calm.
The Lady’s dormitories, where “VIPs” sleep jammed on to narrow plastic covered bunks, were infested with cockroaches. The toilets were beyond description.
As the barge came out from Fakaofo, over the reef to get us (Tokelau has no port or airport), it was plain things had changed. No welcome committee, no speeches.
In the late afternoon, the “grey hairs” or traditional leaders gathered in a fale fono on the edge of the small village square. Men performed a frantic, sweaty dance, the beat pounded out by four big men on a large wooden box.
Large, richly green breadfruit trees dominate the small space. Small, brilliant white terns flit in and out.
The ground is coarse coral sand, abrasive on the feet.
Four games of touch rugby were underway, simultaneously. And a volleyball game at one end. Five balls and flying bodies all on the same ground; yet they never clashed. Atoll living requires compromise and a degree of blindness.
Home sport satellite dishes now bring in multi-channel Fiji TV’s Sky Pacific. They had DVDs before, but now they are plugged into the global mainstream. In the children 18 months ago, there was a media simplicity; now they flash the finger insignia of LA crypts and South Auckland bloods.
Last year, the referendum had opened on Atafu, complete with a big welcome, but Lady Naomi had to sound its fog horn this time, alerting people we wanted to go ashore.
The big change on Atafu was a large new church Faamaoni has built for himself despite the desperate need for a new school. Its cost is not known. Only around two thirds of the islanders are allowed into it.
Those who disapprove of Faamaoni are forbidden; they’re called “Al Qaeda.” The church is firmly locked when followers are not there.
“In choosing and making our votes,” Faamaoni said just before the ballot boxes opened, “let us above all put our love of God, our love for each other above everything else that we do. May that be our guiding light, our guiding force.”
In 1992, he announced that six years earlier he had sexually abused a 12-year-old. He left the atoll, as the girl was too later. She did not press charges at the time, nor since.
In 2004, Faamaoni returned to Atafu and asked for forgiveness for what had happened. As is custom this was forgiven, and he was appointed pastor. But as much as half the island—many with links to the girl—refused to forgive.
One angry islander told me that they had talked of killing Faamaoni because the police were not doing anything.
Last year, Faamaoni briefly told the media the islanders had forgiven him; this time he refused any interviews.
At MFAT, Faamaoni’s domination has been a source of frustration too. But they claim that without a complaint and a subsequent conviction, they can’t do anything.
Tokelau police—two men on each atoll—have done nothing.
When sexual abuse allegations exploded over Britain’s Pitcairn Island (also on the UN’s list of colonies to become independent), a Kent police woman was sworn in to investigate. New Zealand has a studied silence of that option.
We slept ashore that night. It was full moon over the lagoon and without the dogs, it was quiet.
But when we headed off down the sandy road, our host told us to take our wallets and laptops; Atafu is afflicted with burglary. One man entered his home as his fridge was being carried out by another islander.
More than just religion divides the island; the men who run the lighters are called “the army”. They are the biggest and fittest. Fights are common; army verses the others.
Bandaged limbs were common, and it was not just the coral rugby field.
It feels like the serpent has truly taken over. If Faamaoni and Nasau say they want self-government, those who are furious about the girl will vote against it. If Faamaoni says he is against self-government, he has enough followers to spoil the possibility of a two thirds vote.
The rest of Tokelau, including those in New Zealand, look with dismay at Atafu.
New Zealand administrator David Payton bought the news to Nasau that the referendum’s 64 percent return meant it had failed, complete with the notice to be read.
“You can say as much as you want to say and then leave, alright, as much as you want to say, or as little.”
Replied Nasau: “I want to go through with this, I want to get out of here.”
He then read the announcement, concluding that the referendum proposal had been approved. Payton on a stage whispered and said “not approved”.
A wake followed; Nukunonu’s faipule Pio Tuia stayed away.
When Nasau spoke, a relative of Tuia’s loudly abused him.
Tokelau official Zak Patelesio strode into the centre of the hall, plonking two Tokelauan men into their seats, and getting a Wellington Tokelauan Susan Perez into another.
She represented the Tokelauans who fled. A UN official sat in another chair, representing the world.
Perez, he said, enjoyed herself in New Zealand in a good house with schools and a hospital. The implication was that they did not care for their own people back in the atolls.
“Poor Tokelauans” wanted to be recognised by the world and have better hospitals, better school, “to be able to have a flag to be raised where ever they go.”
The UN would see the Tokelauan flag and come to help.
“The real issue is about these poor people...Is it right for New Zealand to support us? How? Only you New Zealand; why don’t you round up the world? We are missing out on the best of the world.”
That drew a derisive comment from a New Zealand official: “They are not poor people. They are poorly led people.”
Russia calling
After China, Taiwan and the United States, it is Russia that wants to make the next big splash in the Pacific. Alexander Ivanov, Russia’s new ambassador to Papua New Guinea said recently that his country is committed to the goals of building collective security, promoting economic integration and harmony in the Asia Pacific region.
In recent months, several large Russian companies have shown interest in supplying transport and special purpose aircraft, helicopters and ships to the Papua New Guinean government to aid in defence, border control, law enforcement and rescue tasks. The sprawling country has seen growing problems in each of these areas and any help would be gladly lapped up. PNG’s great mineral wealth, which has contributed so richly to its economy in the past four years, has not escaped the Russians’ attention either. The ambassador said that
Russian corporations and investors were keenly interested in working with PNG in developing its mining and fisheries industries. PNG’s mining exports have grown by as much as 500 percent in recent years. Russia has also expressed interest in tapping the region’s tourism potential particularly with a view to popularising Pacific destinations for its rapidly growing and increasingly mobile middle class.
Reducing road fatalities
Speed limits are expected to be lowered, if a bill to be tabled in the Cooks parliament is passed. Cook Islands police say changes are needed to reduce the rate of fatal road accidents in the country. A bill will be introduced in parliament on lowering speed limits from 60 to 50 kilometres per hour, and introducing compulsory motorcycle helmets and breathalysers.
3 MPs to appear in court
Three Vanuatu MPs are to appear in court this month facing charges in connection to the country’s biggest fraud investigation. MPs Dunstan Hilton, Malon Hosmander and Noel Tamata and the former first political secretary in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, Andre Lesines, are facing charges of forgery and theft. All four are members of the People’s Progressive Party of the former deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sato Kilman. The four are due to enter their pleas in court on November 6. Meanwhile, the Indo-Fijian fugitive believed to have masterminded the fraud of about US$300,000 remains in Fiji where he is reported to be facing criminal charges.
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