Samoa calls for probe into sub-groups

Samisoni Pareti
For the first time since the inception of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), it members went into the Tonga Pacific Islands Forum meeting without a common platform on two issues that dominated the meeting—Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

The two countries themselves were part of the problem—Fiji currently has an unelected government and an interim prime minister. And the Solomon Islands’ elected leader decided to boycott the Tonga meeting.

As if that was not bad enough, it was at the Tonga Forum that questions regarding the need for sub-regional groupings like the MSG were being raised.

It was Tuila’epa Lupesoliai Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi, prime minister of Samoa, who circulated a paper on the subject entitled Fragmentation of the Forum Membership.

“At the Nadi meeting last year, the Melanesian Spearhead Group held a meeting and so as the Smaller Islands States in conjunction with the 37th Pacific Islands Forum meeting,” Tuila’epa wrote in his Forum briefing paper.

“I wondered aloud at the retreat about the fact that the Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa and Tonga were not involved in similar sub-group meetings (Australia and New Zealand were also not in any sub-group).

“In the usual jovial manner and the Pacific Way of our Pacific leadership, I was cheerfully offered the option to become an observer in one or the other of the sub-groups, or even form a Polynesian one.

“However, underneath the light-hearted banter over the subject is a concern I have of what I feel is a risk to the cohesiveness of our Forum institution through the possible further fragmentation of our membership into sub-groups.

“And as is often the case, not far behind fragmentation is factionalisation.”

Tuila’epa in his briefing paper said he was not opposed to sub-groupings. In certain instances, sub-regional activities and solutions make good sense, he said.

But left uncontrolled, the solidarity of the Forum, in his opinion, could be jeopardised.

“What is not desirable in my humble opinion in the context of our Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting is to be presented with a sub-group position on issues that affect the interest of all our individual countries.

“Such a state of affairs, if we are not vigilant, could conceivably gravitate our wider Forum membership into separate smaller sub-groups of perceived ‘interests in common’.

“It would not be hard to envisage that even when an issue is not common within the sub-group, the members would support each other for the sake of solidarity.

Due care: “This scenario, if we do not take due care, could fragment the Forum further and spell the end, at least, to the way in which the Forum has tried to conduct its business over many years.”

Asked by ISLANDS BUSINESS to offer his views on the concept of sub-groupings in the Pacific, retired university professor Ron Crocombe of the Cook Islands said it made a lot of sense for countries of Melanesia to form a group.

He said it is countries like Australia that had strangled any attempt by islands nations to form their own common groupings.

“Naturally, the western allies will try to hold their grouping in place as long as they can. But the geopolitical realities are, I expect, that the most important grouping within is going to be Melanesia—after all, Melanesia has about 85% of the people and 77% of the land area (depending on which places you include in it) and it is close together.

“Micronesia has a number of effective regional groupings already and it is a logical region. It is a geographical region with a lot in common in culture, history and orientation.

“It deals almost exclusively with the North—with Asia and the United States—whether in trade, investment, aid, flows of people, media, education or almost anything else you can think of.

“Polynesia tried to form a Polynesian Community but as always, Australia and New Zealand did their best to strangle it and succeeded.

“Polynesia is culturally the most uniform but the most diverse on almost all other criteria and it is spread over an enormous area.

“Because of that, the external relations of Polynesians are much more diverse. Most Polynesians now live in New Zealand, Australia, United States, Canada and Chile and elsewhere in the world.  Only about a quarter of all Polynesians live in the independent Pacific Islands nations. 

“So the idea of a Polynesian Community was a good one—mainly concerned with their common cultural heritage and minimally involved with matters like trade.”

Australia, according to Professor Crocombe, will come to regret its policy of opposing the formation of sub-groups in the Pacific.

That such a policy could backfire is already seen in the MSG’s decision to get Beijing to fund the MSG headquarters in Vanuatu and pay for the operations of the office.

“Exactly as Australia, and New Zealand and their group built the headquarters of the Pacific Islands Forum, and they likewise fund and select key staff and manipulate through deciding what they will and what they won’t fund,” wrote Crocombe in his email to this magazine.

“That is common in any international relations, but the international balances of power in the Pacific Islands are now shifting. 

“Aid to the region was low till the Russians offered an alternative during the Cold War, so aid levels from current donors went up.

“When the Russian economy collapsed, USA cancelled its aid to the Pacific and all other western donors reduced their relative GDP contributions.

“The Pacific Islands have China and Taiwan to thank for forcing Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the USA to rapidly increase their aid again. 

“It is a sad reality of world politics that aid is given to satisfy the needs of the donors much more than those of the recipients.

“And it is a sad reality that competition is the only way to get donors to give and be more flexible in their dealings with those they give to. 

“The Pacific is entering a new, challenging and more complex era,” Crocombe said.

It will be for Greg Urwin, secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat to look into the need for groups like the MSG within the ambit of the Forum.

Going forward: He said the idea is not to force the closure of such groupings. He has already taken into account the interventions made at the Vava’u retreat by Sir Michael Somare of Papua New Guinea.

“I’ve noted the comments made by the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea who said quite clearly that MSG did not have any implication for the Forum as a whole.

“It seems to me we must do a couple of things. As we go through the Pacific Plan, we are finding that a lot of the good answers to the issues that the Pacific Plan raises are best applied on a sub-regional basis rather than on a regional basis.

“I give you an example. There isn’t a big answer across the region as to the reliability of aviation services.

“But if you start thinking about it in terms of the Tuvalu, Kiribati, Nauru triangle, that sort of thing, you start to get some sort of sensible and practical answers. And there are a number of other issues in which this applies.

“In that sense, going forward sub-regionally makes some sense. The only real concern is that as it were, the political umbrella the Forum provides as a means for cooperation remains as strong as it is.

“So one or two people have started to feel not disagreement but just a feeling that we have to continue to make sure that those kind of developments wouldn’t lead to any factionalisation.

“I don’t think it’s an issue which we need to think in crisis terms.   It’s just a question of how the Forum is going to develop over the next few years,” Urwin said.