As in many other parts of the developing world, the biggest issue that confronts Pacific islands leadership is that of good governance’


Pacific Islands leaders will once again huddle together this month for the hardy annual that is the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Summit.

The venue this time is the tiny island of Niue and one hopes the leaders’ head count this year will be better than last year’s when some leaders of countries recognising Taiwan gave the Forum summit in Nuku’alofa the go by to attend another meet hosted by Taiwan in the western Pacific. 

That move only served to reinforce the increasing disdain some leaders have been displaying more recently towards the region’s most important body that at the time of writing is without its top executive, the secretary-general, following the recent resignation of Greg Urwin citing health reasons.

As is the case every year, leaders will discuss and deliberate on an agenda that ultimately seeks the betterment of Pacific islanders. During the two-day meet, ideas will be tossed around, plans made and at the end of it all a communiqué will be issued giving us an indication of the goings on at the meeting—some of which would be held behind closed doors.

Regardless of what is on the agenda, Pacific islands leadership is faced with one of its worst leadership crises ever. As in many other parts of the developing world, the biggest issue that confronts Pacific islands leadership is good governance.

Both media reports coming from the islands and the results of studies by international organisations indicate a sharp deterioration in almost all aspects of governance.

It is imperative that this must be addressed, as poor governance is the fountainhead of any nation’s problems, be they economic, political or social.

Poor governance is the complete disregard—whether deliberate or unintentional—for the rule of law and the statutes that govern any process to the advantage of people who are in power or their cronies. It is tantamount to the blatant abuse of power both for private gain and for stifling dissent.

It is easy to see that many of the ills that plague the polity of the Pacific Islands and indeed severely affect the path of their development can be blamed on poor governance, evidence of which we see each passing week.

The past year has been full of reports of blatant corruption in the top-most echelons of national leadership most particularly in the case of Papua New Guinea. There millions of dollars have allegedly been credited into elected leaders’ accounts.

There have also been repeated news reports and analyses by environmental organisations about the extent of unaccounted logging in both the Solomon Islands and PNG that have serious implications not just for those countries’ economy but also their ecology to speak nothing of the people’s shared wealth and heritage.

The media as well as the people have suffered from the high handedness of public figures, elected representatives and officials in Fiji, PNG and Tonga. In fact, the international media contingent to cover last year’s Forum meet found it immensely difficult to carry out their duties because of all sorts of restrictions on their movements in Nuku’alofa.

In Samoa, which often comes out with flying colours in the development and governance indices, we witnessed the government’s single-minded push in switching driving sides—an enormously expensive proposition—paying little heed to widespread public opinion to the contrary.

Then again in PNG, we had several instances of public funds and government properties including some arms from the police inventory going missing. There have also been cases of nepotism where cronies and family members have been shamelessly appointed to positions of power and money with disregard to their patent unsuitability to those positions.

We have seen instances of misdemeanour both within and outside the Houses of Parliament where in one case a member of parliament slapped another in the face outside the house.

And, of course, we have seen far too many overt and covert attempts to muzzle the media with successive threats of new legislation in Fiji and PNG under the pretext of ensuring fair and correct reporting—the list is long and could go on until the cows come home.

Yet, this is to say nothing of the machinations of unelected regimes pushing through suspect agendas with a total disregard for any sense of probity as in the case of Fiji and in some elected governments, frequent allegations of using pecuniary enticements to change political parties every time a “no confidence motion” is threatened, as in the case of the Solomon Islands.

But can we truly expect good governance to find any serious consideration on the leaders’ agenda other than for the purposes of lip service and looking good to the world?

Perhaps not, for it is the great brotherhood of vested interests and it would serve no leader to compromise the free run he or she has over his/her fiefdom in the few years that one has in government.

That insensitive apathy will undoubtedly cause them to gloss over any material issues of poor governance either at the political or administrative level and there will be little willingness to engage with the real problems that emanate from poor governance that their people face on a daily basis.

Who then can bell the cat? That onerous task unquestionably falls on the Fourth Estate’s shoulders. It is a small wonder that these leaderships see the media as their biggest bugbear.

It is therefore hardly surprising that these very regimes have been the most single minded in their attempts to shackle the media with threats of legislation that seem to be imminent in both Fiji and PNG. If at all there is a force that can hold leaders accountable by bringing to light the real issues before the public helping them to make the right choice in the next election, it is the media.

There is no force more potent than the media to put good governance at the top of the agenda collectively at the Forum summit and individually in their respective countries of operation on a sustained basis.