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Condoleezza engages with Pacific leaders
Politics did not warrant much of a mention with the Pacific Islands Forum’s foreign ministers at their lunch with Dr Condoleezza Rice. But the Pacific, warts and all, is of growing interest for America.
One of the most vulnerable of the Pacific’s small islands states, Niue, was party to the rare privilege of direct dialogue with Dr Rice.
Premier Toke Talagi flew into Auckland moments after lunching with Dr Rice alongside foreign ministers from 14 other Pacific nations at Aggie Grey’s Hotel in Apia on July 27.
The impromptu rendezvous engineered by New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters gave the leaders the chance to impart their wisdom on matters of primary concern.
“I thought the meeting went very well,” Talagi said in Auckland.
“We engaged in the areas of escalating food prices, soaring fuel and energy costs, climate change, and so on. I thought the meeting in Apia went very well.
“It would be good to engage with the US through such forums and the intentions are that we write to their government to suggest we engage more closely with them,” Talagi said.
Dr Rice held talks with Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith in Perth and New Zealand’s Helen Clark in Auckland, before the brief stopover in Apia for the Pacific ministers meeting.
In her address to the NZ/US Business Council inside the giant kava bowl at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, Dr Rice made particular reference to New Zealand’s role in the Pacific.
“The Pacific Islands Forum has had important work to do. The Solomon Islands was a place of crisis just a short time ago, but it is a place that is improving
“There is especially hard work to do concerning Fiji where the return to democracy is of absolute necessity, where free peoples everywhere are speaking out for the importance of elections in Fiji.
“Those elections should not be based on any other conditions but the ability to hold an election is something the government of Fiji promised to do next year and must do forthright.”
While the US piggy-backs on New Zealand and Australia in safeguarding its interests in this neck of the woods, Dr Rice made no bones of the fact that it is in Fiji’s interests to return to democracy.
As the international community closes in on Fiji with calculated sanctions, the concept of isolation hovers precariously in the minds of the powers that be.
In a few weeks, 16 Pacific Islands Forum leaders will congregate in Niue’s capital, Alofi, for their annual summit.
The coronation of King George Tupou V in Tonga provides Fiji some respite, but the forum leaders summit in Niue a few weeks after puts Fiji’s predicament back on the agenda.
“I hope the Fiji interim government heeds the unanimous voice of the Pacific Islands Forum countries,” NZ Trade Minister Phil Goff said recently.
“This is not as Commodore Bainimarama might sometimes suggest it is simply an issue for Australia and New Zealand.
“I think there is a very strong and shared view among all of the Pacific Forum countries that the way that we give mandate to the government is through the ballot box and not through the barrel of the gun.
Goff made the comments while addressing the Fijian community in Auckland recently.
“I think that in Fiji itself there is a sense of frustration and a sense of resentment and we don’t want to see that escalate into violence.
“We want to see Fiji restored to constitutional rule and we want to see Commodore Bainimarama honour the pledge that he made to all the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum countries at the forum meeting in Tonga last year that an election will take place by March next year,” Goff said.
If that doesn’t happen, there will be increasing calls among donor countries like the European Union, the United States and Forum countries for further action to isolate Fiji, Goff said.
“We don’t want to see Fiji isolated. We want to bring Fiji back into the heart of the Forum where it belongs.
“But for us to remove the targeted sanctions that are in place now requires a demonstration of good faith also from the interim government.
“We’re prepared to work with it, to fund and help make sure the electoral process is free and fair and properly resourced, but we need to see a response from government as well.
“Now is not the time to be pussyfooting around electoral reforms or banking on the cronyism that have kept the Forum intact.
“There is nothing wrong with holding elections in March and then engaging in electoral reforms thereafter,” Goff said.
Ruci Salato-Farrell
Chandra’s ‘expensive’ inheritance
Professor Rajesh Chandra is not a novice when it comes to the affairs of the University of the South Pacific. But perhaps this time what’s in store is not what he is usually used to.
Successful this time around in his application, Chandra nevertheless is perhaps our best hope to salvage the university from its financial woes having spent most of his career life at USP.
As the new vice-chancellor, Chandra has got himself an expensive inheritance—an institution that is in the red with a “bloated” cost structure.
Income from tuition fees is $1.8 million lower than expected and the university core funders—the islands countries of the region—are having difficulties paying up their contributions.
The financial constraint of the university is so serious it prompted a meeting of the region’s finance ministers in Suva two months ago.
They issued an ultimatum—the university must be revenue driven rather than expenditure driven as is the case now.
In addition, the university must have a funding formula to calculate each country’s yearly contributions.
For the past four decades of its existence, there has been no clear funding formula to determine how much each country has to pay. In other words, countries could have been paying more or less than what they are supposed to be paying.
In the first three months of this year, money coming into USP’s coffers totalled F$25.2 million with expenses totalling F$24.9 million. Almost 58 percent of the revenue was spent on paying the staff members of the university. This totalled F$14.5 million.
Of the total salary bill, F$10 million was spent on paying the vice-chancellor, deans and other senior management staff.
A Budget Deficit Committee was formed by the Finance and Investment Committee of the USP Council in its effort to address the financial problems.
According to a report presented by the finance and investment committee in the May council meeting in Tonga, there have been some savings achieved through not filling vacant positions.
The budget deficit committee, however, was singled out for its slowness in producing policies on staff workloads and minimum course sizes. This is seen as a critical issue if the university is to make any strategic financial savings.
But the concern is how these policies would affect the number and range of courses the university would offer in the future.
For the first three months of 2008, while the university significantly under-spent its budget, it was not achieving its income targets.
“Of particular concern to the committee was the decrease in student numbers compared to 2007,” Faye Yee, chair of the finance and investment committee, said in her report to the May council meeting.
“Student numbers were lower in total but the number of private students had fallen drastically than sponsored students. The committee will continue to watch this carefully and also see how effectively the savings made by the university can counter this.
“The finance and investment committee has also been concerned about the impact continued deficits will have on the university’s cash position.
“It believes a deficit for 2008 is just about sustainable but the university must set a break-even budget for 2009. This underlines the importance of the work of the budget deficit reduction committee and the need for it to make major savings in the cost of the university’s operations.
As it is, the committee is monitoring carefully the university’s cash forecast for the current year to ensure it has enough resources to meet its day-to-day commitments.
As of April this year, the university was owed $6.5 million from regional governments.
Fiji had the highest debt at $3.4 million, followed by the Solomon Islands at $1.5 million, Tonga at $531,145 and Kiribati with $443,062 to pay. Nauru has a $310,414 debt and the rest of the countries had debts under $200,000— and $4.2 million has been received from the countries as their contributions.
Nauru has asked the university for time as they are in a debt crisis and in the process of finalising their debt management strategy.
Chandra, however, is optimistic he can turn the university around. In his interview with the Fiji media, he announced plans to achieve this. One is reviewing the courses and programmes, some of which should no longer be offered by the university.
“USP is now functioning in a different environment with lots of national institutions and we need to look at the higher education sector in a holistic manner. USP has to weigh its advantage and we know we have to do that. We have to respond seriously to the fact that we live in a region that cannot continue to fund USP generously as it has done over the years.
“We believe we will be able to restructure and reform USP in a way the ministers of finance and the governments will be able to say that this is good, agile, cost effective, forward looking institution,” he told the local media.
The number of faculties will be reduced from four to three and this would save around half a million dollars and also a pay cut of about 40 percent for its senior management.
Chandra stressed it was important not to allow what he considered to be temporary financial difficulties to colour the real underlying value of the university.
--Elenoa Baselala
New name for Council of Pacific Arts
Major changes including a new name for the Council of Pacific Arts have been approved by the 22nd meeting of the council in American Samoa.
Other changes include the review of the council’s objectives and the development of a regional cultural strategy which is one of the provisions of the Pacific Islands Forum’s Pacific Plan.
Elise Huffer, Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s Human Development Programme Cultural advisor, said after the meeting that the council will attempt to become a member of the Forum’s regional cultural strategic working group to ensure participation in the development of the regional plan.
“There is an objective in the Pacific Plan that requires the development of a strategy to strengthen a Pacific islands cultural identity,” Huffer said.
The name change will be the second since the first festival in Suva in 1972 when it was known as the South Pacific Arts Festival Council; it changed to Pacific Arts Council to move away from a focus on the festival.
“It is an attempt to reflect the wide range of issues that the Pacific Cultural Council is going to deal with,” Huffer said.
“This will allow it to inform, advise and monitor policies in a range of areas in culture throughout the region.”
Another major project will be the monitoring of the implementation of regional model laws on traditional knowledge and expressions of culture and on traditional biological knowledge.
“These model laws also include the protection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage including languages,” Huffer said.
“It will encompass the development of creative or cultural industries and contemporary artistic expressions in the region.”
The council will also look at developing a platform to ensure an improved management of the festival as it gets bigger, with more categories and the inevitable difficulties for both the host and participating countries.
Manager Community’s Human Development Programme manager Linda Petersen said the next host Solomon Islands presented a report at the meeting which indicated they were already working on infrastructural and even logistical aspects of the festival.
“They seem to be preparing well in advance,” she said.
“This morning they briefed the council on a whole range of aspects of preparations including plans to build a national museum and national art gallery.
“They are already looking at transportation, routes, accommodation and all these other basic logistic issues.
“They presented a schedule if you like and they looked like they are well on their way to a good festival.
“They are well aware that they need to prepare well in advance and we are confident that financially they will be able to host another spectacular festival.”
Fiji’s principal cultural officer Mere Ratunabuabua said Fiji endorsed the changes but all will be formalised in the next couple of months.
“The name change is apt and a timely move—we cannot be seen to be focusing only on the arts, there are other issues we as Pacific peoples will have to deal with.
“In all these developments, there has to be a cultural perspective and so Fiji is quite happy with the meeting outcomes,” she said.
Ratunabuabua said it was very important that the council participated in the development of a regional cultural strategic plan.
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