| Solomon Islands: SIKUA'S VISION |
A new united, strong and God-fearing nation
Alfred Sasako
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Solomons I salute you... Governor General Sir Nathaniel Waena and Prime Minister Dr Derek Sikua.
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Prime Minister Dr Derek Sikua remembers 1978 well, the year Solomon Islands gained political independence after 85 years of British rule. Thirty years on, with constant changes in government, he conceded mistakes had been made.
And righting the wrongs of the past was what he’s set out to do, he told ISLANDS BUSINESS in an interview in Honiara last month [July].
“I want to see a new Solomon Islands that is united, strong and God-fearing - a Solomon Islands that is secure and prosperous,” Dr. Sikua said.
He said the people of the Solomon Islands have, in the 30 years to 7th July this year, learnt that the vision for a united, strong and God-fearing Solomon Islands can only be realised through “good leadership—political leadership that is honest, visionary, inclusive and consultative”.
Sikua, the second Guadalcanalese to occupy the top political post, blamed the people on the question of good political leadership.
“They are the people who make the choice every four years. What we have seen over the last 30 years has largely been self interest and benefits of a few. The rest of the populace has been ignored,” he said.
What went wrong? I asked.
According to Sikua, one of the first mistakes of past governments was the decision to do away with the five-year National Development Plan in 1989, largely because Solomon Islands began to feel the impact of aid donor fatigue.
Donor fatigue: Unlike decades before when aid funds were given out with little or no strings attached, donors were becoming selective about what to support even in former colonies. That, he said, hit hard on Solomon Islands.
“As funding support for the government’s budget began to shrink, there was a view at the time that little or nothing would be coming from aid donors who felt they were being chased away. So the decision was made that, if there’s no money to pay for projects in the plan, then there’s no point in continuing with them,” he said.
One of the main donors that was forced out of the country at the time was the European Union which had to relocate to neighbouring Papua New Guinea because of differences with then Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni’s government.
The EU only returned to Honiara after the 1997 national general election when a Coalition for Change government led by the late Bartholomew Ulufa’alu swept into power, ending Mamaloni’s stranglehold on power. Mamaloni died a few years later.
Sikua said the decision to drop the National Development Plan was wrong.
“It was the wrong thing to do. Because when the plan was done away with, the idea of accountability also went out the window. There is nothing to hold government to account against,” Prime Minister Sikua said.
Sikua also had a swipe at his predecessor, now Opposition leader Manasseh Sogavare, saying Solomon Islands lost face with donors, particularly Australia over the appointment of controversial lawyer, Julian Moti, as the country’s Attorney-General.
“We lost our way. I had to do all the fence mending with our neighbours such as Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand,” he said.
[Moti was handed over to Australian authorities soon after Sikua came into office last December to face alleged sex charges in Australia. He is on bail after a brief appearance in court].
Sikua told ISLANDS BUSINESS that since the five-year National Development Plan was dropped, successive governments had switched to a project-based approach. It was more or less a shopping list,” he said.
All that is being gradually changed. Since his Coalition for National Unity and Rural Advancement [CNURA] government came into office seven months ago, it has been hard at work mapping out what he hoped would eventually return Solomon Islands to the five-year National Development Plan.
It has, for example, produced a Medium Term Development Strategy, which has been given the thumbs up by funding institutions such as the World Bank and other donors.
“The World Bank has made it clear it wants to re-engage and has set up an office in Honiara,” he said.
“We’ll be consulting closely with the World Bank in the next six to nine months. We know the bank has indicated its willingness to help us in the forestry, minerals and fisheries sectors,” he said.
“And the good news is that they have made it clear that there will be no more of the downsizing, rightsizing business so synonymous with its work in the 90s. What they’ve indicated is that we’re right behind you,” he said.
Area of concern: One area which worries Sikua more than anything else is the revenue from logging, a substantial source of revenue for the government.
Modelling undertaken recently shows that revenue from logging will shrink over the next five years in proportion to the volume being exported as government tightens the rules on logging operations.
Revenue is expected to be slashed to $120 million annually, a fifth of what the government is receiving now.
“That is a huge drop,” he said.
“We will have to find the money elsewhere to fill such a gaping hole,” he said.
Sikua was a student, a fifth former at Selwyn College, the Anglican Church and now the Church of Melanesia’s only national secondary school in the country at the dying moments of British colonial rule. He remembers the extent of the preparations the nation’s leaders undertook as Solomon Islands was about to be inducted into the community of nations’ hall of members.
Located just east of Honiara at the time, Selwyn College is one of three church-run private national secondary schools in Solomon Islands. [The college has been relocated to the west of Honiara, following the devastation caused by Cyclone Namu in 1986].
As talks of independence filled the air, the government was hard at work, preparing Solomon Islanders to assume full administrative responsibilities for their own affairs after independence.
One area Sikua remembers well was a recruitment drive to train a young cadre of Solomon Islanders to be ADCs.
“I was fortunate to be one of the eight students picked for the training,” he recalled.
Six months before the big day, Sikua was moved to join other young Solomon Islanders being trained as protocol officers to receive VIPs attending the country’s independence on 7th July 1978. I was actively engaged with VIPs. It was busy, but exciting and meaningful,” he said.
A year after independence, Sikua found himself at the Laucala campus of the University of the South Pacific in Suva, doing a three-year diploma programme in teaching, which he completed in 1981.
“The idea of one day becoming the country’s Prime Minister never occurred to me. The interest in politics was always there, but not to the extent of one day occupying the top political job,” he said.
His first posting as a secondary school teacher was Pawa, again an Anglican Church school, on the remote island of Ugi in Makira/Ulawa Province. His father was once a student there.
Two years later, he was posted to nearby Waimapura National Secondary School, also in Makira/Ulawa Province. It must have been a shock for you, going from one extreme, for example, to the other, Waimapura? I asked.
“Extremes, yes. But in those days, we never had time to complain. We simply did our work,” he said.
In 1985, Sikua completed his first degree through extension studies. Six months into the following year, he was back at Waimapura, but his tenure was short-lived.
He returned to the education ministry headquarters where he was part of the team which put together a dossier for the World Bank’s first major education project in the Solomon Islands.
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