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Forum meeting: The Pacific Islands Leaders Summit is being pencilled in for August in Vanuatu, but already one member country, which currently chairs the Forum, has written asking for a possible postponement because they are likely to be holding an election during that month. Such a request is nothing new, according to Forum sources. But could we be seeing a changing of the guard in Australia?
SOPAC’s funding battle: The internal bickering between member states of SOPAC (Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission) continues. The latest news is that Australia and New Zealand are threatening to pull out their funding from SOPAC unless they toe the line and continue to reform and merge with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme in Samoa. Member states led by Fiji last year introduced a resolution, urging members not to rush into the merger but to comply with the legal requirements of the SOPAC Agreement. They are required to have two thirds support of member states to carry out any changes. The insistence of Australia and New Zealand to stick to the January 2010 deadline has not gone down well with islands nations. Islands leaders say they will maintain the current status until another report is tabled in October. Meanwhile, SOPAC member states were already sending their people out to seek funding from non traditional partners, should Australia and New Zealand continue to drag their funding feet. One donor WHISPERS has been told has already been approached and the response is good. WHISPERS has been told that reps from the two big brothers had approached the EU, the major funder of SOPAC, to withdraw its funding. It is understood the EU provides 65% of SOPAC’s funding and the two countries 16%. And by the way, what is going to happen to the Nadi SOPAC Council meeting later this year which Australia is suppose to chair, if they don't cough up their contribution, which also includes their membership fees?
Name change: It has been only a month since CEO Tony Everitt left the south-pacific.travel organisation for a top tourism job in Queenstown, New Zealand. Already changes are happening. Since he took over the regional tourism body, he changed its name from South Pacific Tourism Organisation to south-pacific.travel in line with the organisation’s move to use the internet more for marketing the islands. Now its name is changing back to South Pacific Tourism Organisation and WHISPERS has been told the south-pacific.travel name was not really that effective. So what other changes can we expect? Still on SPTO, a short list for Everitt’s replacement is expected to be drawn up soon. WHISPERS was told one of the possible candidates for this job is the current acting CEO. Keep tuning in for more updates!
Sir Fred rules: That was not the sound of joy from some in the Cook Islands over the reappointment of the Queen’s Representative. Sir Frederick Goodwin kept his job, the local equivalent of a Governor-General in the semi-independent Cooks. But there were howls from some in the opposition camps that Sir Fred was favoured by Jim Marurai’s government for political reasons. These were that he allowed Marurai’s men to continue in power despite seemingly being a minority. Sir Fred has been the resident head of state since 2001.
Only in Tuvalu: Funafuti’s airstrip, where Pacific Sun flights land twice weekly, has other, more colourful uses when planes are not on the tarmac. Come sundown and Tuvaluans can be found playing a variety of sports on the runway, but its really at night that the airstrip comes alive, in a manner of speaking. Besides people escaping the heat of their homes to sleep on the cool tarmac, the airstrip is also a popular dating site at night.
Evacuation plan: Countries in the Pacific are now devising evacuation plans should natural disasters hit them. In Tuvalu, for instance, their evacuation plan involves moving cabinet ministers and governor-general to their tallest building, which is the three-storey government buildings, or otherwise taking them to their two government vessels—Nirvana Two and Manufolau. In the recent tsunami alert, the country’s Governor-General was to have been evacuated to one of the boats but refused to be taken there. Instead, he opted to stay with the people. But where was the PM? Apparently, he was up in the Northern Pacific attending a meeting. Well, if there is an evacuation plan for the ministers and GG, what about the rest of the 2000 people on the main island in Funafuti? Is there a plan for them too?
Anti-media attitude: Heard that SPC Noumea is now doing away with media positions. That means no more media positions in SPC apart from the Fiji gang running the Regional Media Centre in Suva. Noumea is now booming its staff through the roof at all levels while downsizing on information and public access to the work they do. Doesn’t that speak a lot of the bureaucrats who feel so high-level they have lost eye-level contact with their own Pacific people? How can you plead people centred development when it’s not being talked about and discussed by the people via the Pacific media? If agencies entrench the anti-media mainstream attitude we have in our communities, then donors who demand transparency at financial levels need to know they are definitely not getting it as governance and disclosure levels.
Paper trail: Tonga could be about to become the latest island nation to have its own specialist newspaper printing machine, known as a web press. One used in an unsuccessful attempt to run a second daily newspaper in American Samoa is reported to be moving south. A well-connected Tongan businessman is whispered to be the new owner. Clue: He runs a hotel and his name is not Kalafi Moala.
Sign of the times: The grand, much publicised Taiwan-Pacific Islands summit meetings of the past seem to have been quietly dropped. Whisper is this is because of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain better ties with China. Instead Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou will make a quick visit this month to the six Pacific Islands nations which recognise Taiwan instead of China. Ma will visit Solomon Islands, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu. All in the space of seven days, six nights.
Pago pain: Tougher times are reported around Pago Pago Harbour. The closure of one of American Samoa’s two fish canneries, COS Samoa Packing, is taking its economic toll in many areas. One indicator of the downturn is said to be a sharp drop in the number of container ships calling into Pago Pago. More than 2000 people lost their jobs when the cannery owners decided to move operations to the USA mainland.
Tongan tales: Two British men of the law are gaining international headlines through their current roles in the kingdom of Tonga. Supreme Court judge Robert Shuster sentenced two teenagers to 13 years in prison and six lashes from a “cat-o-nine-tails” whip after they escaped from prison and stole food and other items. Meanwhile, lawyer Lord Ramsay Dalgety, QC, is facing a perjury charge following an inquiry into the sinking of the ferry Princess Ashika last August which claimed 74 lives. The said lord’s many roles in Tonga include secretary of the government-owned Shipping Corporation of Polynesia.
Growing signs: Anyone with any doubts about the emergence of Bank South Pacific across the region should drive along the main street of Honiara. The Papua New Guinea bank’s big new local headquarters is busily being built there, as befits its status as main bank in the Solomon Islands now. Bank South Pacific has leapfrogged Australian giants ANZ and Westpac in the region’s three biggest countries, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomons.
Media watch: Now here’s a question agitating some of the region’s media types and wannabe regional media types. Who’s going to be invited—and more importantly funded—to the big global UNESCO World Press Freedom Day celebrations in May in Brisbane? The Aussie organisers deciding this are believed to have a list of likely names. Whisper is it might not meet universal acclaim.
Underwater cabinet meet: Ian Fry, Tuvalu’s delegate to the Copenhagen climate talks led a radical contingent of developing nations asking for a binding aggressive deal. Fry wept as he made his unsuccessful plea before the other delegates. Some were critical of Fry because, they allege, Tuvalu helped seal its own fate by failing to care for the coral reefs that shelter it from the sea. But what about the Maldives? Its president, Mohamed Nasheed, is the first to be democratically elected in 30 years, and suffered torture as a pro-democracy advocate before being elected. He also made a name for himself as a voice for climate action, holding an underwater cabinet meeting in the lead-up to the Copenhagen talks to make his point. He’s promised to make his country carbon-neutral by 2020.
Pacific out of focus? Appears the Pacific will have to wait a little bit longer to get President Obama’s attention. We contacted our agent in the US, who had this to say: “I think the guy is genuine and has done a lot for this nation. My guess is that the president will get completely bogged down in local politics to the end of the year. Frankly, I think he will achieve little on the global front. And the Pacific is not even on his horizons. The US economy remains sick, unemployment as a whole is at a record high (10+ percent) and in some places double that.”
Bad cheques: Over $4 million worth of dishonoured cheques had been collected by Solomon Islands customs division in the late 2007 and 2008. And worryingly it may not be able to be recovered. According to the local newspaper Solomon Star, the cheques were for import duty payments received from 87 companies in Honiara. The dishonoured cheques totalled $4,080,593. One company used dishonoured cheques at 10 different times during that period, without the customs even knowing it. The finance ministry in their routine check picked up the error and notified the customs department.
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