Islands Business - Whispers

MEL GIBSON’S island paradise STATISTICAL controversy Fiji cabinet shake-up CRACKING relations

Mel's island paradise

Mel’s island paradise: Mel Gibson, an actor of some fame, makes much, or has much made, of his leanings towards Christianity. Perhaps he’ll need to lean heavily on it in the way of a spot of exorcism, if he proceeds with his reported intention to buy Mago, one of Fiji’s largest freehold islands. He’s fronted up in Fiji quietly a couple of times and in November was reported to be buying or have bought Mago for a very small chunk of his personal fortune from the Japanese railway corporation that bought it for F$5 million from its then Borron family owners. What the Japanese owner did with it is a mystery since visitors were not encouraged. Perhaps it is because they too became gripped by the Curse of Mago, also known as J.S.K.B. Borron related to Islands Business way back, as the Curse of the Borrons. The original Fijian tribes that owned the island were conquered and expelled from it way back. A Fijian chief sold it to a European buyer. Thereafter, the story goes, a curse was laid on Mago’s future owners by the original ones. J.S.K.B. travelled the world in search of a means of getting the curse lifted. How he did that will be related in Islands Business in its January 2050 edition. By the way, Mago’s original owners can buy the island back if they can raise the F$20 million or so Gibson is said to have offered for it. By law indigenous owners have to be offered the chance of reacquiring lost land before it can be transferred to a foreign buyer.

PINA/PIBA merge update

So what’s all those talk about the old PIBA and the new PINA, acronyms for what used to be two regional media giants, the broadcasting association and the news association for islands of the Pacific. After all that ‘kiss and make up’ ceremony at the ‘hallowed’ grounds of the PIF secretariat, nothing has been heard of it, up till now at least. There’s been some movement admittedly, but only grudgingly we should add. The old PINA Nius online service died an induced death mid last month, but PINA members are waiting with abated breath to see whether they will be on the list for the new PACNEWS service. But where is the new strategic plan? When will the trouble-shooter take office, and those of you who think it will be a she and an Aussie say aye! And when will ads go out all over Oceania for those never say die scribes of the new look PACNEWS?

Down but not out

Who was it that said you can’t keep a good man down? That seems to be true in the beautiful atolls of Kiribati where a sitting MP managed to successfully retain his sit in a recent by-election. He lost it some months ago after he was charged and convicted for abducting a minor. The whisper was that it was a set-up, but then whispers are not entertained by the current occupant of the big beach house with a mammoth satellite disk in Bairiki. But funnily enough, while the law there states that a convicted MP automatically losses his seat, it does not forbid him from contesting it again upon release. That’s exactly what this MP of the opposition side did and despite standing against the man who put him in, the un-elected attorney general, the MP, once a prisoner now a free man, won! That’s democracy in the atolls for you. Oh, by the way, the unsuccessful candidate is back at his old job: being the unelected attorney general.

Oh, so different treatment?

From Private Eye, a British satirical magazine: The killing of three Black Watch soldiers (in Iraq in November) was front page news. And when the Ministry of Defence released their names—Scott McArdle, Paul Lowe and Stuart Gray—there were dozens of follow-up stories, photos and interviews with grieving friends and families. Another Black Watch private was killed by a roadside bomb a few days later and the initial headlines were similarly huge. But after the Ministry of Defence released his name, Fleet Street almost entirely lost interest. Several Ministry of Defence officers who were put on special late duty that evening to field the expected barrage of calls ended up knocking off early. Could this be because the soldier rejoiced in the name of Tukutukuwaqa, and was a Fijian rather than a sandy-haired Jock? Surely not.

Aussie worries

Aussie officials are increasingly frustrated by a recalcitrant, critical Pacific Islands media which refuses to follow domineering ideology and agenda. The latest blow was the withdrawal of two of the region’s four daily newspapers from the A$2.1 million AusAID-funded “Pacific” Media Project, on top of other publications’ questioning of Australian economic and strategic interests. There was much muttering behind closed Canberra doors about the “oppositional” and “anti-Australian” criticism of Ozzie benevolence and selflessness. Meanwhile, a glossy AusAID publication trumpets its value to Australian businesses, and a Pacific Islands child smiles from the pages; if only, Ozzie officials wish, the PI media was this compliant and naive.

Talking about Ozzie officials

Well, it now appears they’ve taken over Solomons’ most influential medium—Solomons Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC). Reports from Honiara reveal that two Australians have been contracted for the next 6 to 12 months to run SIBC. One will work closely with the editorial team while the other with management. Could one of them finally take over as SIBC general manager, replacing the local boss who has been appointed to be the government propangandist?

Statistical controversy

Funny figure games are happening in New Caledonia. A September census is arousing controversy, firstly because the French government didn’t like the way it was going to be run, and then secondly because indigenous Kanaks didn’t like the way it was run. Now New Caledonia’s authorities have confessed that the census became a mess because about 10 percent of the population boycotted it. Figures it produced can’t be read as being reliable. At the outset no less than one Jacques Chirac dropping in on the territory last year, objected to questions designed to update Kanak, European and other ethnically-orientated population numbers because, he said, all were French citizens. That annoyed the Kanaks, who want to know what their numbers are. It annoyed French settlers as well since they felt the questions inferred they were foreigners and they don’t want to see figures that show them to be a proportionately shrinking community. Politically, that’s not expedient for them. What’s the background of all this? Could it be that details of New Caledonia’s racial breakdown will show that the Kanaks are catching up at a rate that will restore their numerical superiority, just as indigenous Fijians, once a minority, are now 53% of the population? A 1996 census showed that the Kanaks were 44.04% of the then 196,836 population, Europeans 34.11%, Wallisians and Futunans 9.62%, Tahitians 2.62%, Indonesians 2.54%, and others 7.6%. The July 2003 population estimate was 220,467.

Still on statistics

What is a Papua New Guinea cabinet minister’s definition of a “statistical nightmare?” Ask security minister Bire Kimsopa who will explain the fact that only 5% of PNG’s annual output of 50,000 school leavers have any hope of finding a job. “Whatever happens to the 95% remains a statistical nightmare. They are in our towns and cities and we conveniently call them the youths of today.”

A Fiji cabinet shake-up?

Fiji’s Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, is promising himself the pleasure of a big New Year’s cabinet shake-up. Much of it has to do with his little problem with the army, which through November and December was broadcasting a strong impression that it had taken over the government.

Fiddling with power meters

Samoa’s Electric Power Corporation is sparking over the fact that about 50 consumers have fiddled their meters to the tune of about a million tala’s worth of power. And still on Samoa, its national university is planning to open a law school. One day.

No future in the kingdom?

One prominent expatriate Tongan says more and more Tongans see no future in the country for as long as the present management runs it. Businesses are pulling out and investors are now very wary of the country, our disillusioned informant assures us, since they don’t like being expected to concede cuts to people with powers of approval. Another worry is a rising tide of resentment aimed at large numbers of Chinese admitted to manage small Tongan-owned stores. Some eventually are taken over by them. There’s an impression that an increasing chunk of the 80-90 million pa’anga worth of remittances flowing into the country from Tongans abroad end up in the hands of the store managers for remittance back overseas; for China.

Drifting Cooks

Our spies tell us that in the Cook Islands the outlook is hardly better and may even worsen now. Governance in the Cook Islands has returned to most of the bad old ways, one despondent analyser of the country’s affairs relates, with a lot of questionable matters just swept under the carpet under pressure from politicians and their mates who have matters they don’t want aired in public.

Cracking relations

Relations between Vanuatu and Fiji began cracking over a few biscuits in December as the first South Pacific trade war broke out. Vanuatu slapped a ban on the importation of Fiji manufactured biscuits as protection for local biscuit manufacturers. The Fiji biscuit company, the offshoot of a flour mill that made its owners rich thanks to the monopoly it was allowed for years, complained that the ban infringed the Melanesia free trade agreement between the two countries. Vanuatu said biscuits weren’t covered by the agreement. Fiji said they were and threatened retaliation. Crumbs. What next? Vanuatu caved in when the foreign minister overruled the ban imposed by the trade minister.

Big Brother's watching you

After having done nothing much except talk since its inception in 1996 the Pacific Immigration Directors Committee has now outfitted itself with an office and its members are swapping intelligence between themselves about sus travellers. Travellers who don’t want to be items of intelligence shouldn’t travel looking sus.

Regional airline?

Watch for the appearance of PacificIslands.com; the nearest thing there will ever be to a genuine Pacific islands regional airline