Regional unity in Pacific gets mixed reception

Press, 1 June 1982, Page 5

Regional unity in Pacific gets mixed reception

NZPA correspondent Canberra Supporters of regional unity in the Pacific Islands had a mixed time at the fifth South Pacific judicial conference. . One delegate said that the conference represented one step forward and two steps back for the cause of regional unity. The step forward, he said, was really the existence of the conference, as a continuing forum for the exchange of views. After five meetings in the 10 years since the concept was born, the judicial conference is now entrenched. At a private business session after the Canberra meeting, delegates from 17 nations were almost unanimous about the desirability of going on with a sixth conference in two years. The three days of the Canberra conference provided stimuli toward the kind of legal reform in the individual nations which will

have the effect of bringing systems closer together and endowing them with a more distinctive ‘'Pacific" flavour. An example was when Justice Mari Kapi of Papua New Guinea's national Court of Justice delivered a papei* which questioned the suitability for Pacific nations of old common law rules about criminal investigation. The discussion after revealed many reasons why the common law codes oh such matters as confessions and the right to silence were inappropriate to the Pacific experience. However, there was a large measure of agreement that the common law rules would have to be modified if justice was to be done. The judges who attended this conference will probably speak to the politicians who go to Apia. Western Samoa, for a law officers’ conference. Progress on the rules governing criminal procedures are likely to stem from the Apia meeting. The most concrete proposal at the Canberra conference came from the special assistant to the vice-chancel-lor of the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Mere Pulea Kite. She. incidentally, was the only non-judge. the only woman and one of only three non-white people to play an active part at the conference. ■Her proposal was not really new: the establishment of a regional court of appeal for the Pacific, providing a “second tier” of appeals from the various national courts in the region. For countries under'Brit-

ish or American systems, it .would represent the final court of appeal for regional litigants. The proposal appeared to favour the idea of a travelling court, sitting in the country from which appeals came, rather, than one set up in a particular place.

The creation of such a court would have enormous practical and symbolic significance in the' development of regional identity. The proposal, however, was pulled to pieces in the long and lively discussion following. Almost all present supported the concept of the regional court but few gave it any chance of getting off the ground. The objections raised ranged from the jealously guarded nationalism of newly-independent nations to the prohibitive cost of supporting such a court. Judges from some countries raised constitutional barriers to the jurisdiction of such a court. There was also the problem of the basic differences in the laws of those countries which had inherited common law practice and those which had inherited the French legal system. - Chief Justice Edward King of the Federated States of Micronesia, had the courage to mention the vision which all knew was behind the idea of a regional court. “We have a unique opportunity to be eclectic and iconoclastic and to look for ideas that are not necessarily tied into our legal training," he said. The vision implied in a regional appeal court in-

cluded the far-reaching move to adopt and develop the most useful parts of the inherited legal systems. British. French or American, into a distinctively Pacific system of common law. It was the prospect of achieving that task which, with nationalist sentiment, lay at the heart of the conference’s strong resistance to the -court of appeal proposal. If any consensus at all was reached, it was that it would be a good thing if a stable “panel" of judges, preferably including some who had or would acquire a special "feel" for the Pacific, were established to provide courts of appeal for the individual nations in the region. The establishment of such a panel would be an advance, but not a big advance, on the present situation where the wealthier, more developed countries in the region, notably New Zealand, provide judges on loan to their smaller neighbours to hear appeals. The proposal did. however, have the effect of moving the judiciaries of the region toward greater co-operation and less dependence on the old colonial powers and the more affluent former colonies. The result was understandable. Judges, even when willing. are seldom able to make decisions that could bring about changes of such direct political and diplomatic significance. The proposal in'Canberra has guaranteed that the regional court and the visions of regional unity it carries with it. will remain in the wilderness.