Plea to end Pacific ‘colonial hangover’

Press, 26 September 1989, Page 13

Plea to end Pacific ‘colonial hangover’

DAVID ROBIE

looks at a leading academic’s call for

fresh government models in the South Pacific.

PACIFIC ISLANDS governments should look at overhauling their political and administrative systems and adapt them according to their own needs, says one of the region’s leading academics. People of the Pacific needn’t be overwhelmed by the wholesale adoption of foreign models. “There is an urgent need for an effective, flexible linkage between the government and the young and creative sectors of the population,” says Professor Ron Crocombe. “Alas, not much of the scope for creative adaptation has been grasped as yet.” New Zealand-born Crocombe, honoured as the University of the South Pacific’s first professor emeritus on his retirement to the Cook Islands, argues in his revised book — “The South Pacific: An Introduction" — for a move away from the rapid post-colonial growth of relatively inefficient bureaucracies.

Independent Pacific nations are "constrained by a lack of confidence — a hangover from colonial patterns — by the new dependency on foreign governments and foreign experts” who come mainly from nations which were previously the colonial powers. As one cynic notes, the metropolitan colonial offices are as powerful as ever but are now named Ministries of Foreign Affairs. While noting the relatively-low proportion of the population last year who were civil servants in the Solomon Islands (1.5 per cent), Vanuatu (1.7 per cent) and even Kiribati (3.1 per cent, which just tops the "developing country” average of 3 per he points thg', finger at several other

countries. The Cook Islands, for example, has a higher proportion than its official figure of 11 per cent, and Niue’s is even higher. He stresses that the great majority of people in positions of power, and of the young elite at the Pacific universities, are sons and daughters of a small minority in the previous generation who were either ministers of religion, civil servants, people of hereditary privileges, or business people. Crocombe cites examples of corruption and cases where national resources have been usurped for the personal benefit of those in power. He is critical of the financial impropriety involving “a disturbing number of leaders in politics and the bureaucracy, but police action at that level is rare.” Papua New Guinea’s former Foreign Minister, Ted Diro, was shown by a commission of inquiry last year to have accepted large sums of money from General Benny Murdani, then commander of the Indonesian armed forces, and to have negotiated a treaty of friendship between his country and Indonesia which was more favourable to Jakarta than Port Moresby. In Vanuatu last year, independent auditors targeted Barak Sope, leader of the ill-fated constitutional coup against the leadership of

Prime Minister Father Walter Lini. The auditors found that Mr Sope, responsible for the Vila Urban Land Corporation, had diverted large sums of money for his personal. use and for close political colleagues. Mr Sope also negotiated the purchase of large quantities of arms and ammunition from abroad. In the Cook Islands and Tonga, there have been scandals about civil servants drawing travel and other allowances far higher than their salaries and the actual costs.

“There are several countries in the Pacific where this is now a problem of massive proportions relative to the size of the national economy,” Crocombe says. He singles out Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Western Samoa as being hit by this problem more than other countries. This fifth edition of a book regarded at many universities and institutions as a sort of “bible” of the region, has been published by the University of the South Pacific’s Institute of Pacific Studies in association with the University of Canterbury. The author carried out his extensive revision while he was at Canterbury’s Centre for Pacific Studies before returning to Rarotonga. Although an extra 33 pages have been added, Crocombe deals with the Fiji coups in less than three pages and the Vanuatu crisis in half a page. About Fiji, he says: people familiar with

Fiji realised that the indigenous Fijian people would not tolerate a government dominated by the interests of the Indian community and that harmonious survival depended on a Fijian majority in power.”

Crocombe also sees ethnicity as a significant factor in Vanuatu’s problems, with most people of the capital island of Efate supporting Barak Sope and the opposition. Land rights is also a factor. “Personal ambition for power and material resources is more clearly evident here than in most Pacific political contests,” he says.

Tonga and Western Samoa once had the highest proportions of highly-educated manpower in the Pacific. Not any more.

Not surprisingly, Crocombe regards the biggest challenges for the South Pacific as coming from the north — particularly Japan. Formerly a ruthless colonial power in Micronesia for three decades, until World War H, and the springboard for large numbers of settlers in Hawaii and lesser numbers in New Caledonia, Japan is rapidly becoming a major aid donor and influence in the region.

Japanese vehicles and electronic equipment have virtually dominated the Pacific market About France, he says it remains to be seen whether its new policy of expanded aid and aggressive participation in regional affairs will achieve its goal of becoming an accepted member of the Pacific community by the twenty-first century.