It's not working for us!

J. Roughan

9 July 2009

Honiara

  

This past week our small nation celebrated its 31st birthday. Congratulations one and all! Many an African nation and nations elsewhere around the globe would be tickled pink to have achieved such a milestone--still free, united and with a hope for a bright future. However, there are more than a few of our people who are warning us about some seriously, big thunder clouds on the horizon.

 

The nation already weathered a severe storm, our Social Unrest years of 1998-2003. April 2006's Chinatown Burndown came as an ugly  reminder that, in spite of years of practice governing ourselves and a foreign military force at our beck and call, really in our very midst, we still  managed to fall off the social rails. The Chinatown Burndown tells us once again that there are some in our midst who feel the system is not working for their interests.

 

These two incidents' roots--Social Unrest years and the Chinatown Burndown--can be traced back to the sentiment that colors much of our history since 1978. Our people, although eager and extremely happy at independence day, now rightly say: "The Nation is not working for us!"   Other parts of society, however, sing a different tune. The political elite, politicans, government sector in general have truly prospered during 31 years of independence. Not so the bulk of the nation! It is not working for the rest of us!

 

Our Youth Time Bomb continues ticking loudly in our ears. This group of youthful citizens, the most numerous, making up more than 40% of our population, remain jobless, receive less than quality education and are seeing their dreams of a bright future fading fast. The Solomons as we all know is not working for this group!

 

What about women? Can the nation honestly say that the Solomons is currently working on their behalf? When women study parliament's numbers, 331 men and 1 woman over a three decade period, any thinking person is forced to admit that something is radically wrong with how we have been governing ourselves. Isn't this being voiced out now by many citizens who currently seek to re-dress the terrible imbalance of men and women in parliament? Women rightly claim loudly and clearly: "The Nation is not working for us!"

 

Because the nation is not working for most citizens--provinces on the receiving end of small grants while Central Government swallows up ten times as much--there is a clear determination to do something to stop this injustice and to make the lives of ordinary people fit the dreams of our original independence days..

 

Fortunately, at this stage the movement to make the nation work for every one is done in a wholly legal, rational and in a non-violent way. The Constitutional Review Congress, for instance, has for the two past months, May and June,  been sorting out the details of a future nation that works better for the majority and not simply for the select few.    

 

On the occasion of the recent 31st anniversary celebrations our Prime Minister asked for the whole nation to join forces and work together for a better, brighter and prosperous future. The pijin phrase he used summed up the theme nicely: Yumi Tugeta Bildim Kantri Blong Yumi! But this dream becomes reality if and when the whole country works for all people. If major parts of our nation--women, youth, the Provinces, etc.--feel they are second class citizens, called upon only when it is in the interests of those who run the country for their own benefit, then the Solomons will never be a country working for all of us.