People view future brightly!

J. Roughan

4 September 2009

Honiara

 

SIDT's most recent Report Card marked the Sikua Government as a failure in its outreach to the country's citizens. Yet, in spite of the low marks delivered by people across the nation on government's health work, delivering quality education, resource assistance and the availability of small amounts of money, the 2,000+ people surveyed also predicted, much to everyone's surprise, that the Solomon nation would be enjoying a good future.

 

Almost 6 out of every ten persons asked in the June/July survey, said they were sure that the "Solomons had a great future ahead for itself". Yes, one person out of every 5 surveyed had also said the opposite but the vast majority of people were quite up beat about a solid Solomons future. We found such an upbeat mood strange! Present day's poor economics, government inability to pay its debts on time and a poor local business scene all seem to call more for a negative rather than the positive outlook predicted by the people for the nation's future.

 

Yet, people were telling us something quite different. Why is this so? What is it that the ordinary villager, the typical town dweller and daily worker is seeing that many of us are overlooking?

 

Back in 1995 SIDT while conducting a national poverty survey, came upon a similar people's prediction which, at the time, we didn't understand and, unfortunately, too easily set aside. SIDT's 1995 Poverty Survey asked thousands of people to assess their wealth or lack of it by using the local measuring yardsticks, not money in the bank but real wealth like land availability, job opportunities, education chances, water access, housing, food consumption, transport, communication, etc. etc. 

 

It was people's response to the last survey question that made us sit up and take notice. The last survey question asked people to mark their understanding of wealth during three different time periods: the years  between 1980-1990, from 1990-1995 and then to take a leap to the year 2000, five years to the future.

 

People's first two responses on their real wealth during the 1980-1990 and 1990-1995 periods were predictable. Yes, they did feel they were a little bit well off. However, when it came to them predicting five years in the future, the year 2000, people's scored themselves low, very low.  They were, in fact, predicting, long before the Social Unrest years of 1998-2003 hit the nation, that their world of 2000 was going to be a  poor one, much poorer, than they had been living over the previous past few decades.

 

In 1995, however, the nation hadn't seen any coups, it didn't have armed militants roaming the streets and edges of Honiara, there was no such thing as a Weather Coast rebellion with its many murders, rapes, burnings and certainly there was no displacement of more than 20,000 Guale workers and their families. All of this social chaos happened years after the year 1995!

 

What were these people seeing that most of us couldn't or wouldn't see? How could they predict a future which many of us only became aware of when staring it in the face, when we were in the middle of the Social Unrest? What is it that today's people are telling us in the latest SIDT survey?

 

They are telling the nation that the Solomons future is a good one, that things will become better and that life as we know it will become better for more and more of its people.  Could their predictions be wrong or quite off base? Of course they can but that was our response in 1995 when people were predicting a poor Solomons future. I hope today's prophets are on the mark, that the Solomons does have a bright future ahead of itself and that we are doing the right things to get there.  This time, however, I will be watching much closer than I did in 1995!