Pushing the panic button!

J. Roughan

11 March 2010

Honiara.

 

Our MPs are in full panic mode! Each and everyone of them must face the voting public within the next few months. The majority of them feel they are ill prepared for this vote which will determine their fate for the coming four years. And they have every reason to run scared! They have lived well, better than ever before in their lives. But that life style is in serious danger of coming to a quick, inglorious end for most of them when they face their people's vote of confidence in mid-2010.

 

Ever since the 1984 national elections, on average, 44% of sitting MPs have failed in their re-election attempts. This up coming election will not only confirm this high turn over rate but more MPs than usual will bite the dust. In fact, according to my calculations, up to 55% of the present house will be out of a job come the end of June, 2010.

 

At this stage, our MPs are frantically pulling out all stops. Their first line of defense is to pressure the Government to immediately dole out their constituency grants--Rural Livelihood, Millennium Fund, Special Mini Project, RCDF and Parliament Mini Project Fund--or, as the rumor flying around town has it, they may threaten not to attend Parliament's very last sitting. MPs realize that their track record over the past four years has been less than sterling. Few of them can claim that most Solomon Islanders' lives better now than when they first arrived in Parliament.

 

The different kinds of development funds held by government are the only tools in their grasp to help convince voters that they should be re-elected. However, the history of sitting parliamentarians attempting re-election in national polls runs contrary to these expectations.Since 1984, 44%, on average, of sitting MPs have failed in their re-election attempts.

 

% of Parliamentarians failing in Re-elections.

 

(see separate printout)

 

 

Too many MPs are counting on a last ditch exercise of handing out development grants to constituents at this late hour to make up for their lack of concern for them since the last national poll in 2006. MPs' fading hope is to change voters minds by throwing development monies at them at this late stage. But that type of thinking has long since passed! SIDT's most recent Report Card (July 2009 below) can be viewed in a context of the last 7 Report Cards dating back to 1989. Not a single Report Card over a twenty-year period indicates that the politicians of those times were actually thinking and acting for the benefit of the ordinary Solomons citizen.

 

                                                            

Report Card Summary(see separate printout)

 

There is a close connection between the failure of many MPs seeking re-election and their disregard to the lives of ordinary Solomon Islanders. As noted above, 44% of all MPs suffered defeat in their bid to be re-elected to parliament. The foundations of the Basic Life in Solomons does not rest on doing development projects but on getting the basics of island living right. People want and need quality education, well run and properly staffed health clinics and hospitals. resource assistance and the availability of modest amounts of money on a regular basis. Projects  are only the icing on the cake but they are not the stuff which the cake is made of.

 

Of course people look forward to working on a development projects but their main concern is that their everyday lives offer hope for a better future for their kids and themselves with quality education, well staffed clinics, their resource base of food production helped and the hope for jobs are met first. Future MPs would be well advised to pay immediate and constant attention to past and future Report Cards to assure re-election rather than pushing the panic button at the last moment hoping that a project or two will turn the tide that is fast going out on most of them.