They still don't get it!

J. Roughan

13 April 2010

Honiara

  

Present government members plan to run as an united group in the forthcoming national poll. According to themselves, they have done such a marvelous job of leading this nation as a group over the past two years that their six party coalition should present itself to the voter as a unit. May I dare to disagree? In fact, the best thing for an individual government member would do to have half a chance of making it back into Parliament is to run on his own, distancing himself completely from government's so called track record.

 

Why? Because the Sikua-led government's accomplishments over these past two years are fundamentally weak! In its defense, government backers may well quote the number of bills it has passed and how these have become the law of the land. Good! Great! Yes, passing a bill into law is an essential part of governance but being solid leaders to the whole country is a much more important test. For instance, what about its two failing state enterprises--SIWA and SIEA--sitting right under the government's nose which seriously fail their customers.

 

Electric power is consistently cut twice a day during the middle of the daily business cycle for two hours at a time. Not a single government authority has made comment on the issue, much less doing something about restoring power to the country's one business hub over these past four months. Tens of dozens of local business houses, the Honiara Town Council itself, private citizens, etc. if they can afford generators, all have bought their own power generators. They have given up on government's miserable attempts to supplying power and find it cheaper, certainly more reliable, than SIEA's erratic and expensive power output. 

 

SIWA is another sore point among people. Its constant denial to Honiara's 80,000 people's for clean, abundant water is fast becoming a serious health risk. Unless a householder has purchased at least one large water tank, then, counting on daily cooking, drinking, cleaning water remains a distant dream. Last week, the National Referral Hospital had become the latest victim of the poor water supply. 

 

Parts of Honiara, for instance, have not had its rubbish collected since before the early days of the Social Unrest, 1998. That's more than 12 years now! The piles of rubbish along Honiara's back streets is the favorite nesting place for rats, cockroaches and other vermin. Perhaps the rubbish is collected in and around the city centre but most people live, not down town, but in and around the town. Failure to pick up and dispose of rubbish is another serious health risk. 

 

Why in the world would anyone vote in a second round a government that has been inactive when it is currently unable to properly respond to  people's basic need for water, power and rubbish removal. Government's select committee recently conducted a thorough-going review of the National Referral Hospital's failings. What it uncovered were serious issues in the nation's health outreach programs and the committee came up with dozens of recommendations. When Parliament had a chance to study the committee's findings, government's response was curious. Few recommendations have been acted upon. 

 

And villagers living outside of Honiara and other urban centers haven't fared much better from the present government's outreach as well. Quality education, well stocked clinics, new roads linking markets and women's agricultural production and a major push for youth employment still remain at the planning stage level with little hope that these most needed basics will root in rural people's lives any time soon. Two separate surveys done the same year, 2009, said the same thing. Although the message was delivered by two different messengers, the message was the same in both cases.

 

SIDT's Eighth Report Card (July, 2009), for instance, showed that more than 2300 people marked the Sikua Government a failure. It showed how weak government had been in its handling of people's need for quality education, health issues and job creation. But the other survey, conducted by Australia National University personnel, said much the same thing. In both surveys, SIDT's and the Canberra survey, were in agreement: 40% of Solomon Islanders thought that the government's track record on improving basic services was not good.

 

Of course the government has run out of time! Parliament finishes its last seating on 24 April, less than two weeks away. May I suggest that the best and probably only viable strategy that members who plan to make a return bid to Parliament must clearly inform voters how their lives have been bettered since 2006, the country's last national election. How and where has the sitting member battled poverty? How many jobs, livelihoods and employment opportunities has the member funded, backed and worked on during his 4 years in office? With these facts in hand, the member can confidently appear in front of the voters with positive results and promise to do a better job in the future.