We give you a nation blessed with peace! Don't mess it up!

J. Roughan

31 July 2010

Honiara

 

This Wednesday Solomons people go to the poll to elect the country's 9th Parliament. These newly elected members carry a great burden,  some thing greater than their own individual selves. For they have a nation of half-million people, their own wantoks and relatives, in their hands. This nation deserves much more than it has received over the past ten years or so.

 

First of all, our beloved Solomon Islands,enjoys a profound peace. The idiocy of Civil War which gripped sections of our people from 1998-2003 has passed. The tainted leadership of men with guns who led factions of Guale and Malaita young people has mercifully come to an end.   

Unfortunately, however, not all in the country are convinced that the deep levels of poverty, lack of youth jobs and easy money can't be secured through the barrel of the gun. These and other social ills require quick, decisive and comprehensive solutions which only parliament can effectively address. Please don't mess things up!

 

Ours is truly a blessed country! Food remains abundant, its resource base of thatch, flooring, housing material is more than adequate and the 1/2 million people's health is solid and getting better by the year.

 

Although poverty levels, especially among villagers and the urban dwellers, remain stubbornly high the means of lowering them rapidly--a food security, processing and value added economy, villager built infrastructure projects, upgraded semi-permanent homes, etc.--are, with strong, dynamic national leadership, open to us. 

 

We certainly are not a poor nation! Even with a severe decline of the forest industry, our copra, cocoa, oil palm, gold and fishing industries are significant big players in the national economy. Of course the revenues these enterprises generate can never be sufficient if 70% of the profit are gobbled up and pocketed by Central Government, Parliament and Honiara's elite.

 

There never will be enough funds for the nation's actual owners who control the nation's land, trees, fishing grounds, mountains, reefs, etc. but the greed of the political elite, power brokers and dominant ruling class make this impossible.

 

Solomons 9th Parliament starts off way ahead in the game. Not only does peace abound in the land, it's a peace created by the people themselves.  It is not merely a product of RAMSI presence. If village-life wasn't as peaceful as it is then hundreds more of RAMSI personnel would have had to be called in. As it is, fewer and fewer troops and police personnel have been needed because people's peacefulness has dominated the scene.

 

Our resource base remains as solid as ever. What is needed is careful management, prudent stewardship and creative administrators able and willing to work in the roll as servants and not to insist in always being on top, master and boss.

 

Newly elected parliamentarians we put into your hands a country still trying to find itself, beaming with confidence and hope for the future knowing full well that it enjoys a hard earned peace and blessed with an abundant of national revenue. Please don't mess it up!. God Bless Solomon Islands.