J. Roughan
5 August 2010
Honiara
5 August 2010
Honiara
Ordinary people, Honiara's citizens, are streets ahead of our political elite, political leaders and their parties. Last Wednesday's election showed up the large and growing gap between the political class' perceptions of how to run our country and those who do not have much power except their vote.
While much of Honiara was using up-to-date technology—cell phones, theatre teams, TV coverage , Pijin Komics—politicians, their masters and some of their followers were still bogged down in noisy car cavalcades along Mendana Avenue, picture posters of candidates and circus events.
Last Wednesday our national elections went off quietly, orderly and in general quite smoothly. Our 9th national election went off without any major hitch. Overseas observers as well as local or domestic observers were pleased with people's conduct.
Such an accomplishment is a major step in our country's political maturing which many an African nation would give its back teeth to pull off. But this maturity, this growing in political adulthood has been an uneven thing. In some respects part of our political landscape has grown significantly while other parts less so, much less so.
For instance, while the typical voter easily fitted in with the Polling Station's requirements—searching for one's name on the voters list, standing quietly almost reverentially in line waiting to cast his/her vote and professionally following the direction of the Polling Stations personnel—our political heavy weights seemed to be stuck in the past century.
In Honiara, for instance, candidates and their political parties staged a circus, something that had little or no information values, but was heavy on entertainment. Dozens and dozens of cars, trucks, taxis and buses, paraded up and down Mendana Avenue, blowing their horns, carrying upwards of hundreds of young people, many of them too young to vote.
To what purpose? How was the voting public informed, made more aware of the candidate's understanding of the problems facing the nation, his solutions, his responses to these pressing problems. On election day, I voted in the Central Honiara constituency—where 23 candidates were contesting the election. Of the almost 2 dozen candidates, I only knew four of them well and three others slightly. How I would have loved to have had a chance to listen to a public debated among these candidates!
What was needed, for example, would have been a public debate organized by Honiara City Council where candidates could have publicly debated the city's basic problems, how the candidate planned to work with other parliamentarians to solve them and where the money to tackle these problems would come from.
But Honiara got nothing along this line! What it got was a circus parade of cars, trucks, buses and taxis filled with young people shouting out slogans and indecipherable talk. All of this was happening while the rest of the nation was enjoying the modern miracle of cell phone technology and TV footage, our town politicians and their dull parties could only manage last century's technology: pictures of the candidates face, a few printed words and a circus of vehicles clogging up the streets.
No wonder the $50,000 campaign spending limit seems so small for many candidates. They're spending money on the wrong things. People need to know, to be informed, made aware of and brought up to speed. The last thing they need are spectacles which belong more to the world of entertainment than political understanding and awareness.
SIBC has made great use of reporters travelling out to the Solomons far reaches and reporting back to its headquarters in Rove. The Electoral Commission's use of mobile theatre teams, travelling across the length and breath of the nation, is another good indicator of getting into the 21st century. Back in the late 1980s SIDT pioneered the use of Pijin Komiks to teach villagers complex and difficulty subjects.While much of Honiara was using up-to-date technology—cell phones, theatre teams, TV coverage , Pijin Komics—politicians, their masters and some of their followers were still bogged down in noisy car cavalcades along Mendana Avenue, picture posters of candidates and circus events.
Last Wednesday our national elections went off quietly, orderly and in general quite smoothly. Our 9th national election went off without any major hitch. Overseas observers as well as local or domestic observers were pleased with people's conduct.
Such an accomplishment is a major step in our country's political maturing which many an African nation would give its back teeth to pull off. But this maturity, this growing in political adulthood has been an uneven thing. In some respects part of our political landscape has grown significantly while other parts less so, much less so.
For instance, while the typical voter easily fitted in with the Polling Station's requirements—searching for one's name on the voters list, standing quietly almost reverentially in line waiting to cast his/her vote and professionally following the direction of the Polling Stations personnel—our political heavy weights seemed to be stuck in the past century.
In Honiara, for instance, candidates and their political parties staged a circus, something that had little or no information values, but was heavy on entertainment. Dozens and dozens of cars, trucks, taxis and buses, paraded up and down Mendana Avenue, blowing their horns, carrying upwards of hundreds of young people, many of them too young to vote.
To what purpose? How was the voting public informed, made more aware of the candidate's understanding of the problems facing the nation, his solutions, his responses to these pressing problems. On election day, I voted in the Central Honiara constituency—where 23 candidates were contesting the election. Of the almost 2 dozen candidates, I only knew four of them well and three others slightly. How I would have loved to have had a chance to listen to a public debated among these candidates!
What was needed, for example, would have been a public debate organized by Honiara City Council where candidates could have publicly debated the city's basic problems, how the candidate planned to work with other parliamentarians to solve them and where the money to tackle these problems would come from.
But Honiara got nothing along this line! What it got was a circus parade of cars, trucks, buses and taxis filled with young people shouting out slogans and indecipherable talk. All of this was happening while the rest of the nation was enjoying the modern miracle of cell phone technology and TV footage, our town politicians and their dull parties could only manage last century's technology: pictures of the candidates face, a few printed words and a circus of vehicles clogging up the streets.
No wonder the $50,000 campaign spending limit seems so small for many candidates. They're spending money on the wrong things. People need to know, to be informed, made aware of and brought up to speed. The last thing they need are spectacles which belong more to the world of entertainment than political understanding and awareness.
What are our political masters doing? They publish pages and pages of difficult political text on their policies, their party's agenda, most of which their own members have failed to read. Why couldn't at least one political party employ some of our clever and gifted cartoonists, to come up with a Pijin Komik which would cover the party's manifestos in picture form?
Newly elected parliamentarians know well your own people have already entered the 21st century. What might have been effective for the 20th century is fast going the way of the dinosaur. Please look around you and listen to your people!
--
Paul Roughan
Chair
Islands Knowledge Institute (IKI)
www.islands-knowledge.org
Unit 17, NPF Plaza
PO Box 1682
Honiara, SOLOMON ISLANDS
+677 28642
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