Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Learn to unpackage CODE words!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Parliament needs- to catch up!
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Villagers latest message:"We're staying home!"!
23 March 2011
Honiara
Yes, the 2009 Census confirms that our population numbers have passed the half million mark (510,000) and also reconfirms how many or our citizens have decided to live in a growing Honiara city and our many provincial towns. But it also reminds us how many people have not moved to the Solomons urban sector but prefer living their lives at village level.
In the 1976 Census, for instance, our urban population had reached 12% and we were informed by experts of the day to expect that by the turn of the century, only 24 years away at that time, almost 1/3 of our people would have left village life to take up residence in Honiara, Auki, Kira Kira, Buala, etc. etc. The migraton from rural areas to the urban was unstoppable and happening all over the globe. Every nation was undergoing the same shift from rural to urban. Some nations, like China, were set to have in the 21st century a dozen or so mega-cities with more than 10 million people. Suva, for example, is already home to more than 1/2 of Fiji's population and still growning. How would the Solomons be any different!
Yet, our rural people were sending the nation but especailly government officials a different message! In 1989, the next Census already showed a slowing down of Solomon Islanders heading for town. In that Census only 16% of village people decided to take up residence in an urban setting. That meant a 4% increase of population in a 13 year period--1976-1989. The 1999 Census, moreover, confirmed that there definitely was a slowing down of people settng up urban residence when that Census showed a shift from village to town had been modest. Of course the Social Unrest period--1998-2003--made it difficult to secure an accurate count of what was happening nation-wide.
Hence the preliminary figures for the 2009 Census do not come as a complete surprise. It seems that rather than the urban numbers increasing like so many other nations currently experience worldwide, the percentage of our people leaving the rural area and those living in town has hardly moved. The 2009 Census shows that the urban population has gained only 1% over a ten year period to reach 17% for the whole of the Solomons. Here's a brief table to clarify the issue:
SOLOMON ISLANDS URBAN POPULATION GROWTH.
(1976 - 2009)
CENSUS % INCREASE
1976 12%
1989 16%
1999 16%
2009 17%
These urban Census figures cover a 33 year period--1976-2009--of national history and are unlikely to change much over the next ten years or so. These numbers mean that the vast majority--currently 83%--of our people continue to vote with their feet to remain solidly village bound, are quietly resisting the lights of town life and yet seek to be served with better education opportunities, adequate medical assistance and a modest portion of the national investment.
Yes, the Solomon's urban sector continues to grow (but at a much slower rate than previously predicted), more people have chosen to live city life but the best meaning of these figures is that most people are determined to stay close to their village resource base which guarantees a place to grow sufficient food and insures protection, security and peacefulness in their daily lives.
:Politicians of all stripes, both at national and provincial levels, have their work carved out for them. Unfortunately, as SIDT's nine Report Cards dating back to the Mamaloni era in 1989 have shown government after government have had terrible track records in assisting people in accessing life's basics. Perhaps if our political leaders became more interested in their people's daily lives, then when election time does roll around the Member's 50% failure rate at the polls could begin to change to something more positive.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Jobs, Jobs and more Jobs! But what kind of jobs?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
RAMSI in photos! Only half the story?
9 March 2011
Honiara
Honiara's newest highrise--the mid-town Hyundai Building--currently hosts a great photo history of the RAMSI presence in Solomons from its earliest days in country. A couple of hundred pictures detail RAMSI's history from its initial arrival at Henderson Airport in mid-2003 to the present day. No matter what you may think of this intervention force, this picture-history makes for a worthwhile addition to national understanding of recent major historical events.
Historians, social scientists and Pacific Islands experts from different universities have flocked to our shores for a closer view of what actually happened here durng our Social Unrest period (1998-2003) and the RAMSI event (2003-2011). They have given themselves the task of more fully understanding why the RAMSI intervention event had been necessary to help not only Solomon Islanders grasp its full meaning but to learn what the intervention did right and what could have been done better.
The world's new millennium, not yet a dozen years old, has had more than its fair share of military interverventions. Three months earlfier, for instance--March 2003--just before RAMSI landed in the Solomons, America, Britian, France and other nations intervened in Iraq. In 2001, Afghanistan suffered its turn for military intervention. Currently, Libya with its Colonel Gaddafi, looks more and more likely to become a candidate for military intervention as well.
Scholars focusing on the Solomons RAMSI intervention eagerly search out what lessons could be gleaned from what happened in this neck of the woods to make other interventions more productive and peaceful and much less destructive. Over this 8 year period, then, only a single RAMSI soldier was killed in the line of duty. Yes, the RAMSI force suffered a few additional accidents but the outcome of a two-thousand military, police and admin presence, working in a strange and foreign context, has been so remarkably peaceful, one could say, tranquil. Where else in the world over the past hundred years has such an outcome been achieved?
And this question highlights the second part of the title of this essay: Only half the story? Are RAMSI's truly great accomplishments--quickly bringing peace back to troubled parts of the nation, rounding up, bringing to court and jailing many criminal militants, re-setting government's ability to once again function, getting the national economy back on track, etc. etc.--the fruit of the intervention force alone? Or have there been other forces, quite silent ones, working in the background which were as vital and critical to the very success of the whole RAMSI operation?
I speak of the typical Solomon Islands villager, the nation's silent majority, who seems to have been overlooked in the RAMSI photo history. Of course there are many photos of islanders in the picture-history but they are often portrayed as interested by-standers, as outsiders applauding the positive outcomes of the foreign presence. Factually the nation's Social Unrest period was basically confined to Honiara, Guale's Weather Coast, the Marau area, parts of North Malaita and one or two places in Western Province. Fortunately 95%+ of the Solomons were not involved with the disturbances of the Social Unrest period.
It was, however, the nation's little people who kept the country glued together, functioning and caring for the women, children, sick and Olos at the village level. For five years--1998-2003--village people with little help from central authority and less from a compromised police force kept villagers, who make up more than 80% of the population, fed, housed and protected.
These very same people too had suffered the pains of over a twenty-year period, poor political leadership patterns, inept delivery of basic services of education, health services and infrastructure work, growing poverty levels, rampant corruption, etc. etc. but they never took up arms, killed people different from themselves and caused the nation to fly off its social rails.
For every unrest and social dislocation that was found in Guale, Malaita and Western Provinces, these were more than matched by other the Solomons provinces of Temotu, Makira, Central, Isabel, Choiseul where little or no unrest rooted. RAMSI, in fact, didn't set a foot in these other provinces until more than a year had gone by since its landing.
I'm the first one to say that RAMSI has been a blessing to the Solomons. I make the point, however, that this great success depended a great deal upon the common sense, backing and cooperation of the 'silent majority'--the Solomons Villger. Yet, these have yet to be thanked much less duly rewarded with better political leadership and a stronger functioning state. The RAMSI photo history should at least recognize the place the Solomons small people played in keeping this nation alive.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
MDGs are everyone's business!
Human rights security and peace!
J. Roughan
23 February 2011
Honiara
Near-East countries—Egypt, Bahrain, now Libya, etc.—to name but a few are currently in deep social and political turmoil. Governments, decades in power are being swept away overnight like so many dead leaves on a tree. Strong men, kings, Prime Ministers, dictators and whole government systems are feeling the awesome strength of People Power.
Machine guns, even the use of heave duty mortars, rockets and anti-aircraft guns are being used to quell their own people who only last month cowered in their homes in deep fear. Now thousands, not just young men but women, older people even children in parents' arms continue to come out on city streets. Nothing stops them until they see and feel a new political order in their country beginning to take root.
This new order represents a full flowering of basic Human Rights where all—peasant, villager, worker, business owner, politician, ruler, etc.—are all equal under the law. Where corruption, no matter at what level, is tackled head on, people voice out their frustrations without fear of prison, a safe life becomes the fundamental part of all levels of society and not just for the rich, famous and powerful.
All of these happenings began in mid-January this year. Of course the peoples' frustration, fear and poor lives were rooted in decades of discrimination and government contempt of Small People. What could these poor, ordinary people possibly do? They had become so used to repression, without any rights and powerless to act that the only option open to them was to keep a low profile, pray a lot and hope for the best.
But this faded overnight! One young Tunisian had had enough! All he was doing on a daily basis was to feed and care for his small family by earning a few cents selling fruits and vegetables at the local market. But he refused to pay a bribe to the local police. They confiscated his meagre garden produce and refused to give the vegetables and fruit back to him until he paid the bribe.
Rather than giving into their unjust demands, he burnt himself in a public square rather than continuing a life of salivary. That was 25 January 2011, less than a month ago! Since that time, however, ordinary people of the Near-East have exploded in rage. After years of repression, lack of basic Human Rights and living in deep poverty, they exploded on the streets of many capitals.
No one could have predicted that such a minor happening—a street vendor's refusal to pay a bribe—could have caused so much upheaval. Yes, had a head of state been assassinated, or a government toppled by an army of terrorists or some kind of a natural calamity hit the region, perhaps that would have been enough to trigger off a universal rebellion.
In hindsight, however, the continuous government refusal to honour people's fundamental and basic Human Rights for many years must now be added to those events which have the power to change the direction of history overnight. The question we in the Solomons must now ask ourselves is: Will the continuous disregard by authorities to people's basic rights trigger a revolt among our own people?
Like the Near-East countries now burning out of control many of their people's grievances—growing poverty levels, youth unemployment, corruption at society's highest levels, poor delivery of basic social services of education, health and infrastructure building, etc.—are alive and well here in our own islands. Twenty years of SIDT's survey work is proof enough that village people and the urban poor are dissatisfied with government non performance.
Are we building a big stick to beat ourselves with by refusing to listen to our people and to their just demands on human rights, security and therefore peace? The utter nonsense of parliamentarians hopping from one side of the House to the other leaves the nation gasping for breath. When will it stop? When will our leaders take their citizens seriously? Must the country explode like the Mid-East nations are doing right now before we come to our senses?