Truth alone destroys rumor, half lies and tok stori!

J. Roughan

16 September 2009

Honiara

Eighteen years ago this month, 27 September 1991 to be exact, a Solomons Airlines twin otter hit Mount Nasuha on southern Guadalcanal's Weather Coast on a return flight from Makira heading to Honiara. All fifteen people on board the aircraft died instantly. The nation was in deep shock for it was the worst aviation accident our small nation had ever experienced.

 

It didn't take long, unfortunately, for the rumor mill to go into overtime, the half lies to surface and tok stori to take hold. Foul play was at the heart of many of these rumors because of the presence of the prisoner Tony Bara who would have been the chief witness at a sensational murder trial had he not died in this air accident. To government's credit, the PM of the time, Solomon Mamaloni, immediately ordered a Death and Fire Inquiry be mounted so as to clearly identify what exactly had happened in this unfortunate accident. The PM was determined to stop all the made up stories in their tracks and get to the bottom of what exactly happened.  

 

Although an inquiry was immediately launched, to this day there has never been an official report tabled. Fortunately the Solomon Islands Chief Magistrate at the time, David Chetwynd who left the country in mid-1992, published his own study on the accident. It makes grim reading. He found serious fault with how rescue attempts were handled, interference from high officials and the tack of professional work at the accident scene. He was under the impression, however, that soon after his own report had been made public, the official inquiry document would be made known to the nation so as to put to rest the many rumors that had already risen. 

 

This never happened! Here it is 18 years later and still Solomon Islands people are left with only rumor, half lies and tok stori to explain the most serious air accident that had ever happened. The full picture of what really occurred on Mount Nasuha has yet to be heard.  The lesson  governments must learn from this kind of official inaction or refusal to make public what should be known doesn't just disappear or fade from people's minds. If the true facts of a situation are not made known or are deliberately hidden, that is not end of story. Rumor, half lies and tok stori take on a life of their own.

 

Isn't this what happened with the government's suppression of some parts of the Commission of Inquiry report on the 2006 Chinatown burndown? By with holding parts of the  Commission's report from people only confirms in their heart that the Chinatown Burndown was in great part due to RAMSI's poor policing efforts during those days. Solomon Star, in its Friday, 4 September 2009 issue for instance, quoted a Patrick O'Connor essay (originally printed in an Australian newspaper) where he clearly makes a point of asking why RAMSI's "unexplained failure to take basic security measures that could have prevented the violence".

 

Government's suppression of parts of the Commission's report doesn't help matters at all. In the 1991 Death and Fire Inquiry although mounted by the government of the day has yet to see the light of day 18 years later. That doesn't mean that people have forgotten about the air accident. It does mean, however, that the ordinary citizen now has mixed emotions about the usefulness of official inquiries if their findings are easily hid from the very people who have a right to know.

 

Presently a select Parliamentary Committee is thoroughly studying what is happening in our one and only Referral Hospital, No. 9. The committee's hearings, however, are held in open air, covered by live radio and then, for those unable to listen to the live radio coverage during the day,  in the evening hours a TV coverage brings the findings to the rest of the nation. One thing is for sure. This live radio and TV coverage of  what doctors, nurses and hospital staff are sharing out in public can never be bottled up, hidden from the public and brushed under the carpet.

 

It's easy to predict in the light of the medical staff's moving testimonies about their deep. serious and on going staff shortages, the broken but vital equipment, the poor staff discipline and a host of other weaknesses will certainly be addressed by the authorities and rather quickly so.  No. 9 is our final place for bring back good health. If the Referral Hospital is in such a miserable state, what can the rest of us hope for when serious sickness hits us. Overseas medical care, unless you are part of the political elite, is beyond the reach of 99.9% of us!

 

This on going hospital inquiry shows how important it is to have an official inquiry made public and in 'your face'. There can't be any cover up, or silence or 'mi no savvy' attitude. No. 9's life threatening shortcomings are clear to all the public especially to the members of Parliament. Once  the Committee's report is tabled in parliament, it would be political suicide for a parliament member to dismiss this report, make light of it or do anything but act on it and quickly so.

 

Truth, not only makes one free, it alone destroys rumor, half lies and tok stori!

Law of Unexpected Change

J. Roughan

10 September 2009

Honiara

 

Often we humans do things thinking that the outcome of our actions will produce only what we originally intended. But more often than we would like to think about, something entirely new comes from our action which had never entered into our minds in the first place. This happens so often that it's got its own name: the Law of Unexpected Change.

 

For instance when humans started doing more and more gardening and less and less hunting and gathering to secure their daily food, something new happened. Not quickly, of course, but over time it became clear. Gardening for food took a whole lot less time than searching for it, hunting and then killing it, But this new way of getting one's foot meant people had extra time on their hands to do other things like making better spears, stronger axes, newer tools, making music, etc. etc. 

 

This new ability to produce more and better food allowed people to heap up in one place and stay for longer periods of time. That meant the beginnings of village life which later grew bigger until small towns emerged. This great change would later on be called the Agriculture Revolution and would see human beings creating towns and then, cities.

 

But there were other revolutions as great as the agriculture one. When Mr. Gutenberg of Germany invented a printing press in the 1500s, everyone knew that more and more bibles would be printed and quickly so. Few people, however, realized that not only would more and more bibles be printed but other types of literature would explode in numbers as well. Novels, plays, literature, and all kinds of printed stuff could be massed produced as well. Here was another case of human beings intending one thing and the Law of Unexpected Change working overtime 

producing something else again.

 

All around us at this very moment we are living through another REVOLUTION. It is called the Information Revolution. The computer has forced us into a new kind of world and like revolutions before, some things happen which we expect--the production of faster and more accurate information--as well as things we never thought about--games, films, music, etc. Preparing for the unexpected change is just as important as knowing about the things we intended would happen. 

 

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century caught many off guard. Factory work, for instance, took the husband out of the home for long periods of time. Women's role began to shift from more than cooking and caring for children but managing the whole household for the good of the family. Even today we are still trying to catch our breath what this deep change has done to society, some of it good and solid, others filled with problems.

 

But our most recent Information Revolution is only beginning to take hold among us. Wait until the cell phone culture--Honiara's children already walk the streets with cell phones glued to their ears--starts to really take hold when it will be possible to contact any part of the Solomons with the flick of a few fingers on a cell phone. We will be able to speak to our distant relatives, friends and others while sitting at home and think such a luxury quite ordinary. But such a revolution brings ways of acting which we have never known and we hardly understand.

 

Just like other revolutions what we intend by this technology will be one thing and what really happens along side what we intended will press society in new ways. Nations in East Africa, for instance, already use cell phone to by pass commercial banks--a person can safely, securely and reliably transfer money from one end of the country to another.

 

Commercial banking firmsin East Africa had given the cell phone technology little concern and certainly never thought it could be used to transfer money.  But now these same banks are clamoring for government to limit cell phones from transferring money since such a practice is eating into bank profits. No one had thought a cell phone could do such a thing but ordinary people stretched the cell phone's ability. What else will the cell phone, part of the Information Revolution, bring to our own people in the next few years?

People view future brightly!

J. Roughan

4 September 2009

Honiara

 

SIDT's most recent Report Card marked the Sikua Government as a failure in its outreach to the country's citizens. Yet, in spite of the low marks delivered by people across the nation on government's health work, delivering quality education, resource assistance and the availability of small amounts of money, the 2,000+ people surveyed also predicted, much to everyone's surprise, that the Solomon nation would be enjoying a good future.

 

Almost 6 out of every ten persons asked in the June/July survey, said they were sure that the "Solomons had a great future ahead for itself". Yes, one person out of every 5 surveyed had also said the opposite but the vast majority of people were quite up beat about a solid Solomons future. We found such an upbeat mood strange! Present day's poor economics, government inability to pay its debts on time and a poor local business scene all seem to call more for a negative rather than the positive outlook predicted by the people for the nation's future.

 

Yet, people were telling us something quite different. Why is this so? What is it that the ordinary villager, the typical town dweller and daily worker is seeing that many of us are overlooking?

 

Back in 1995 SIDT while conducting a national poverty survey, came upon a similar people's prediction which, at the time, we didn't understand and, unfortunately, too easily set aside. SIDT's 1995 Poverty Survey asked thousands of people to assess their wealth or lack of it by using the local measuring yardsticks, not money in the bank but real wealth like land availability, job opportunities, education chances, water access, housing, food consumption, transport, communication, etc. etc. 

 

It was people's response to the last survey question that made us sit up and take notice. The last survey question asked people to mark their understanding of wealth during three different time periods: the years  between 1980-1990, from 1990-1995 and then to take a leap to the year 2000, five years to the future.

 

People's first two responses on their real wealth during the 1980-1990 and 1990-1995 periods were predictable. Yes, they did feel they were a little bit well off. However, when it came to them predicting five years in the future, the year 2000, people's scored themselves low, very low.  They were, in fact, predicting, long before the Social Unrest years of 1998-2003 hit the nation, that their world of 2000 was going to be a  poor one, much poorer, than they had been living over the previous past few decades.

 

In 1995, however, the nation hadn't seen any coups, it didn't have armed militants roaming the streets and edges of Honiara, there was no such thing as a Weather Coast rebellion with its many murders, rapes, burnings and certainly there was no displacement of more than 20,000 Guale workers and their families. All of this social chaos happened years after the year 1995!

 

What were these people seeing that most of us couldn't or wouldn't see? How could they predict a future which many of us only became aware of when staring it in the face, when we were in the middle of the Social Unrest? What is it that today's people are telling us in the latest SIDT survey?

 

They are telling the nation that the Solomons future is a good one, that things will become better and that life as we know it will become better for more and more of its people.  Could their predictions be wrong or quite off base? Of course they can but that was our response in 1995 when people were predicting a poor Solomons future. I hope today's prophets are on the mark, that the Solomons does have a bright future ahead of itself and that we are doing the right things to get there.  This time, however, I will be watching much closer than I did in 1995!

The Power of Paper!

J. Roughan

27 August 2009

Honiara    

 

Albert Hauhere, a newly trained teacher from West Are'are in the middle 1970s, decided to make a lasting contribution to his village. He didn't have any money to speak of but he did have a workable plan. With the help of dozens and dozens of young village people he could construct a solid football pitch right in the middle of the village. Houses and homes lined the pitch but in the middle was a professional football field which  over the years hosted many a football tournament, acted as a recreation focus for school kids and held other events.

 

At the beginning, the fly in the ointment was no matter how willing the kids were to help they needed work tools--pics, shovels, knives, etc--to bring their dream to reality. This is when Albert tested the power of paper. He sent a letter to the Auki administration asking it to help the village of Nariekeara create its own sports field. After all, Auki had already grandly announced that it had received a $10,000 grant to help in provincial sports fields. But his letter received a negative reply . . . yes, there had been money available for sports fields but it had already been completely used up for expenses to the Auki sport's field.

 

Needless to say, Albert wasn't happy at all. However, I asked him to do two things: first, file away a copy of his original letter and the Auki reply and secondly, mention these facts when applying for help from overseas. A letter to New Zealand, fortunately, brought a much happier reply. A New Zealand organization was quite interested in his project and replied with a cheque to cover the cost of buying field making tools.

 

But that wasn't the end of the story! Late in the 1970s, just before independence, Nariekeara was visited by a government school inspector, John Seagraves, who saw for the first time the football pitch right at the heart of the village. He was duly impressed. The grass was more like a golf course, drainage ditches worked perfectly and the football field's lines were clear and accurate. John asked a few questions as to who was the person behind the project, how was it accomplished, who had funded the necessary tools, etc. etc. 

 

However, the education officer became upset when he found out that the funds for the project had come from overseas. Why weren't local funds used? It was a poor way of starting off a country, he said, by seeking overseas funds when the same funds could be given locally. Albert asked the education inspector to wait a few seconds while he went into his own home to retrieve the file he had been saving for this very moment. 

 

Albert's thin file of a half a dozen letters told the whole story: a copy of his own original letter, Auki's rejection response, copies of his letters to New Zealand and finally, the last letter which had carried the cheque to buy the tools necessary to build the field. Once Mr. Seagraves had read the correspondence, he quietly put the folder down and no more was said. Clearly Albert Hauhere had done the right thing but the message was clear and simple: Paper had Power.

 

How often people have come to me telling me of their projects, their plans, their dreams. Many would relate to me that they had shared these very dreams and plans with their honorable but nothing had come of them. When I pressed them for more detail, more often than not only words and tok tok were shared with their MP. Did they present the Honorable with a paper detailing how they intended to bring their dream to reality. No, the usual answer came back. They had spoken about their plans, their dreams but no paper of any kind was presented. 

 

Many Solomon Islanders hate paper! Talk, speaking and conversation is their thing. All this paper work is white man's way and we in the Solomons do things differently. Unfortunately, it is paper that makes the world turn . . . not money. If we don't master paper, then it will come back to master us.

 

As much as we don't like paper and see it as more an enemy than the more we will lose out. There are plenty of young Solomon Islanders coming on stream who handle paper very well, thank you. Those of us who find the paper route too difficult to follow, then get those of the family who are good at putting things down on paper to help us out in our dreams. If Albert could do this almost 40 years ago, certainly we should be thinking of it today.

Report Card and Millenium Development Goals!

J. Roughan

6 August 2009

Honiara

 

Last week's Report Card results say much about Solomon Islands chances of getting close to hitting its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target. Nations across the world, the Solomons included, publicly promised nine years ago to pull out all stops to have its poorest people achieve, by year 2015, the majority of the millennium development goals.

 

Our political masters committed the country to getting rid of extreme poverty, having universal primary education, reducing child mortality, improve maternal health, ensure the integrity of our environment, etc. The latest Report Card survey results were, among other things, measured how far along this road we had traveled as a nation. Unfortunately, this recent Report Card's failing grades say we are not even traveling in the right direction.

 

If each section of SIDT's Report Card is closely studied, it becomes clear that government is falling farther and farther behind on its promise to its own people. This promise committed government to raise the quality of life of our poorest and the nation's least powerful.

 

Health Services  56/100

 

Urban, rural and those living just outside of towns and cities were asked to rate government's efforts in health matters. Before marking  government on how well or poorly it has been working on teh nation's health--work of hospitals, clinics and aid posts as well as the doctors, nurses and other staff--the person was asked to weigh up their experiences over an eighteen month period.

 

Too often our survey takers heard complaints that the needed medicines were absent or out of date or that the health worker was less than enthusiastic in trying to aid the sick person. Many low marks in this area are traced back to personal experience of people when interacting with the government's medical establishment.

 

Quality Education 65/100

 

The Sikua Government's best score comes in the education sector. People do recognize when government is trying hard and reaching out to its people. But they are not blind to an overall view of education. They are not slow to critique local teachers when they fail to attend class, continue to demand school fees in the face of government's efforts to strike them out and are saddened by poor school buildings and such. 

 

Resource Assistance 55/100

 

Citizens know well that their gardens, forests, reef and sea are their life blood. Once one or two of these resources go into decline or worse still, in danger of disappearing, then life becomes most difficult. That is why those surveyed gave government a low mark. Its field officers weren't working out among people, weren't teaching villagers how to get the best out of land and failed to establish markets for people's products.

 

$$$ Availability 45/100

 

The global financial tsunami is hitting the nation's small people hard these days. Of course many are lucky who can call upon garden, forest and sea for food and sustenance. But more and more small amounts of money are needed to buy 'luxuries' like soap, taiyo, matches, cooking oil, etc. But store prices scare them. Their prices go in only one direction . . . up, up and up!  That is why the typical Solomon Islander needs small amounts of money to begin to taste The Good Life. Yet, this is the very area where less and less is the order of the day.

 

Average  55/100

 

The MDG is a useful yardstick measuring government's track record.  How well or how poorly is the political establishment treating its people. Today's Report Card is another way of measuring how the government of the day performs its primary duty. After 20 years of measuring the results, it's sad to say that rather than our poor growing out of their poverty, they are falling lower and lower. When will things change?

 

Traveling backwards

J. Roughan

30 July 2009

Honiara

Below are the results of SIDT's latest people's Report Card survey on government's service delivery to its citizens over the past 18 months--December 2007-June 2009--of the Sikua Government's hold on power. This Report Card is the eighth (8th) people survey conducted by SIDT since 1989, twenty years ago. In this survey, people across the nation--more than 2100 of them--mostly from the provinces--64%--marked out their reactions to the government's work in their lives. It does not make for happy reading!

 

Other Report Card readings, dating back to the late 1980s when Solomon Mamaloni was Prime Minister, are detailed to help the typical reader understand how the present administration stacks up to former governments of the day. Unfortunately, not too well at all! In fact, only in the education sector (65%) does the Sikua administration show any advancement over other former governments. Yet, even this one bright spot in an otherwise uniformly dismal result remains on the lip of failure. Any thing less than a 60% mark, for instance, is a failing result.

 

During the Kemakeza era two Report Cards--2001-2005--the effects of the Social Unrest years weighed heavily on the government's ability to reach out to its citizens. Providing the basic services of quality education. strong medical attention, increasing employment opportunities, etc. were difficult to accomplish. Security and peace, for instance, were the vital parts of daily life.

 

In today's calm, security and peacefulness nation wide, however, there is little reason why the present Report Card results aren't much stronger. Of course, the current national economic strain helps explain a bit why people have marked the Report Card with a low 45% when it comes to  Availability of Money. But the other low results of the Report Card--Health Services and Resource Assistance--call for other reasons to explain what is happening.

 

Part of the explanation rests in the attitude of MPs, Civil Servants and Solomon's political class which more and more are under the illusion that government and its wealth is basically for themselves and less and less for the citizens of this nation. A sense of entitlement which has recently come to the fore over these past few weeks--spouse $50,000 retirement fund, $400,000 termination grant to MPs, special housing for the PM, etc.--must be counted as part explanation of the sorry state of this Report Card.

 

Next year the nation goes to the poll to elect a new Parliament. It's quite clear that many a voter will use the present Report Card results as a talking point for candidates to respond to. Those present members of parliament would be well advised to study this report and aim to do some serious soul searching about its meaning in their lives. If they seek to be re-elected, it would be wise to map out ways of making a real difference in the lives of the people of their constituency rather than thinking of ways of lining their own pockets.

Massive transfer of national wealth!

J. Roughan

23 July 2009

Honiara  

Over the past 31 years the Solomons have witnessed a massive transfer of national wealth away from landowners, villagers and rural people to a select few--the political elite and the political class. Much of this transfer, unfortunately, has been legal!

 

The latest version of this wealth distribution scheme now three decades long has been the efforts of a few to quicken the pace of the transfer, by clothing it in legal language and await people's verdict on the action. Well, ordinary citizens across the land have had enough! Rewarding parliamentarian spouses a $50,000 termination grant has finally broken the long-suffering silence of the tax payer.

 

In the face of a global financial meltdown where country after country struggles to cope with rising budget shortfalls, the response from certain members of the political class has been to travel the opposite direction. Rather than search for ways to save money and budget wisely with dwindling amounts of ready cash, our law makers and their cronies decided to break the bank. They don't intend to save but to spend more of what is actually owned by the many to lavish it on the few. 

 

In the nation's earliest days, 1978-1986, a good case could probably have been made that its senior law makers were deserving of special privilege. After all, it was argued, although few parliamentarians brought much at all to the law making process, perhaps offering high salaries and extending to them many expensive perks, it was a way to attract the best and the brightest to the service.

 

Unfortunately, few MPs, overwhelming male, lived up to the requirements of office. A brief review of 30 years of history shows how poorly our MPs have performed over these years. Once the Solomons political class had the reigns of power in their hands, our economy began to falter badly. In 1978, for instance, the Solomons dollar was equal to the American dollar. In other words, Solomons currency was as strong as the US dollar. Now thirty years later it takes 8 Solomons dollar to buy a single American one. In fact, as any one who has traveled overseas knows, it is quite difficult to exchange our currency with other any other countries' currency.

 

Because our political class proved themselves so poor in governance, not only has our economic health taken a severe beating, but we have become the only Pacific nation beholding to other countries' military. Our parliament's disastrous mishandling of the national economy has been matched by an equally destructive drive to destroy the very nation.

 

Our first eight years of independence--1978-1986--were our best years. Compared to the following years, these first eight years witnessed real progress for most of our people, not only the few at the top. In our first years, commodity--cocoa, copra, palm oil, fish--prices started to dip worldwide. It was a case of taking two steps forward and one step backward. Still that did mean we were advancing--only one step at a time--but that was an advance although slower than we would have liked.

 

We had no war wounds to heal, destroyed infrastructure to re-make or people on their last legs. But our national leaders in the person of the MPs, their cronies as well as many local landowners refused to accept this situation. No they had a better idea! They decided to make a giant leap forward by selling off our round log wealth for miserable amounts of money.

 

The round tree export of the 1980s led directly to the Social Unrest years of 1998-2003 when the country nearly destroyed itself. Without a unified police force and a dedicated Central government capable of leading people and overseeing a weakening economy, all we could do was to ask the rest of the Pacific to come in and save us.   

 

Yet, before RAMSI ever landed on our shores it was the village and the villager which came to the rescue and kept us afloat until the might of Australia and other Pacific nations could stabilize the nation. Now six years down the track, although we are still not healed, the same leaders who pounded the country to its knees are at it again. They want to continue the same game plan--massive transfer of national wealth into their own pockets--that brought so much destruction and heartache to the nation in the first place. When will we ever learn?