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?

First things first!

J. Roughan

16 July 2009

Honiara 

 

Honiara City Council recently announced it was seriously planning to construct the nation's first "children's hospital" in the Pacific. What great news! Here, right in the heart of the city, is to be a hospital dedicated primarily to the well being of children and open 24/7. It looks like some people in authority have put on their collective thinking hats and are intending to have the city take serious steps in the health business. 

 

But then I started to think. How much difference will a new hospital do with the filth of the city which has been collecting for many years now. What about the mounds of rubbish that have not been collected for more than five years now. Yes, not five days, 5 weeks or 5 months but five years.now.

 

These mounds of uncollected rubbish are the happy home of cockroaches, rats and other vermin. If the medical profession worldwide has learned anything over the past half century, it knows that the best way to fight disease, reduce skin troubles and weaken the grip of sicknesses is to keep a town clean, destroy the breeding  places of diseases and make a clean surrounding the target. 

 

Hospitals are for curing people who fall sick. Preventing sickness in the first place is a much more powerful way of making and keeping people healthy. No, don't get me wrong. Of course a Child's Hospital is a great idea. But a more powerful way to insure our children's health is to insure everyone in town is healthy.

 

At present there's not a single public toilet for more than 80,000 Honiara residences. The greatest health strides of the 20th century were not found in its penicillin, antibiotics and other medical miracles but the humdrum work of getting rid of human waste, keeping public places clean and insuring plenty of good, clean and plentiful water around.

 

We in Honiara have none of the above! No public toilets, little running water and the filth of our town roads is embarrassing to say the least. I  normally ask any first time visitor to Honiara what is their biggest surprise. Too often I get back this response: "The town is so dirty!" I don't bother arguing with them since their first-time insights are right on target.

 

All my toktok is not set out to stop Honiara City Council from going ahead with its plans to erect a Children's Hospital but to ask questions about the context of this new hospital. If the town can't clean up its streets, if rubbish is hardly ever collected, if good, clean water is rarely delivered then, a half dozen new hospitals will not make much a difference to town health.

 

Malaria reduction in the Solomons has come about not by posting a medical doctor in each village, erecting new hospitals in every ward but by making sure of three fundamentals of primary health. Have people sleep under treated mosquito nets nightly, keeping village grass and weeds low and when a person does come down with malaria, immediately treat the sick person with anti-malarial medicine. By following these three rules, more and more malaria has been beaten.

 

As said before, yes, go ahead put up a Children's Hospital but at the same time let's get the town looking clean, build at least half a dozen  public toilets--leased out and run locally for profit--and demanding more clean water. If we can get these three things going, after a few years we might actually close the hospital down . . . there won't be enough sick children around town to use it!

It's not working for us!

J. Roughan

9 July 2009

Honiara

  

This past week our small nation celebrated its 31st birthday. Congratulations one and all! Many an African nation and nations elsewhere around the globe would be tickled pink to have achieved such a milestone--still free, united and with a hope for a bright future. However, there are more than a few of our people who are warning us about some seriously, big thunder clouds on the horizon.

 

The nation already weathered a severe storm, our Social Unrest years of 1998-2003. April 2006's Chinatown Burndown came as an ugly  reminder that, in spite of years of practice governing ourselves and a foreign military force at our beck and call, really in our very midst, we still  managed to fall off the social rails. The Chinatown Burndown tells us once again that there are some in our midst who feel the system is not working for their interests.

 

These two incidents' roots--Social Unrest years and the Chinatown Burndown--can be traced back to the sentiment that colors much of our history since 1978. Our people, although eager and extremely happy at independence day, now rightly say: "The Nation is not working for us!"   Other parts of society, however, sing a different tune. The political elite, politicans, government sector in general have truly prospered during 31 years of independence. Not so the bulk of the nation! It is not working for the rest of us!

 

Our Youth Time Bomb continues ticking loudly in our ears. This group of youthful citizens, the most numerous, making up more than 40% of our population, remain jobless, receive less than quality education and are seeing their dreams of a bright future fading fast. The Solomons as we all know is not working for this group!

 

What about women? Can the nation honestly say that the Solomons is currently working on their behalf? When women study parliament's numbers, 331 men and 1 woman over a three decade period, any thinking person is forced to admit that something is radically wrong with how we have been governing ourselves. Isn't this being voiced out now by many citizens who currently seek to re-dress the terrible imbalance of men and women in parliament? Women rightly claim loudly and clearly: "The Nation is not working for us!"

 

Because the nation is not working for most citizens--provinces on the receiving end of small grants while Central Government swallows up ten times as much--there is a clear determination to do something to stop this injustice and to make the lives of ordinary people fit the dreams of our original independence days..

 

Fortunately, at this stage the movement to make the nation work for every one is done in a wholly legal, rational and in a non-violent way. The Constitutional Review Congress, for instance, has for the two past months, May and June,  been sorting out the details of a future nation that works better for the majority and not simply for the select few.    

 

On the occasion of the recent 31st anniversary celebrations our Prime Minister asked for the whole nation to join forces and work together for a better, brighter and prosperous future. The pijin phrase he used summed up the theme nicely: Yumi Tugeta Bildim Kantri Blong Yumi! But this dream becomes reality if and when the whole country works for all people. If major parts of our nation--women, youth, the Provinces, etc.--feel they are second class citizens, called upon only when it is in the interests of those who run the country for their own benefit, then the Solomons will never be a country working for all of us.

One billion hungry!

J. Roughan

30 June 2009

Honiara 

The world achieved a dubious record recently. For the first time in its history, a billion people--that is a thousand million children, women and men--are seriously underfed. To put it clearly, they are really hungry. Most of these starving people go to bed hungry each night and the majority  of them will face the very same empty stomachs and pain the very next day.

 

Of course, some of this billion people are found right here at home. The current international financial breakdown, the money tsunami, has hit right across the nations of the world. Our small country has not escaped this pain! Some of our own people more than ever before are suffering the same lack of food and it will get worse before it gets better.

 

How many of us remember this time last year when the rice price finally hit the $200 mark for the first time. Immediately, Honiara's residents, demanded that government do something about it. Poor people couldn't live with such a price hike. Yes, there were signs that government had become alarmed. Rice import taxes were lowered and in some cases slashed, other leaders turned to Thailand for cheaper import only to find that transport costs more than made up for the original cheapness and still others claimed that the nation must grow its own rice.

 

Paying more than $200 million yearly for overseas' rice was not a healthy national plan for the long term. Then, Taiwan offered $25 million for the Solomons to become a serious player in the planting, harvesting and rice processing business. As good as this thought was, the idea that the Solomons could in a short period of time become almost self-sufficient in rice production was unrealistic.

 

Of course our people could grow, harvest and process rice as good as anyone else. But a rice culture is something more, it's a way of life. Labour intensive and exacting, rice growing is a grain that developed over centuries in southeast Asia. It takes years and years of practice before rice cultivation becomes second nature.

 

Yet at the same time we have in our midst experts in other kinds of food production. Our women's ability to produce food through their expertise in planting, caring for and harvesting the nation's root crop product has had a track record of hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet, rarely have our decision makers turned to them, assisted, helped and offered a helping hand to make their potato, yam, taro, cassava, etc. plantings more and more plentiful and profitable

 

Currently a billion people go to bed nightly with little hope that the next day will see them eating more than a single meal for many days in the future. Some of these billion would give their back teeth to be assured that tomorrow would bring them ONE meal for the whole family.

 

While thanking Almighty God for His blessing of plenty upon us, he usually does not reward us by performing a miracle or two. What He does expect, however, is for us to use the gifts already given--healthy farm lands, abundant rain, pest free areas and expert farmers--to make the best of these gifts not only for ourselves but others not so well blessed.

 

Our Parliamentarians occupy a special position in this hungry business. Their 2 million dollar grant--the Rural Constituency Development Fund and other funds under their care--could not be better focused than increasing food production. The financial meltdown that makes food more and more expensive world wide, will not go away this year. In fact, this time next year it will only begin to lessen. By mid-2010, if we are lucky, the world will begin to see a modest up turn. That's for the world! Our own case, however, well might take longer.

 

That is why focused efforts by government decision makers, rural farmers, women gardeners and the rest of us have to realize that the problem of One Billion Hungry People stares us in the face this very moment. The nation has a chance to pull itself up and get cracking with agricultural policies that deliver food security for all. No longer can we depend upon Australian rice, Asian biscuits, noodles and starches while our own people already know how to grow enough food for all of us . . . and at an affordable price.  

The 70/30 Split!

J. Roughan

25 June 2009

Honiara  

 

Since 1978 Central Government--Parliamentarians, Ministries, Public Servants, the whole Central Government apparatus--has managed to absorb the lions' share of national revenue, overseas aid, development funds and wealth creation. In other words, the system that has governed the Solomons for more than 30 years, has seen more than seven dollars out of every ten ending up in the hands of a few.

 

A fairly strong argument can be made that the basic, root cause of our recent Social Unrest period--1998-2003--can be traced back to this unfair system. Of course misguided development practices, poor leadership patterns, corruption, land issues, etc. played their part. But those who brought little to the leadership table--poor formal education, thin experience successfully running local businesses and little by way of national resource wealth, have become, through an electoral process, the major benefactors of national wealth.

 

For example, the annual average revenue given to the nine Provinces between the years 1995-2000 (a five year period) was $96.6 million out of a national annual average of $336.3 million; this has resulted in a vertical split of 29% to the Provinces and 71% to Central Government. People across this island national felt this unfair split in their daily lives.

 

Citizens across the nation, for example, have scored seven Report Cards starting in 1989, twenty years ago. With not a single exception, thousands of ordinary people have marked seven different governments as failures because these governments did not provide people with the basics of life: insufficient number of working health structures, lack of quality education opportunities, a failure to strengthen people's resource base and a growing difficulty in gaining modest amounts of money for ordinary needs of daily living.

 

However, the 1998-2003 Social Unrest period raised people's eyes and have them actively asking themselves why should this state of affairs continue. If the nation's natural resource base actually belongs to villagers through their lein, tribe and descent group, why is it that their lives aren't better, healthier and more productive?

 

This kind of thinking is one that fuels the present day work of the Constitution Review Congress that meets daily to pour over the 2004 Draft Constitution and bring it up to the present moment. Our 1978 Constitution, crafted by overseas experts, did not adequately reflect the reality of Solomon Islands. At independence day, there was no time to create a constitution which would fully accept Solomon Islands' customs, traditions and history. 

 

Now with 30 years of experience under our belt, having gone through a severe Social Unrest testing period and a people restless for a change  that would bring better life to the majority of our people, the time is ripe for a deep review of the original Constitution. With this review comes the need to draft a new, locally grown one. That is exactly what the Constitutional Review Congress is working on at present. 

 

The next two steps in the process are just as important. Bring the reformed Constitution back to the people for their understanding and input is vital. Since it is they who will be living under this new document it is only fair that they have a major say in how they think things should be working.

 

The final step in the process is incorporating people's thinking to a plenary session with all stakeholders. Those of the Congress will fan out among the nation's villages, explain as well as possible the highlights of the new constitution and seek input from the majority of people. This document will not be rushed . . . it is far too important for that.

 

But if a human document is to have divine blessing then it is important that the nation must pray that the final product is one blessed by the Almighty.

Parliament Report Card: 100% and 0%

J. Roughan

18 June 2009

Honiara 

This week saw Parliament go from top of the class to the very bottom within a few hours. First the 100% mark!

 

Parliament demonstrated its power to be a truly effective national voice by voting into the Governor General position a gentleman with impressive legal background, with many years of legal expertise and someone who was both mature and tested in the Public Service. Unfortunately it took four rounds of voting before the chamber finally did settle on Frank Kabui.

 

But earlier in the week Parliament fumbled the ball terribly when not one of Parliament's 50 members could bring themselves to nominate a single woman candidate's name for the GG's post. More than half the men who were actually nominated for this critical position did not possess the minimum requirements to hold such high office. Many of the nominated candidates never trained in law, or had in depth experience in other disciplines and lacked years of formal education training. But still their names appeared and were duly offered to parliament as suitable candidates for the highest post in the nation.

 

Yet, the nation already boasts of women who have earned Ph.D., medical doctors and Masters Degrees, been tried and worked successfully at the highest levels of Public Service and are considered by their peers to be mature, quite intelligent and deeply dependable. But not once did a woman's name make it to the short list while men with far less training, experience and education were seriously nominated.

 

That's why the Parliament Report Card is marked 0%!

 

Currently our newspapers carry lively readers' comments on the idea of women holding parliamentary seats come next year's election. What a great boost it would have been had today's parliament members nominated a woman for the GG post! It would have clearly shown that some Parliamentarians, at least, welcomed the idea that a woman could be considered for the highest position in the land.

 

But Parliament lost a golden opportunity!  Is there fear that if a woman had actually been nominated, she would now be the Solomon Islands GG in waiting? Australia and New Zealand, both of whom recently had women Governor Generals, seemed to have survived well since having a woman who held the GG post.

 

Parliament members hold special place in the minds and hearts of people. They are seen, by many, as being special moral leaders in the affairs of state. What they say and do, does make a difference to the rank and file of Solomon Islanders. They are opinion makers especially in those areas of life which are close to people's lives. 

 

While Parliament rightly voted in such a solid candidate for the GG's post as Mr. Frank Kabui, it would have been a great gesture had it also included a name or two of women, from the other half of the nation. It's that group of people who daily keep the local sky up by feeding, caring and tending for those who make up most of the nation.