Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

Tonga’s first-ever democratic elections took place smoothly on Thursday, and resulted in a resounding victory for those urging reform. ‘Akilisi Pohiva’s Friendly Islands Democracy Party won 12 of the 17 popularly elected seats, just two short of the number required to form a government. The other five popularly elected MPs are independents, who at least in theory could team up with Tonga’s nine noble MPs to form a government. The nobles, however, have made clear that they – and indeed King George Tupou V – prefer that Tonga’s next prime minister should come from among the people’s representatives. For the first time in Tonga’s history, therefore, the outcome of a general election will determine the shape of the country’s next government.

Since King George Tupou I unified the scattered island group in the mid-19th century, Tonga has had royal-appointed governments. The 1875 constitution created a Legislative Assembly, but the king retained authority to appoint members of cabinet, including the prime minister. Read more…

Author: Biman Chand Prasad, University of the South Pacific

Battered by coups, sluggish growth and in recent years the global increase in food, fuel and commodity prices, Fiji’s economy is struggling to regain its feet.  The December 2006 coup led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama was the fourth in the last two decades. Bainimarama, in ousting the Laisenia Qarase-led Government promised to tackle corruption, put an end to racially discriminatory policies and reform the race-based electoral system.

The Prime Minister promised a general election under a new Constitution in 2014. However, the history of previous coups in Fiji and the economic recovery plans implemented by successive governments provide little optimism for a swift economic recovery. Read more…

Author: Stephen Howes, ANU

Ever since the 1980s, Australian academics and official reports have called for Pacific Islanders to be given better access to the Australian labour market. To its credit, the Rudd Government introduced the Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme in August 2008. The scheme allows Pacific Islanders to engage in farm work in Australia for up to seven months a year. Unfortunately, the scheme has never taken off, with less than 100 Islanders participating in the two years since its launch. Theories for its failure abound ranging from excessive red-tape to the prolonged drought.

In stark contrast to Australia, New Zealand has always offered preferential migration treatment to its Pacific neighbours. Read more…

Author: Norm Kelly, ANU

The Solomon Islands elections held in August were conducted peacefully, and largely without incident – a relief to the RAMSI security force which had been bolstered in the months leading up to the elections. The increased RAMSI presence was a reaction to the 2006 elections and the then election of Snyder Rini as Prime Minister, when RAMSI was found wanting amid riots and looting and Honiara’s Chinatown was largely destroyed.

As elsewhere in Melanesia, voter registration continues to be one of the main challenges for election administrators. Read more…

Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

The Solomon Islands has a new prime minister. Danny Philip is a veteran politician from the western part of the archipelago. His country is home to half a million people living scattered across a few hundred islands. Mr Philip introduces himself as a leader with whom the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which has been stationing hundreds of foreign soldiers, police and civil servants in the country since 2003, can do business.

But RAMSI cannot be pleased by his expressed intention to honour the militants who rampaged across the country with guns and bankrupted the state until 2003. Read more…

Author: Charles Prestidge-King, ANU

After the Solomon Islands Prime Ministerial election Danny Philip looked a happy man. Following two hard weeks of wrangling and lobbying between contending camps, he was elected leader by Solomon Islands Parliament with 26 votes to rival Steve Abana’s 23.

An emotional Philip took the stand in front of local and international media to dedicate the win to his mother, a long-time sufferer of polio, and to put forward his government’s agenda. Read more…

Author: Satish Chand, UNSW@ADFA

The Australian acting high commissioner to Fiji was declared ‘person non grata’ and ordered to leave the country within 24 hours by the Fiji government on July 13.

This is the second Australian diplomat of a total of three that have been sent packing by the Bainimarama regime since taking office via a military coup in December 2006. Each expulsion by Fiji followed allegations of interference of the diplomats in the domestic political affairs of the nation. Read more…

Author: Matthew Dornan, ANU

The Nadarivatu hydro scheme may not be on the same scale as the Three Gorges Dam in China, but it is of similar importance for electricity generation in Fiji. When completed, it will generate 40 megawatts of power. This means that the Fiji Electricity Authority (FEA) will be well on its way to achieving its renewable energy target of 90 per cent of total generation. In total, the Nadarivatu scheme will replace 22,000 tonnes of expensive diesel and heavy fuel oil per annum.

So what is the problem? Unfortunately, the involvement of Sinohydro Corporation Ltd in Nadarivatu’s construction has raised significant labour and economic concerns within Fiji, and has contributed to unnecessary concern about the nature of China’s involvement in the Pacific region. Read more…

Author: Gary Hawke, NZIER

New Zealand marked time in 2009, with the government conserving its political capital but achieved little.

Much of the agenda was international rather than domestic. This was most obvious in the area of climate change. New Zealand shares the international policy issue of identifying a suitable response to a risk assessment and choice of appropriate insurance policy, but there was also much emotional nonsense. Read more…

Author: Sandra Tarte, University of the South Pacific

In 2009, the political realities in Fiji became more clearly defined, but increasingly perplexing for its regional neighbors and development partners.

The moment of truth for the country, and for Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s military-backed government, came on 9 April when Fiji’s Court of Appeal ruled that the December 2006 coup and the interim administration it installed were illegal. This ruling removed the already somewhat tenuous constitutional basis upon which the interim government had previously claimed its political mandate. It was also the catalyst for the abrogation, one day later, of the Constitution by the President, and the declaration of a ‘new legal order’ under which the Bainimarama-led administration was reappointed. This development clearly indicated to all that there would be no turning back to the pre-December 2006 order. It also marked the further consolidation and entrenchment of the military-backed regime – a process that is likely to continue throughout 2010. Read more…

Jon Fraenkel, ANU

Kevin Rudd has talked of the danger of a ‘coup culture’ spreading from Fiji across the Pacific, but nowhere else in the region has experienced anything similar to Fiji’s three coups. The Solomon Islands witnessed a coup back in June 2000, when Malaitan militants in cahoots with the Police Field Force over threw Bartholomew Ulufa’alu’s government. But there an elected government was back in charge within the month, and the constitution was never abrogated.

Other than that, you need to go back over a century to find another example of a coup in the Pacific. In Hawaii in 1893, American settlers overthrew the government of Queen Lili’uokalani, installing a government that was recognised by Washington several years later. Bill Clinton apologised in 1993. Only Fiji, Tonga and Papua New Guinea (PNG) have standing armies that might, in theory, carry out coups. Read more…

Author: Andrew Elek on behalf of the Australian Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation (AUSPECC)

On December 4-5, 2009, the Australian Government convened a ‘one-and-a-half track conference’ of prominent government officials, academics and opinion makers. In this week’s digest, Peter Drysdale reports on the meeting which discussed the form an Asia Pacific community might take and the role of existing forums (including APEC) within evolving regional institutional architecture.

Drysdale and Hadi Soesastro have made a useful recommendation for how Prime Minister Rudd’s proposal, could be advanced by a council of the leaders of the G20 members of APEC, together with India. Read more…

Author: Virginia Horscroft

Fiji may not have been invited to this week’s Pacific Islands Forum Meeting in Cairns, but its presence will be felt nonetheless.

Regional leaders expelled Fiji from the Forum back in May, because they were not persuaded that Commodore Bainimarama planned to restore democratic rule in the near future. Far from getting Fiji off the agenda, its expulsion has intensified the dilemma facing Forum members – as recent public displays of their differing opinions on the treatment of Fiji demonstrate.

Australia’s political leaders are anxious to ensure that the issue of Fiji does not overshadow this week’s meeting in Cairns. Instead, Australia’s foreign minister, Stephen Smith, is insisting that leaders throughout the region are keen to focus on the ‘real work at hand’.

Rightly so. The Pacific Islands are now facing unprecedented challenges to their economic development, thanks to the global financial crisis and climate change.

For these challenges to be tackled effectively, the Forum must agree on regional responses to them. The important role that Fiji has to play in those responses is inescapable.

Read more…

Author: Stephen Howes

The Pacific Islands Forum meets in Cairns this week. If the leaders of the Pacific’s island economies want to know what needs to be done to lift the traditionally low levels of economic growth seen in the region, they would do well to ponder the recent growth record of one the Forum’s own members, Vanuatu.

Prior to 2004, Vanuatu, like many other Pacific island countries, had a long-term rate of economic growth little different from its population growth, about 2.5%. But economic growth in Vanuatu took off in 2004, and growth for the 2004-2008 period has averaged 6.6%.

Due to the global recession, short-term growth prospects are uncertain. But so far this year, tourism growth has accelerated, not declined.

Vanuatu’s growth acceleration is important for the Pacific. It dispels the myth that the Pacific island economies cannot grow, and it confirms the range of factors which are important for growth in the Pacific – a dynamic private sector, active land markets, deregulation, and macroeconomic and social stability.

Read more…

Guest Author: Virginia Horscroft

While our attention is focused on the political crisis in Fiji, a development that could prove critical to the Pacific is passing almost unremarked.

This week will reveal whether members of the Pacific Islands Forum are able to cut a deal to negotiate a regional trade agreement.

If they manage that, it will be a major achievement for regional engagement – a welcome positive in a year that has so far not been a good one for the Pacific.

Read more…