· The following "Opinion" piece was written
for a number of academic friends following the recent political instability in
Solomon Islands.
Lilo's
politics
The recent political instability
in Solomon Islands has once again highlighted the fragile nature of Melanesian
politics, which is sad, but not surprising in the context of Solomon Islands.
My personal observation is this –the attempt by the sacked former Minister of
Finance, Gordon Darcy Lilo, to oust his cousin and caretaker Prime Minister,
Danny Philip, appears to be a long term project that he was setting up to
achieve following the election of this government. But it comes at an opportune
time for him and his political backers to fundraise for financial inducement
from Asian logging companies that have been the financial backers of every
government that Lilo has joined since entering politics in 2001.
In all fairness, no one in
Solomon Islands and the international community should read too much into the
current political situation in Solomon Islands. At the end of the day, it is
politics as usual in Honiara as politicians have already made up their mind of
whom they will vote as the next Prime Minister. But as part of the new
"culture" of money-politics in Solomon Islands, politicians are
buying time to ensure that the betting game for their political support would
inflate. Sadly a change of government or Prime Minister would not make any
difference in addressing pressing issues that are slowing down the efforts of
rebuilding the country’s economy, political and social stability, land reform,
corruption, weak governance, holding crooks accountable, exploitation of
government finance and providing a new sense of direction. Rest assure, none of
the above issues will be fixed after the election of a new PM and at the end of
his tenure.
And there are good reasons that
the public in Solomon Islands should be weary of or pessimistic about if these
two political leaders are taking control of any new executive government. Only
few months ago, the current sacked Minister of Finance, Gordon Darcy Lilo
(current candidate for the PM’s post), and his partner in crime, caretaker
Minister of Planning and Aid Coordination, Snyder Rini, were implicated in
a number of multi-million dollar corruption cases and yet no government has ever taken
up the challenge of taking them on. To their credit, Lilo and Rini have been
shifting political allegiances from one executive government to the other
since 2001 as a way of preventing any new government from possibly investigating
or taking legal action against them.
The history of Gordon and
Snyder’s involvement in past controversial cases of corruption, misused of
public and aid monies, facilitating crooks and giving favours to political
cronies are palpable. Not that they are different from former Prime Ministers
such as Manasseh Sogavare and Dr Derek Sikua. They seem to share similar
political traits in their leadership style. And no one could easily forgotten
Lilo and Snyder's separate decisions few months ago, as former government
ministers in the then Dr Derek Sikua-led government, to release an Asian
logging tag-boat and allowing the exportation of prohibited marine resources
(then under a government moratorium) in contempt of a Solomon Islands High
Court order and a Customs Department decision to prosecute both Asian companies
for breaching the conditions of their business activities in the Solomon
Islands. The only reason given by Lilo then was the companies have been
contributing huge taxes to the national coffer.
But no one knows or tells me how
many thousands of dollars that Lilo and Rini have both received in reciprocate
from the Asian companies for intervening and acting in their best interests.
The current political climate in
Solomon Islands is simply a symptom of a real poisonous government system,
where corruption is a mainstay of the executive and administration governments,
who will only act on self-interests. In a sense, the current political
wrangling has nothing to do with policy direction or any effort to provide good
governance, but all to do with self-interests. Remember this – these
politicians are the same individuals who've had partly contributed to the
gradual demise of the Solomon Islands and in recent months deliberately
frustrated the Dr Sikua-led government and other efforts since 2003, to
legislate laws that could stop political promiscuity as the basis of political
instability in the democratic process of the country.
Essentially, the then role played
by Lilo and Rini in preventing efforts to fix the political abnormalities in
the Solomon Islands electoral system, is a true measure of their leadership
credentials. So in my observation, there is no alternative solution to provide
political stability as the basis of rebuilding Solomon Islands economically and
politically, when the main culprits of corruption are the very people who are
in national leadership positions. At present, the bureaucracy and the executive
government in Solomon Islands are so corrupt that relying on them to fix our
current mess will be liken to a dream.
With the way things are going,
the country is running out of options to prevent itself from re-descending into
total social chaos and political oblivion, similar to the cases of Sierra Leone
and Mogadishu in Africa. Solomon Islands needs to prosecute and jail
politicians and their cronies, who are exploiting public institutions and aid
monies for their own political gain, as a deterrence to future crooks. The
process of democracy won’t fix the country’s highly compromised public
institutions and politicians, who will be using their political leverage to
ensure that nothing is going to threaten their interests.
There is no other way…… the
international community has proven since the intervention of RAMSI in mid-2003
until now that they cannot provide every single solution to very problem that
our country is facing. Our leaders are not cooperating and playing their part
in the process of rebuilding the nation.
· Following
the election of Lilo as the new Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Father
Terry Brown, sent a news update confirming that the 29 members of parliament,
who voted for Lilo, had each received $SBD500,000 from unidentified
financial backers. Only Lilo knows the financiers.
Next articles:
·"Lilo's political background and his logging
connection".
· "Melanesian politics and the risks of
harbouring Fiji".
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