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Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Charles Dausabea and the RAMSI saga

Charles Dausabea’s recent accusation of Australia of “hijacking” the judicial system in the country is not only misleading, but an attempt by a very frustrated and desperate person. Of course, his view is not representative of the country’s mood for Australia to exit from its leading role of rebuilding the country; but such a statement should not be taken in the context of him, but seen in the context of him being a puppet of a foreign legal advisor. In reality, Dausabea’s recent outburst is simply part of a campaign by a number of former local criminals turned political leaders and Australian citizens, who are trying to make Australia and RAMSI feel unwelcome in the country.


While the Registrar of the SI High Court has recently refuted Dausabea’s unfounded allegation, the public in Solomon Islands should not in any way allow itself to be influenced by a man, whose personal history as a politician speaks volumes of his leadership quality and the lack of it.
Historically, Dausabea has been always a divisive figure in the Solomon Islands political circle and civil society. To his political supporters, Dausabea is a saviour in times of need and a very generous person. He has often shared his material wealth and spoils with supporters and been ready to help the needy in his constituency of East Honiara whenever they approach him to provide assistance in paying primary, secondary and tertiary education scholarships, purchasing sports and other equipment for sporting teams, church choirs and youth groups, providing travelling expenses, airfares and pocket money for touring individuals, sports teams and church groups and paying for the building of community halls and buildings.
But for his opponents and those with prior working experiences and knowledge of his dealings, one way or the other, as a former police traffic officer, politician, government minister, director of protocols, political appointee, financier of the now disbanded Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF), president of the SI National Olympic Committee, and Member of Parliament, Dausabea is a heartless bully, murderer, crook, corrupt, criminal and a racist thug.
The mixed images and different perceptions by the public about Dausabea are also influenced by the cultural values, virtues and norms that are “acceptable” in various ethnic communities of the country. In most Malaitan cultural and linguistic communities, stealing, telling lies, conning people and accumulating wealth by hook or crook, are traditionally acceptable qualities of bravery, worthy of a leader. On the contrary, Polynesian and contemporary Christian  communities in the country see those attributes as unacceptable, outright disgraceful and unworthy of being associated with a national leader. 
For decades, the above contrasting images of Dausabea as a national leader have made him either a saviour or a big time crook, depending on one’s vantage point. And for others, Dausabea has always been a law unto himself in the small-fishbowl community of Honiara since he became a politician in 1989. During his time as a Member of Parliament, Dausabea has been untouchable. His only bad luck with the judicial system in the country occurred twice: before and after he became a parliamentarian and lost his parliamentary seat of East Honiara Constituency in 2003.
Obviously, the presence of RAMSI in the country over the past nine years has frustrated him and his network of criminal operatives in various government departments and other public institutions from carrying out their usual under-table and corrupt dealings.
Dausabea’s history prior to becoming a politician
To qualify one of the perceptions that Dausabea is a big time crook, let’s briefly analyse his past dealings and history as a former convicted fraudster turned politician. Dausabea is no stranger to controversy. Before he became a politician in 1989, he was a traffic officer with the Solomon Islands Police Traffic Centre at Kukum Station, East Honiara.
His rise to national spot light came in the most dubious way in the early 1980s, when he was charged and jail for over two years, for forgery and fraud of more than $20,000 from the Solomon Islands Ports Authority.
The case was based on a scheme that Dausabea had hatched. He enticed and befriended the then office orderly or mail-man of the Solomon Islands Ports Authority; a man from Makiara-Ulawa Province by the name of Arthur. During their friendship, Dausabea asked Arthur to forge the “signature” of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the SI Ports Authority, which he did.
Over time, they studied and practiced the signature and before long, they successfully penned it down on a stolen SI Ports Authority’s cheque, which they had successfully cashed at a bank. For months, Dausabea and Arthur took new girlfriends and relocated their residential homes in Honiara to Tambea Tourists Resort, in North West Guadalcanal.  They lived in lavish life style at the resort, hired rental cars and travelled on a daily basis to and from their workplaces in Honiara.
In addition to their luxurious life style, they also hosted drinking parties on a weekly basis. Of course the honeymoon ended in tears when members of the SI Police CID arrested and charged them for forgery. But the most intriguing issue about Dausabea’s ascendency to national political leadership was the way he was elected to parliament in 1989.
The story began following his discharge from Rove prison. His elder brother, who was a well-liked and popular political leader in the then Honiara Municipal Authority, now the Honiara City Council, died in suspicious circumstances. Allegations were labelled against his opponents at the council for foul play, but they were never taken up against them in a court of law. The outpouring of grief and sympathy for Dausabea’s family by ethnic Malaitans and supporters of his late brother in the East Honiara Constituent finally led to Dausabea’s decision then to contest the forthcoming national election in 1989. Dausabea won convincingly through sympathy votes.
But sadly, Dausabea never learnt his lesson from his past. In the following national election of May 1993, Dausabea’s re-election victory was overturned by the SI High Court, after it was successfully challenged by the runner-up, John Maetia Kalu’ae. In Kalu’ae’s petition, which was then upheld by the SI High Court, he alleged that Dausabea had practiced widespread corruption and fraud in the electoral registration of names. The court nullified Dausabea’s victory and banned him from contesting the re-run election for East Honiara Constituency.
While taking a spell from national politics, Dausabea was appointed as the Director of Protocols in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by his political mentor and good friend, the then Prime Minister, Solomon Mamaloni. But Dausabea’s term was also short lived following a diplomatic blunder, when he failed to intervene in an embarrassing case of the then Solomon Islands High Commissioner to Brussels, who got really drank and began verbally abusing the visiting Ambassador of South Korea, during an official function to honour the visiting dignitary at Lelei Resort, West Honiara. The case led to his immediate dismissal.
Despite the apparent failure of Dausabea to perform his role as the Director of Protocols, the late Mamaloni, once again, created a new post and appointed him as the Head of the Prime Minister’s Office Intelligence Services. Back then, no one really knew Dausabea’s activities, but he had gradually become very influential in the political circles and civil society in the country. In the following national elections of 1997, Dausabea re-contested and regained the seat of East Honiara, amidst more allegations of bribery and fraud.
Interestingly, the two High Court cases, which had resulted in Dausabea’s jailing in the mid-1980s and nullifying his victory as the elected Member of Parliament for East Honiara in May 1993, were made prior to the arrival of RAMSI in mid-2003. Since then, RAMSI has been assisting in rebuilding, not only the capacity of the judicial system and the police in the country, but public trust on both institutions.
The only time in the history of the country that the judicial system and police force were highly compromised and virtually hijacked was when the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) ousted the democratically elected government and took control of the police, courts and executive government between 1998 - 2003, when RAMSI arrived in the country. Back then Dausabea was one of the key leaders of the MEF armed thugs. In a sense, the judicial system in SI prior and after the RAMSI intervention was never kind to Dausabea. So his charge that Australia has hijacked our judicial system is beyond belief.
The only era that Dausabea appeared to have stayed away from running foul with the legal system in Solomon Islands was from 1993 until 2002. Interestingly, following the intervention of RAMSI in the country in 2003, which restored the highly compromised judicial system in the country, Dausabea was again convicted and jailed for fraud, and then arrested again in April 2006 and briefly jailed on allegations of inciting violence.
Dausabea and his BRA connection
Dausabea’s political career and history have laced with vengeance. He became late Mamaloni’s right hand man during the Bougainville ethnic crisis between 1988 and late 1990s, where the government was allegedly involved in the importation of arms for the BRA.  During that time, Dausabea was implicated in a number of cases of financial aiding, supplying of old WWII relics for the cause and allowing BRA members and sympathisers to build houses and reside at his land near Henderson Airport, north east of Honiara.
Despite mounting allegations against Dausabea over his alleged criminal activities, especially his decision to allow BRAs to reside at his house and allegedly engaging in acquiring and collecting WWII bombs and other war relics and transported them back to Bougainville for their conflict, the authorities failed to mount an investigation against him. A move that was reciprocated by the BRA to the MEF during the ethnic conflict in Solomon Islands, where former members of the BRA were seen taking part along-side armed MEF militia in some of their operations on Guadalcanal and carrying out special tasks for MEF in Gizo, Western Province.
The apparent reluctance by the judicial system and the police force in the country to take action against Dausabea has been understandable. Over the past two decades, Dausabea had surrounded himself with armed body guards and armed criminals, who are too willing to do anything to protect their boss.
As common knowledge, during the ethnic conflicts between Guadalcanal militants and Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF) in 1998 – 2003, Dausabea was once again implicated in openly housing, arming and financially supporting a so-called platoon of the MEF armed militia at his residential area near Henderson Airport. Despite the then government’s initial decision to outlaw the MEF armed militia group and the police knowledge of the existence of the armed group, the police failed to arrest Dausabea.
Instead, Dausabea’s reputation remained intact, which also resulted in his re-election in 1997 and 2006 national elections, only to relinquish the later soon following his conviction and imprisonment for fraudulent. Besides his political prowess, Dausabea has also made a name for himself in the country’s sporting administration arena. Under his stewardship as President of the Solomon Islands National Olympic Committee (SISNOC) in the early part of this decade, Dausabea was also accused of misappropriating thousands of dollars of grants by the International Olympic and national government for the development of sports in the country. Again – Dausabea has never been charged or called to account.
One of Dausabea’s bloopers of epic proportion as former President of SISNOC was his decision to strip-off the title of the SISNOC Pageant Queen from the winner, Yolanda McSasa’i on the basis of her racial profile. In 1996/7, SISNOC held a Pageant Queen contest, to raise funds for the upcoming South Pacific Games and to select a pageant queen to represent the country in the games.
Following a tight contest, the judges announced the winning Pageant Queen as Ms McSasa’i, a Polynesian girl from the island of Bellona, in the Rennell and Bellona Province. As president of the organisation, Dausabea vetoed the decision on the basis that the winning candidate was not a Melanesian woman, and it would be an insult to the Melanesians of the country for a Polynesian to represent them. Despite the racist overtone of Dausabea’s decision, no one was able to challenge him.
With a history of criminal convictions, forgery, fraudulent, arms dealing, aiding criminals and racism, Dausabea’s accusation of Australia and the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) of “hijacking” the judicial system in the country, based on a flimsy assertion, is not only brave, but self-evident of someone who is pulled by the nose by some alien anti-Australian legal advisor(s). In the end, Dausabea and his cohorts should stop insulting the intelligence of our law abiding citizens. Nafunao!
The following Members of Parliament have represented East Honiara

Election                                               MP                                   Political Party
1976                                       Bartholomew Ulufa’alu             National Democratic Party (NADEPA)
1980                                       Bartholomew Ulufa’alu             National Democratic Party
1984                                       John Maetia Kalu’ae                   SI National Party (SINP)
1989                                      Bartholomew Ulufa’alu (resigned) National Democratic Party
                (Bye Election)      Charles Dausabea                         People Alliance Party (PAP)
1993                                       Charles Dausabea (petitioned) People Alliance Party (PAP)
                                                John Maetia Kalu’ae                    SI National Party (SINP)
1997                                       Charles Dausabea                         People Alliance Party (PAP)
2001                                       Simeon Bouro                               Independent
2006                                       Charles Dausabea (jailed)          People Alliance Party (PAP)
2008       (Bye Election)   Silas Milikada                                    Independent
2010                                       Douglas Ete                                    Reformed Democratic Party

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