Police Commissioner Joshua Bong’s call for improved government intelligence was roundly supported by all sectors of Vanuatu Society. The announcement, made at the closing of a recent security conference, met with enthusiastic responses from everyone this writer interviewed.

A survey of 100 people asking the question ‘Do you support intelligence in government?’ resulted in a 97% response for the ‘yes’ side. Two respondents, both MPs, had not finished reading the question when the poll closed. The third, a prominent minister, replied that he has campaigned for intelligence and that he supported the idea of intelligence in principle, but he could not condone its use in government at this time, as it might undermine the balance of power.

There were a few mixed responses. The reaction of one group of youths was difficult to gauge, as their sustained laughter made it impossible for them to speak. A chief from Kivimani village on the island of Futua Lava seemed to call for part-time intelligence, observing, “Ol minista oli waes finis, be waes ia i kasem olgeta long aftanun nomo.”

Approached for comment, a police spokesman said, “That’s not the kind of intelligence we meant. We meant analysis and data gathering and…. Oh. Right. Yeah, I think I see what you mean. Yes, I think intelligence in government would be a great idea.”

More on this breaking story as it appears. Assuming more intelligence actually does appear.

Just yesterday, Minister Regenvanu was kind enough to respond to my column of last week, in which I expressed more than a little impatience at his silence over the March 4 attack on Marc Neil-Jones. He thanked me for my views and asked, “But who’s done more for good governance and transparency in Vanuatu: you or me?”

It’s a fair question –more than fair, actually– one that bears serious consideration.

My first instinct was to reply, “Your colleague beat the crap out of my friend. I said something about it; you didn’t.” That has the benefit of the truth, and it’s a fairly good summation of how I felt at the time I was composing the column.

But it’s not at all satisfying, nor does it do anything to further the goals that I know Minister Regenvanu shares with me and with an ever-increasing number of voters.

More importantly, tit-for-tat point-scoring rhetoric only contributes to the decline of political dialogue, making enemies and sowing confusion in the very places where clarity and unity should be most easily achieved.

So let’s dig a little deeper and see what more we all could be doing to make things better.

First off, let me state that any man of principle who embarks on a career in politics is a better man than I. (Any woman of principle who does so is probably a better man than any of us.) From the very first step, compromises must be made. As I said in last week’s column, the calculus of power is byzantine and counter-factual.

If you’re looking for easy answers to anything, look elsewhere. If someone promises you easy answers, don’t trust them. They’re either naive or they’re deceiving you. To his credit, Minister Regenvanu made a point of not promising anything but the sweat of his own brow during his election campaign.

In my afternoon convos over kava, I’ve often said that politics is a muddy road, so throwing out a politician for having soiled his feet is silly and wrong. It’s the ones who roll around in the middle of it like pigs in a slough – these are the ones we should be objecting to.

It’s easy for someone like me, who won’t even qualify for citizenship for another two and a half years, to sit on the sidelines and imagine that I could outplay those on the field. So it’s healthy to consider from time to time what things look like from the ground, to understand the pressures and exigencies that impose themselves from minute to minute.

The price is a heavy one. It’s impossible, in politics at least, to have friends without having adversaries. If you don’t have any rivals, that’s because you don’t have any power yet. So every choice, every compromise comes laden with the knowledge that, even if you’ve pleased some people, you’ve upset a few others. Victories are measured in inches and the goal line is often miles away.

The question then –the impossible question– is this: When do you stand and when do you sidestep? Which are the battles that must be fought, and at what cost?

Conventional wisdom has it that, following MP Iauko’s assault on Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones, PM Kilman was handcuffed by the fact that removing Iauko from his portfolio would effectively topple the government. So, like it or not, this marriage of inconvenience had to continue.

To make matters worse, the prospect of a successful prosecution was vanishingly small. There was nothing to indicate that the Public Prosecutor and the Police wouldn’t be just as ineffectual in this instance as they’d been on countless occasions in the past. Not only would a powerful man be given grounds for vengeance, he’d likely have the means and opportunity to exact it, too.

Better, then, to bide one’s time and wait for an opportunity further down the line. Iauko’s rather incendiary rise has not made him a lot of lasting friendships, and anyway, his countless pre-election promises would soon be coming home to roost. Why fight an overt battle, possibly at significant cost, to achieve something that Iauko seemed to be perfectly capable of doing to himself?

Viewed through the lens of political calculus, there’s some merit to this line of reasoning. One could even be so bold as to argue that the baroque architecture of parliamentary rules and precedents that govern behaviour in other nations using the Westminster form of government are neither appropriate nor desirable here in Vanuatu.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s consider what might happen if things played out differently.

What if PM Kilman had required his Minister for Infrastructure and Public Utilities to resign his portfolio, pending a police investigation? He’s shown he’s capable of moving inconvenient Ministers out of the way. At the same time as the Iauko scandal was unfolding, he manoeuvred the Labour party out of power. This in retaliation for having signed an Opposition confidence motion.

In that case, the immediate goal was to remain in power, to live another day in order to achieve the policy goals that comprise the very reasons for governing in the first place.
Let’s apply the same logic to the Iauko debacle.

On the one hand, sharing power with people who care nothing for policy and are willing to fight every minute of every day for a bigger piece of the pie, people who, more to the point, are willing to stop at nothing… well, you have to ask yourself: Are you making things better or worse? On the other hand, you can’t get into government without them, and they know it. More to the point, perhaps it’s better to have them using these tactics against others than against you.

As the author of the Godfather famously put it, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

The problem with this equation is that it allows the worst excesses to continue unchecked. In other words, there will never be a better calibre of MP in this country, because the others either drag them down or elbow them aside. You either learn how to scrap or you don’t play at all.

So how do we improve governance, then? The only way to maintain one’s integrity is to be able to exert enough power over the other players to force them to play nice. And there’s no way to gather that much power, because of the disunity and distrust that’s endemic in Vanuatu’s political landscape.

It would take a grand, unifying goal, something about which the entire population of Vanuatu could agree, to achieve –even momentarily– the kind of unity of purpose and energy that Fr. Walter Lini managed during the first days of the Republic.

What if taking a stand, even allowing a government to fall, were enough to galvanise such a movement? What if it could be made clear to voters that there are certain kinds of behaviour that simply cannot be tolerated, and that this behaviour is the cause of so many of Vanuatu’s afflictions?

That’s not an easy task. Many voters don’t think in terms of policy and long-term reward. Some are willing to choose self-gratification over nation-building every time. Given Vanuatu’s voting districts, you don’t need more than a few hundred of these to get yourself in the running. Pony up a bit of cash to run some stalking-horse candidates and you can split the vote small enough to get in with the support of a single village.

So the risk, then, is that you take a principled stand, try to galvanise the electorate into an unprecedented level of support, only to find yourself standing on the sidelines, come Election Day plus one.

Worse, you could actually succeed in garnering an unprecedented level of the vote, only to discover that you’d been equaled by, and forced to share power with, the very kind of candidate you were elected to turf out.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I’ll say this again, in all sincerity: A principled man who’s willing to walk that muddy road is a better man than I, because I would always take that principled stand, keep my conscience clear, and fail entirely as a politician.

That may sound back-handed to some. It’s not. Life is a complex and messy thing; there are no simple answers. And sometimes staying pure and principled means staying powerless.

For my part I’m willing to abdicate that power, because once in a while things need to be said at any cost.

It’s easy for me to say this, but I don’t say it lightly. I say it because others can’t:

If a Government Minister resorts to political violence and coercion and the government takes no action to remedy this, that government deserves to fall.

The week before last, Vanuatu witnessed an unprecedented event in its political history. Parliamentary Speaker George Wells instructed the members of the Police and the Vanuatu Mobile Force to bar all members of the public and the press from entering Parliamentary precincts.

Then, with no one but the MPs themselves to witness, the government changed.

We are told that a vote was held on a pending no-confidence motion. We are told that certain members of the Government crossed the aisle to vote with the Opposition. But we don’t know precisely what happened, what words were spoken and what actions were taken to ensure this outcome.

Were Police or soldiers present inside Parliament as well as outside? Were any threats, implicit or explicit, made to Members before the vote? Were any blandishments or other incentives offered?

I’m not suggesting any of these things took place. I’m suggesting that they could have, and we would never know. Anything could have happened during that session, and unless we find some way of getting corroborated evidence of what did happen, a question mark will always lie over the proceeding.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, a United Nations organisation that works to strengthen democracies worldwide, lists five key attributes of a healthy democracy:

It is representative; it is accessible; it is accountable; it is effective. And it is transparent.

Without transparency, none of the other attributes are measurable.

Secrecy runs counter to kastom as well. It is frankly unimaginable that any change in the customary power structure could take place beyond the view of the people.

Arguably, MP Wells had the legal authority to clear the public and the press from Parliament. Whether he had the moral right to do so is not so easy to determine.

While the Constitution clearly states that the proceedings of Parliament are to be public, it leaves room for extraordinary circumstances. The Standing Orders of Parliament, the rules by which the Speaker is legally bound, state, ‘The Speaker may order the withdrawal of visitors [from Parliament] in special circumstances.’

The Orders further state that, ‘In exercising his duties, the Speaker may request assistance from officers of Parliament or if necessary, members of the Police Force.’

‘… If Necessary….’

So, MP Wells need only explain what ‘special circumstances’ required that Parliament be barred to the public in order to reassure the citizens of Vanuatu that he acted legally.

And then, of course, he would have to lay out the reasons why the use of Police was necessary. The Standing Orders only allow the use of Police ‘if necessary.’ Any reasonable definition of necessity requires the presence of an obvious and otherwise unavoidable circumstance. It should therefore be easy for MP Wells to explain what threat to public order existed that required the presence of armed soldiers at Parliament’s gates.

Was there danger of insurrection? A coup? Violent criminal activity? I’m not being facetious here; I’m genuinely asking. Mr. Wells obviously didn’t just decide out of the blue that these measures were necessary. I trust that he had his reasons.

I only ask that he share them.

It is critically important that the ex-Speaker justify his actions and demonstrate to the people of Vanuatu that he acted lawfully and with reason. If he does not, then the legality –and the legitimacy– of the vote is called into question. If the vote is called into question, then so too is the government.
That’s not something anyone wants.

This is not a trivial issue, a slip-up in a young democracy that’s just finding its feet. If indeed it is the case that the public and the press were barred for no good reason, then a terribly dangerous precedent will have been set that cannot be allowed to continue. It is anti-democratic, and it is anti-kastom.

The only thing that could excuse this behaviour is if MP Wells can demonstrate that he did not overstep.

By all accounts, nothing happened during the vote that had not happened before. This should not make us complacent. It should have the opposite effect.

If indeed, the threat of force was used to bar the public and press from a session of Parliament in which a change of government took place, and there was no compelling reason for this action, then Vanuatu’s politicians, no matter how inspired or high-minded their intentions, have led the country away from its roots.

Transparency is not just the name of a local political gadfly. It is a real thing. It is crucial to the country’s well-being. And it is not possible to like it on Monday, ignore it on a Tuesday and promise to be back Wednesday.

As the recent WikiLeaks controversy has shown us, a shining light can be discomforting, even embarrassing at times. It can actually make it more difficult to get things done. But –and here’s the key– it makes it more difficult for us to do wrong, too.

Newly-minted Prime Minister Sato Kilman has already voiced his reservations about the measures taken by the Speaker. That is commendable. He should introduce changes to the Standing Orders in the next sitting of Parliament to ensure that if these rules are ever again invoked, they will not be applied frivolously and with little cause.

A shocking story is emerging from the Northern Vanuatu island of Maewo. Last week, two brothers, fugitives from Kaiovo village, appeared at Lolowei Hospital on neighbouring Ambae island. One was treated for injuries. Witnesses said he claimed he had been stoned following a village meeting. The other walked onward to Tumsisiro, an Anglican mission, and requested sanctuary.

Before long, a caller from Maewo ascertained the brothers’ presence in Ambae, and a motor boat was dispatched. Reports estimate that up to a dozen men armed with axes and bush knives arrived at Lolowei. They proceeded to the outpatient clinic and promptly murdered the first brother. Stunned onlookers watched as they struck him dead, then dragged his corpse down to the shore, mocking and abusing it as they went. The second brother met the same fate soon afterward.

Within hours of the events, the story began to spread that accusations of sorcery and murder were the cause of this tragic episode. As with most such events, speculation is rampant and details are difficult to corroborate. One distraught Ambaean related a tale that seems to align well with others:

She told of a meeting held in Kaiovo to deal once and for all with the death of two local school employees, widely suspected to have been poisoned. At its climax, a local church elder announced that God had given him the names of the perpetrators. He had no sooner identified the two brothers and an elderly male accomplice than the local chief instructed the villagers to kill them.

Before the brothers could react, she said, one of the villagers picked up a large volcanic cooking stone and launched it at one of them. He missed, and the two began to scramble to their feet. Another stone quickly followed, striking one of the brothers and injuring him. They nonetheless managed to escape, leaving the older man to be beaten severely by the villagers.

Reports indicate that they obtained a canoe and paddled across several kilometers of open ocean to Lolowei’s tiny cove. It was there that their pursuers caught them up and murdered them.

Poison, witchcraft, religious visions and mob justice. One could easily dismiss these events as the actions of a backward, primitive people, benighted in superstition.

We should be careful not to mock too loudly, lest we mock ourselves.

The same week this story emerged, Internet pundits noted the rise of a pernicious and dangerous trend in online ‘crowd sourcing’ behaviour. People in China have taken to organising themselves to avenge various social transgressions. Using social networking tools, they identify and publicly shame people who, they claim, have committed various acts of cruelty and callousness.

In one case, a Chinese woman posted a video of herself as she tortured and killed a kitten with her stiletto heels. Indignant viewers tracked down personal details including her name, address and employer and began a harassment campaign that culminated in her flight into hiding.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, one is tempted to say. Surely someone so thoughtlessly cruel brought her fate upon herself. Some have observed that it’s hardly surprising to see such behaviour arising in China, with its inept local police and corrupt administration.

But such vigilantism is everywhere. In a case whose circumstances closely mirror that of the young Chinese woman, a teenage American boy uploaded a video of a dog being molested and was subjected to nearly identical treatment. The loosely-organised confederacy of online activists known as Anonymous has a track record of posting incriminating information about their targets.

They too claim the moral high ground, arguing, for example, that their disruption of the Church of Scientology, both online and In Real Life (their term), is a reaction to Scientology’s suppression of information about their organisation. Their tactics, claims Anonymous, include kidnapping, torture and even murder their own members.

People often complain that the Law is impersonal, an uncaring instrument whose application too often punishes the innocent and allows the guilty to walk free. In practice, it is capricious and too often selectively applied. All of this is true, from time to time.

But the alternative is summary judgment and mob justice. Far too often, they’re driven by hysteria and a deep-seated desire to find a scapegoat in order to externalise the worst aspects of human nature that exists within all of us. A recent Daily Post story on the Lolowei murders reports that villagers had long made use of the two accused poisoners to settle their own petty differences.

The very people who had commissioned these despicable acts were the brothers’ accusers and ultimately their executioners.

So where was the rule of Law? As with so many government services, policing is little more than a charade in rural areas. Newspaper reports indicate that, far from detaining the perpetrators and securing the bodies as evidence, police escorted the bodies to the attackers’ boat and allowed them to be taken away. The bodies were apparently fastened with stones and dumped into the ocean.

(It must be acknowledged that police dispatched criminal investigation staff to Ambae the very same day the reports first surfaced. As this column is being written, anonymous sources are reporting that 7 men will be summoned to face charges of unlawful assembly and murder. Whether these people are already in custody is not clear.)

Had these events happened even a few years ago, the brothers might have made good their escape. But with the advent of mobile telecommunications throughout Vanuatu, it only took a few phone calls to locate them, to coordinate transport and, yes, to propagate the sordid story across the nation.

Truly, technology can change lives, but it doesn’t change human nature.

A recent report from the Pacific Institute of Public Policy measuring the social effects of mobile telephony has solid evidence indicating that one of the primary benefits of mobile services is to reinforce social bonds and to sustain them over distance.

Such benefits are undeniably good, but development – especially social development – cannot consist only of technological advances. Improved access to information is a good thing, but it’s only as useful as our ability to process, filter and understand the information itself. No amount of technology will mitigate the worst excesses of jealousy, superstition and mob instinct.

One surprising datum emerging from the PiPP telecoms report is that people don’t recognise the role played by the Government in these recent changes. Satisfaction rose over last year’s report with regard to access to family and friends, business opportunities, travel, even education. But satisfaction levels with the government services actually dropped slightly this year, safeguarding their place at the very bottom of the index.

Social development is a complex, often amorphous and always difficult undertaking. But the government of Vanuatu has to state clearly, publicly and unambiguously what its role will be in this regard. If it doesn’t, people will continue to take matters in their own hands, sometimes with tragic results.

A friend of mine recently completed a photography project documenting the people of Dhaka, Bangladesh. These 265 mostly candid portraits capture what I like to call the miracle of the mundane. Without editorialising, they create a compelling polemic for the inherent dignity of every human being.

They’re noteworthy precisely because they’re not newsworthy.

If you were to ask me what animates me, what makes me take on the labours of love that fill my time to brimming, I would likely point to something like this. I’ve often been accused of being an idealist, but that’s only partly true. The ideals that I aspire to are simple:

We should have the right to a peaceful, respectful existence, with all the rights and responsibilities that this entails.

We should be able to choose which dramas and adventures we become involved in. Those we can’t choose should never grow so large that we lose all choice whatsoever.

One of the most alluring and endearing aspects of life in Vanuatu is our collective ability to drift along with few cares and few (sometimes too few!) responsibilities. The machinery of government grinds and chugs on by like a smoking bus with three cylinders firing, but aside from a bit of smoke and noise, leaves us largely unscathed.

Recent events, especially last Thursday’s tsunami warning, serve as a reminder just how fortunate we are. Within an hour of the alert being issued, news agencies the world over were contacting the Daily Post. Intent on the next human tragedy, they wanted to know: How much damage? How many dead?

The answer, happily, was that only one young girl was hurt when she ran in front of a moving truck.

Had a similar area in virtually anywhere else in the world been struck as we were by 3 earthquakes in quick succession, each in excess of 7.0, thousands, even millions might have suffered.

The simplicity of our existence – our lack of development – has in many ways saved us from the worst. If we didn’t have so little, we might have more to lose.

Life goes on today as it did the day before. We worry about where the next bag of rice is going to come from. We ruin our sandals in the mud. We bicker and fuss our way through petty jealousies. And we laugh at every opportunity.

In a place where the worst example of anarchy we can find is a dozen children playing on the beach, where the sum of our fears extend no more than a few miles from home, where even a hurricane is more frightening than deadly, we should really consider ourselves blessed.

But that should never make us complacent. For all its manifold blessings, Vanuatu society is still fraught with imperfection. Violence may not be institutionalised, but it is systemic. Too many women and children, safe from the predations of the state, are nonetheless victims in their own homes. Family, stronger here than in most other societies, is increasingly strained by distance and economic forces.

The difference between Vanuatu and its more turbulent Melanesian neighbours is as much one of luck as anything else. We all have corruption, venality, social and economic tensions and occasional violence. But for some reason, Vanuatu always pulls back from the brink.

How is this? What exactly is it that has allowed us to avoid the worst excesses of violence, economic and social dispossession? I honestly don’t know. If I were forced to answer, I’d likely wave my hands vaguely and mutter something about how people just don’t like things getting out of hand.

During the incipient insurrection some years ago between Police and Mobile forces, a besieged Police commander delivered an impassioned speech to the throng assembled behind the VMF picket. What began as an angry peroration culminated in a series of (ultimately tearful) apologies to everyone concerned for having caused such a ruckus. By observing the rhetorical standards of public oratory, the rebel leader defused his own obduracy.

We are a decent society, therefore, because we are used to acting like decent people.

Conclusions like this are dangerous. Too often, they lead only to self-satisfied complacency. As one chief explained it to me, it’s as if we are given the gift of a lovely garden with bountiful fruit trees. With such abundance, it becomes difficult to see the sweat and the toil that went into clearing the ground, the care and attention that allowed the tiny seed to become an adult tree.

It’s far too easy as well to assume that the tree will continue to bear fruit forever.

Thursday’s tsunami warning was a false alarm. But there is another tsunami approaching whose effects will be more widespread and, if we don’t prepare for them, more devastating than anything the ocean could do.

As development continues its inexorable spread through Vanuatu society, we must ensure that our politicians and policy makers never lose sight of individual faces of the people on whose behalf they were chosen to work.

They aren’t newsworthy, but they are noteworthy. They are us.

In times of crisis, communication and coordination enable us to survive and to recover quickly.

When an earthquake occured between Samoa and Tonga early in the morning of September 29th, it created a tsunami that struck the inhabitants on the eastern and southeastern parts of the island within minutes. Sirens sounded and church bells rang all over side of the island, sending people fleeing to higher ground.

The latest reports from Samoa indicate that in addition to at least 149 dead, 640 families comprising roughly 3200 people have lost their homes and possessions. Most have yet to to return to their villages, and are without proper access to power, water and other basic amenities.

Food, water, clothing and shelter are all critical elements of the relief effort.

Equally important is the ability to communicate.

As I write this, many Port Vila residents are still feeling shaken following another tsunami warning caused by an 8.0 magnitude earthquake Thursday morning at the far northern tip of the Vanuatu archipelago. Happily, it was a dud. Boaters in Port Vila harbour reported a minor swell, nothing more. Two more tremblors measuring above 7.0 were felt that day, further raising anxieties.

Within 15 minutes of the tremor, the first official warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. A few minutes after that, warnings began to be issued via email, web and broadcast media. Shortly before the wave was due to arrive, downtown Port Vila was a ghost town. Shops, schools and businesses were closed in Santo as well.

It was encouraging to see the speed with which the information was disseminated, and how care was taken to ensure that the news was accurate and timely.

Following the cancellation of the alert, there was much discussion about how things could have been done better. Among the problems mentioned were traffic jams caused by parents attempting to collect their children from schools, closed although most were situated on safe high ground and never in danger.

Others suggested that TVL and Digicel should collaborate to send broadcast SMS messages to their client base. While a commendable idea, we cannot rely entirely on such media. SMS operates on a best-effort basis, but voice traffic always takes precedence. So if everyone starts phoning family and loved ones – as happened this morning – their calls will take precedence. The busier the network, the slower the rate at which SMS messages can be sent.

Also, it’s impossible to send messages to people based on their location. From the perspective of the equipment used to send these messages, you’re either on the network or you’re not. Exactly where you are is impossible to determine.

While useful, SMS can only be a part of the solution. Broadcast media and good old-fashioned warning sirens are still the most direct and effective way to get the message out.

Tellingly, none of the the warnings that I saw originated from the government unit designated to deal with these situations. While the Geohazards unit and the Meteo office were quick to disseminate details via radio, TV, web and email, the National Disaster Management Office was nowhere to be seen.

Government resources are limited, it’s true. While every effort is made to provide accurate, detailed and up-to-date information, resources are always stretched. Esline Araebiti, Geohazards Manager, described her efforts to keep tabs on recent volcanic activity on Gaua’s volcano. Dormant since 1982, it recently began to show signs of life, and has since been upgraded from level 0 (dormant) to 1 (increased activity, danger near crater only).

The first people to notice this renewed activity were the people of West Gaua. With neither mobile nor landline service available, they used a teleradio to contact provincial authorities in Sola on nearby Vanua Lava, where the message was relayed to the Geohazards Unit.

(It’s hoped that the Government’s Universal Access Policy Fund will improve communications capacity in this extremely vulnerable area.)

Luckily, portable sensing equipment was available, and members of the unit embarked immediately for Gaua. The equipment uses satellite technology to send monitoring data back to Vila and onward to the US Geological Survey’s international network.

Thursday’s earthquake was centred about 150 kilometres from Gaua. There is some concern that the disturbance might cause increased activity in the volcano. Much like a can of soda when it’s shaken, an earthquake can cause the explosive release of gases from magma chambers deep below the earth’s surface. Gaua’s lava chamber lies immediately below a lake, so there’s significant concern that if it’s breached it could cause a catastrophic explosion. Authorities are therefore watching carefully to see if the volcano’s status should be upgraded yet again.

The kind of sensing equipment deployed in Gaua is costly to purchase and maintain. NZAID and the Pacific Fund have been assisting the unit in establishing a permanent monitoring station on Ambrym to track activity on Marum and Benbow volcanoes. These stations use Digicel’s GPRS service to provide lower-cost communications. Results so far are quite positive, though there have been technical issues with Digicel’s tower located in nearby Ulei village.

Sylvain Todman, a consultant working with the Geohazards unit, stated that there is a critical need for additional equipment. Currently only two volcanoes are monitored on a full-time basis. There is an immediate need for six such stations, located on Tanna, Epi, Ambrym, Ambae and Gaua. Each station costs between $12-17,000, plus regular service and maintenance – not too expensive, considering the lives that might be saved.

The September 29 tsunami took between 5-8 minutes to reach the coast of Samoa, and only a few minutes more to strike Tonga and American Samoa. Thursday’s false alarm provides an object lesson on the importance of timely, accurate and systematic information sharing, both in acquisition and dissemination of geohazard data.

Communications is, after all what makes us human. And what keeps us safe and alive.

Note for online readers: For more detailed analysis and reporting of the situation in Fiji, I’d recommend the perceptive and well-sourced Coup Four and a Half blog. In its own words:

This blog has been created to allow stories and information that have been supressed or banned by the administration of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, as a result of the decision by the President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to impose Public Emergency Regulations, which has led to heavy handed censoring of the media.

Recently, numerous commentators in Vanuatu and other Pacific countries have complained loud and long that Commodore Frank Bainimarama is being treated unfairly by the media. The real bad guys, they say, were the ones who so abused the shambles of Fijian democracy that the army leader was left no choice but to intervene.

Furthermore, they argue, the problems of governance in Fiji are significant enough that holding elections before 2014 (the date recently suggested by the ruling junta) would only result in a return to the same sorry state the nation was in before. In short: Fiji can have its coup now or later, but by having it now, we can rest assured that it’s happening for the right reasons, guided by the right man.

I’m not entirely unsympathetic to this argument. It’s true that some reports, especially those appearing in Australian popular media, tend to miss the point that Fijian democracy was deplorably weak when Bainimarama took over. Furthermore, the hard rhetorical line taken by the governments of Australia and New Zealand hasn’t done much to improve the situation for anyone.

Frank Bainimarama is without a doubt a patriot who cares deeply about the welfare of his nation. But the question is whether any single patriot should rule Fiji.

To be sure, Fiji needs to clean house. But the process by which this is accomplished is more important than any other consideration. The current regime’s apologists might say that the Commodore became disgusted with the tenants’ behaviour and, like any good landlord would, he turfed them out.

A commendable act, perhaps, but here’s the thing: It’s not his house.

The arbitrary use of coercive force is antithetical to democracy. Fiji’s military is known worldwide as an effective and disciplined force, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that (for the most part) they’ve shown discipline and restraint in spite of having no checks on their authority. But the very things that make it an effective fighting force make it perfectly unsuited to govern.

Government in a healthy, pluralistic society is a messy, disorganised, often self-contradictory contraption. Dissent, competition and the basic precept that a candidate succeeds or fails based on his standing in the eyes of his peers are all necessary to its proper functioning. Military organisations are necessarily designed to stifle all of these.

There’s a good reason why the military in every healthy democracy subordinates itself to the nation’s political leaders. It is precisely in order to ensure that discipline, unity of action and obedience for their own sake do not end up taking the country down a path the populace is not willing to follow.

Recent events in US political history have led to vigourous arguments about the nature of a unitary executive, but alas, even that kind of questing debate about the exercise of power is not currently possible within Fiji’s borders. As wise and well-meaning as Frank Bainimarama may be, he cannot be allowed to rule alone. He is, after all, one man, just as fallible and prone to human frailty as the rest of us.

And here we come to the crux of the problem: Nobody who’s given it more than passing thought would deny that the de-colonialisation of the Pacific has been fraught with problems. Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and PNG have all wrestled with the application of the tools of democracy left us by our erstwhile masters, often failing in the attempt to reconcile them with traditional approaches. The fundamental issue of self-determination remains unresolved in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Today, after a generation of mixed results, we would all do well to engage in a thorough examination of just what democracy means in the Pacific.

But that debate is prejudiced, even precluded, when its terms are applied arbitrarily and by fiat. Frankly, there is no place in a soldier’s world for dialogue. As long as Fiji remains under military rule, it cannot heal itself.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to imagine how things could have happened differently. Before he ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, Bainimarama had already taken unto himself the role of benevolent but implacable defender of Fijian democracy. Few people complained when he ousted George Speight’s openly racist regime in 2000, and when he elevated Qarase to the PM’s chair, the populace later validated the choice. It was hardly a surprise, then, to see him take up the reins once again when Qarase began consorting with his opponents.

By acting unilaterally to ensure that Fiji’s previous coup-plotters were not allowed to walk away unpunished, Bainimarama was saving his own life as much as anyone else’s. But he was also defending one of the fundamental tenets of a society of laws: actions must have consequences.

What he seems to have disregarded, though, is the logical extension of that precept: His own actions have consequences, too. He must be answerable to his own people. As things stand right now, he is not.

And that alone makes him dangerous. Not necessarily because he’s wrong now, but because, being fallible, he could be. And when he does act against the interests of his country, intentionally or not, the only recourse left to those who oppose him will be to apply the same tools of arbitrary force against him.

One hope remains: That Bainimarama, with the assistance of his Pacific allies, finds an orderly way to back down from this impasse, and to subordinate himself once more to the will of the people he’s spent his life defending.

With headlines like ‘Man Gets On Bus’, and ‘Breakfast As Usual’, Fiji’s beleaguered fourth estate is reporting all the news it feels is still fit – or safe – to print. Such stories are a reaction to Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s extensive power grab this week, which included the abrogation of the national Constitution, removal of judges and senior financial figures, expulsion of Australian and New Zealand-born journalists and censorship of domestic media.

One particularly riveting feature, titled ‘Paint Dry’, recounts the couch painting adventure of a man named Max. The paint, he recounts, “went on wet, but after four hours it started to dry…. That was when I realised, paint dries.”

I expect it ran with a four column headline.

In solidarity with my Fijian colleagues, I’ve decided to write about nothing as well. Happily, this is easily done. Even though Port Vila is home to the Melanesian Spearhead Group and PM Edward Nipake Natapei holds the chair this year, I am glad to say that I have nothing to report.

Despite being uniquely positioned to provide sober diplomatic counsel to the increasingly isolated Fijian dictator, despite what our PM describes as a fraternal relationship with one of our closest neighbours, one with whom we have a unique trading relationship, whose culture closely resembles our own, we and our Melanesian brethren have decided to do exactly nothing to prevent Fiji’s descent into constitutional, social and economic crisis.

So, in the space where I might otherwise have observed that, in throwing out the Constitution without so much as a ‘by your leave’, Commodore Bainimarama has left himself with little room to manoeuvre, let me instead tell you just how lovely my frangipani tree is this year. Its fragrant flowers, tinged in the softest rose and yellow hues, have a transient, fragile beauty.

Were this a column of any substance, I might remark on their similarity to Fiji’s tourism industry. Stunning beaches run for miles, uncluttered by tourists. Boutique resorts, once frequented by backpackers, lie picturesque and empty, their charm neglected, their staff sent home.

Instead, I can devote this space to the weather. The gloomy overcast, high winds and heavy rain that beset us this last week have at last cleared away. Were MSG members inclined to do more than bicker over the cost of renting an apartment in Port Vila, I might have been forced to draw an analogy to a ray of light shining across the region after a stormy political setback. Happily, no such comparison is necessary.

I have to admit that I’m glad. It’s so much easier to write about my family’s Easter celebration, which featured much laughter and too much pizza and chocolate, than to venture into the delicate and inordinately complex dynamics of a well-meaning commander who may truly believe himself the defender of his nation, but whose soldier’s philosophy prefers the rule of force to rule of law. I would much rather recount how my 3 year old niece shrieked with delight when she saw her photograph appear on my computer screen than try to explain to an uncomprehending world how this 54 year old self-styled protector of justice has allowed things to come to this pass.

Far better to dwell on the simple pleasures of a walk through Vila’s market house than to wander down memory lane, enumerating the countless failures in democracy and governance experienced by every Melanesian country. Totting up the list alone would take up half my word count. Explaining the many causes, the patchwork quilt of kastom, the tightly raveled web of filialism represented by the wantok system of patronage and support, would require volumes.

Layering on the cross-cultural tensions between ethnic Fijians and their Indo-Fijian neighbours would have been near-impossible. Explaining Bainimarama’s simplistic logic of using arbitrary measures to cast out these inequities and injustices – well, that seems to be beyond the ken of most international commentators. Thank heavens, then, that I can content myself with a pastiche on the variety of life and colour in my garden.

And Heaven help me if I had been left with no recourse but to prognosticate. How could I hope to properly characterise the patient, determined diplomatic dance that represents Fiji’s only hope of escaping economic, political and social collapse? If I had to describe the potential for outright destruction of the very things that the Commodore genuinely wants to defend, to lay out in simple terms just how far from the democratic fold he’s drawn his nation, I honestly don’t know if I’d be up to the task.

How to encapsulate a manageable framework to honestly and positively perform a stock-take on the state of democracy in Melanesia after its first generation of Independence? Engaging in the renewal of political and social engagement, shaped into a uniquely Melanesian form, is truly a place where even our brightest political angels fear to tread.

Small wonder the leadership of the Melanesian Spearhead group would rather issue non-statements, preferring a sincere tut-tutting to action.

Let’s go one better and join our silenced Fijian brethren watching paint dry.

As I write this, Vanuatu’s members of Parliament are plodding through the Government’s budget bill. It’s an unusual second consecutive week of work for our MPs, and though everyone is intent on seeing the job completed, they’re giving the work the attention it deserves.

Opposition members have kept cabinet ministers on their collective toes. Following a salvo of incisive questions from across the floor, Finance Minister Molisa sent his staff back to the Ministry with instructions for more detailed briefing materials. The lights were burning into the small hours at Finance.

Measured in strictly procedural terms, progress may be slower than Speaker George Wells might want, but the Opposition, looking revitalised and with a newfound sense of purpose, has been… well, doing its job, to be frank. That’s a refreshing – and timely – first.

It may seem silly to outsiders, but I’m not the only one here who’s taken some encouragement from these few weeks of Parliamentary process. After years of listening to the same tiresome tirades against do-nothing politicians, we are at last seeing something genuinely newsworthy in Vanuatu politics: A thorough and detailed investigation of how the nation spends its money.

There’s a little bit of wonkery to this story, procedural details that have passed largely unremarked by the general public. Here it is in a nutshell:

The Government decided to tidy up its affairs this year, putting additional expenditures from last year onto the books in a supplementary appropriation. Funds for Health, PVMC, back-pay, the Agriculture Development Bank and a fleet of new ministerial vehicles combined to push urgent, unforeseen expenditures over the 1.5% cap that Finance legislation had placed on them. In order to retroactively bring these expenses into the fold, the Government pushed through a one-time increase in the discretionary limit to 4.2%, bringing the total to slightly more than 500 million vatu.

Wait a minute – Ministerial vehicles? MP Ralph Regenvanu rightly questioned their designation as urgent and necessary expenses. He has a point, too. But equally important is the Government’s decision to bring these payments into the light of day. By submitting its past profligacy to Parliamentary scrutiny and making it clear that such retroactive increases will not recur, it was able at least to secure the integrity of the process.

As it passed the required amendment, Minister Molisa assured MPs that the change to 4.2% would be reverted via new legislation to be introduced immediately following consideration of this year’s budget. This would require an extraordinary session, but that had been accounted for in the planning. Better to keep MPs around for a few more days and see the job done right than to work – literally – in half measures.

The Opposition had their own agenda, too. Following a realignment that left veteran parliamentarian Sato Kilman in the fore, they embarked on a concerted and effective campaign, forcing the Government to defend its policy priorities and the spending they entailed. MPs Moana Carcasses Kalosil and Ralph Regenvanu were often in the thick of things, posing informed and detailed questions concerning Government’s spending priorities. They arrived in the House prepared, with notes in hand, and maintained an unprecedented level of cohesion in opposing those spending measures they felt did not meet the standards they set out.

PM Natapei’s coalition, itself demonstrating a high degree of unity and preparation, has carried every vote so far. But the heightened scrutiny required that they spend longer than originally planned on the appropriation bill. And here’s where it gets interesting.

The law states that budget bills can only be considered in ordinary sessions of Parliament, so the extraordinary session scheduled to follow (to revert the changes to the supplementary spending limits) wouldn’t do. All right, then, said Government, we’ll just tack a second ordinary session onto the first, and then add an extraordinary session after that, should we need one.

What with the robust scrutiny the budget bill is receiving, it appears they do. So the Parliamentary marathon seems set to continue.

Some will no doubt moan about the cost, but I say it’s worth every penny. In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen Parliament working quite as well as it is right now. Government is taking steps to keep future hands out of the cookie jar, and what’s more has owned up to the crumbs on the counter.

For their part, the Opposition have done what a good Opposition is supposed to do – they’ve challenged, pushed, prodded and demanded answers. To its credit, Edward Natapei’s government, most notably Finance Minister Molisa, have stood up to the scrutiny and held their ground.

The result? Our parliamentarians seem (at last!) to be moving beyond a musical chairs approach to government and taking the role of governing seriously.

No doubt everyone’s feeling a little weary right now, and some may be grumbling about the expense and inconvenience of keeping Parliament in session into another week. I say we stay the course. Government is doing its job. This, truly, is the price of democracy, and if you ask me, it’s money well spent.

There is only one thing worse than a badly played football match: a badly refereed match.

What makes a bad referee? Players the world over agree that it’s not strictness or laxity; what makes a referee really bad is when he’s inconsistent and unpredictable. The ref consistently calls offsides in favour of the defence? Not great for the strikers, but a team can adjust and try different approaches to the net. The ref calls them consistently in favour of the offence? Drop the zone defence and mark your man carefully.

But when neither team knows how the play will be called, it creates uncertainty, which leads to sloppy play and sometimes a little opportunistic cheating, hoping that this time the ref won’t call a questionable play.

This principle applies everywhere. In numerous business surveys, company leaders consistently report that continuity and predictability in economic management and government affairs matter more to them than the economic structures themselves.

As long as clear rules exist around ownership, trade and the economic environment in general, a well-run company will be able to find its way – and possibly to thrive – under just about any regime.

But a company that can’t predict what will happen tomorrow can’t plan effectively. And a company that can’t plan finds itself scrambling from one day to the next. It finds that it can’t commit – neither to its customers nor to its staff. When this uncertainty becomes generalised, with nobody willing or able to say what tomorrow holds, the business climate worsens all round.

The government of Vanuatu has made great strides in recent years in its efforts to make its bureaucratic components simpler and more predictable for all concerned. The primary purpose of this is to insulate the civil service from the innate turbulence of Vanuatu politics. By carefully channeling initiatives through straightforward but rigourous processes, the worst weaknesses of government instability are compensated for.

The days are long past when political infighting could result in the failure to table a budget, as happened under then-Prime Minister Barak Sope.

These reforms are invaluable, but not sufficient. The process of creating new laws and regulations requires the same kind of predictability and respect of process. Currently, there is next to none.

To be clear: The State Law Office generally does excellent work in drafting legislation. With a few notable exceptions, Vanuatu’s laws in recent years have been clearly scoped, defined and written. But State Law’s influence is limited to ensuring the legality and clarity of the bills they draft. They have no say at all over their contents.

What a Bill actually contains is entirely up to the Cabinet members and their staff.

So how, exactly, did the recent amendments to the Employment Act come about? To the best of my knowledge, there was little if any consultation with business, unions, civil society organisations or the general public. Whatever actually transpired, the near-panic expressed by a number of prominent business owners demonstrates that they were singularly unprepared for the Amendments’ passage in Parliament.

Contrast that with the policy and legislative review conducted by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities. For years now, they’ve been talking, thinking, researching and sharing their views with anyone interested. Policy papers and proposed legislation are made available months before they enter Parliament. By the time a Bill arrives on the Order Table, people know exactly what’s in it, and what motivated the choices made.

Not every stakeholder agrees with every aspect of what gets enacted. But at least they know what to expect. The player doesn’t have to like the call, but she needs to respect the referee.

In any given election, about half of all elected MPs are new to Parliament. Efforts are underway to educate them in Parliamentary process and the roles and responsibilities of Members and Ministers. But we need more.

The real battle behind the Amendments to the Employment Act is not over their constitutionality. Nor has it to do with the Minister’s prerogative – and responsibility – to legislate matters of employment rights. It’s not the Minister’s responsibility to make everyone like what the Act contains.

The shock of latest amendments has done nothing but create uncertainty. They undermined confidence across the board. Businesses are increasingly tempted to perform an end-run around the rules, to sack their fulltime employees and require them to return as short-term independent contractors.

This means that such workers will get no severance at all. Worse, benefits like VNPF contributions become the employee’s responsibility. This will almost certainly undermine the Provident Fund. There will doubtless be other negative consequences as well. In short, the Minister’s unquestionably good intentions are being subverted by the lack of due process and consideration.

It is up to the Minister and the Government to ensure that Vanuatu’s market place is ruled fairly, clearly and consistently, according to rules that we may not all like, but we all agree to respect. The only way to achieve this is to create a clear, well-trodden path down which every piece of policy and legislation must travel before it becomes law.