Yesterday I wrote about the need for the development of a coherent and unifying political philosophy in Vanuatu. Today, I feel I should explain why the development of such a vision is a difficult – not to say intractable – problem.

This is Chief Kalori of Clem’s Hill. One of the young turks in Efate’s francophone population at the time of the Independence movement of the 1970s, he presided over a community responsive to the French argument for a go-slow approach. As members of a large, distinct minority, they felt they had every reason to fear being overwhelmed and shouted down by the largely Anglican/Presbyterian leadership of the Independence movement.

The French at the time were much more conservative in their approach to Independence. They are presently the last colonial power in the region that hasn’t utterly divested itself of the trappings of overt rule. In the 1970s, the French quietly and not-so-subtly provided assistance to anti-Independence political parties (eventually united under the familiar mantle of the Union des Parties Modérées, or UMP) and supported rebellions on Santo and Tanna.

Picture Kalori, a young man of rank and potential in the 1970s, watching his fathers become isolated and shifted out of power, while young, foreign-educated firebrands radioed political speeches from hiding places in the bush only a few kilometres from his nasara.

The young lawyer who preached, Castro-like, over the bush radio is now President of Vanuatu. Chief Kalori remains in his village, very much the injured lion. He is quick to reprove the country’s founders, men he – not entirely without reason – considered under-educated and ill-prepared for the demands of ruling a newborn nation.

While Kalori is alive, there will be another view of Independence: not undesirable, but in the 1980s untimely and rash. He feels that everything that has transpired since then, the venality, pettiness, lack of political coherence or cohesion… all of this can be laid at the feet of some brash young men who lacked the education and the wisdom to take a more patient tack.

Father Lini did little to ingratiate himself with the francophone population at first. He sent colonial police to deal with the Tannese insurgents, and brokered an agreement with Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister to bring the Nagriamel leader Jimmy Stevens’ Bow & Arrow Rebellion to an abrupt and somewhat violent end.

Even after the violence was ended, he was not beyond expressing his pique by kicking out the odd French diplomat.

Some years ago, I spent an afternoon listening to a francophone chief from Tanna regale me with the history of cultural tensions in his area. His story culminated in the imprisonment of all the area’s leaders and ultimately the death of the most senior. He paused at the end and said to me in Bislama, “I’m glad you’re French Canadian. What I have said to you today, I could never tell to an anglophone.”

(Apologetically and as tactfully as I knew how, I later disabused the chief of his mistake. He never spoke directly to me again.)

Unity doesn’t come naturally in Vanuatu. As with many cultures, affiliations are complex, beginning with family and radiating from there to include village, island, language and religion. The most closely kept – and contested – are those closest to you, but external threats can quickly make them disappear, at least until the threat subsides.

One remarkably simple and transformative political fulcrum is the externalisation of conflict. It’s infinitely easier to unite against an external threat than against an internal one, let alone for any positive reason. In the 1970s the near total disenfranchisement of the ni-Vanuatu population was sufficient to bring virtually everyone together. Even those opposed to Independence argued against the timing, not the goal.

I often find myself wishing I had met Father Lini, so I might have some inkling why his presence in the political field was enough to hold things together for as long as he did. But lately I’ve come to suspect that had he remained healthy to this day, he might have found himself in his younger brother’s shoes: only one of the larger dogs in a very large, snappy pack.

Popular support and party unity were already diminishing at the time of his fateful stroke following a prayer breakfast with US President Reagan. Some have even speculated that the stroke was not an accident. Perhaps, they say, the mere mention of the word ‘socalism’, albeit in its benign, uniquely Melanesian usage, was enough to excite interest among Langley’s shadowy denizens.

In any case, politics in Vanuatu is very, very personal. While men like Kalori live, grievances live unaddressed. Jealousies are compounded by a sense of missed opportunity, an inversion of ‘there but for the grace of God…’, that continues to animate actors at all levels of Vanuatu politics.

And when that passes, only the venality, the opportunistic pursuit of the quickest, shortest gain, will remain. And that is why it is more important than ever to find something (dare I say anything?) that will allow the new generation’s leaders to elaborate a coherent picture of a future for all of Vanuatu.

I doubt they’ll succeed, but I feel that someone ought to try.

How dare Karl Rove have the temerity to open his mouth? How dare the Rush Corps pray for failure? Can’t they see we’ve won?

The Left has won, that much is true. But all it’s won is an election, nothing more. This is not the end of the fight. Though they’ve suffered an electoral rout, many Republicans feel they are still on decent ground, and have every reason in the world to feel there’s no great need to change tactics.

For these people, a failed stimulus and subsequent economic disaster is the stuff of dreams. It’s what they’ve been working toward for decades.

“This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.”

President-Elect Barack Obama spoke these words to nearly a quarter of a million people in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois on a night that I will remember as one of the highlights of my life.

Reporting on the event, even the normally sober Economist Magazine could not avoid tingeing its account with giddiness. Shyly, almost ashamedly, the anonymous author recounts how American and international journalists lost all semblance of restraint when CNN called the race. They came tumbling out of the media tent en masse to join the multitude of revelers.

How could they not be affected? Each and every one of us was changed personally, individually, by this event.

But it would be disingenuous for any journalist to declare from the pulpit of their own column, that – just this once – they’ve forsaken their dais to speak as woman or man. I will not do that. I will instead sit down on the steps to this poor podium. Indulge me while I speak from my own experience….

I was a bit prodigal as a child, reading words from the newspaper before I was four. I remember my mother’s shock when Bobby Kennedy was shot. (I recall less about her reaction to the death of Reverend Martin Luther King – and that in itself is telling.)

Since that day, I have watched as American democracy progressively lost whatever luster it had gained through the efforts of its greatest practitioners. Franklin Roosevelt set an economic example for the world with his New Deal. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its existence to his wife Eleanor. Lyndon Johnson turned his back on the bigoted southern Democratic Party bloc when he signed the Civil Rights Act into law. But from the late ’60s onward, things went downhill.

I was still a pup when the Watergate scandal splashed itself across the world’s front pages, and young enough to naively wonder how the American people could buy into the facile pseudo-logic of the Reagan regime. I couldn’t comprehend how a country founded on the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality could support brutal regimes in Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile and countless other countries across the globe.

But the more I reflect on the events of my youth, the more I realize that the baying maw of cynical opportunism – called Realpolitik when it dresses for dinner – has been with us throughout history. It has always been easier to win the argument with the fist than with reason and the rule of law. Why compromise when you can just murder the other guy?

And that’s just what they did. John and Robert Kennedy, along with civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King and countless others, died for daring to use reason in place of force.

The very best of them were taken. And they left behind an angry, aimless generation. Without compass, without real leadership, without a guiding philosophy to pull them out of themselves, they opposed the ‘Establishment’ for opposition’s sake. They ended a war but left peace to fend for itself. In the end, they sold everything in exchange for credit, a suburban home and a La-Z-Boy mythology.

Barack Obama and I are nearly the same age. I can’t claim to see into his mind, but I must assume that he and I, awkward, skinny kids puzzling over world events from the sidelines of society, have seen the same patterns. And judging from his words and deeds, I’m inclined to think we’ve reached the same conclusions.

He does not preach Reagan’s mythical ‘Morning in America’. Not for him a ‘Thousand Points of Light’. His rhetoric isn’t the murderous travesty of ‘Compassionate Conservatism’. Rather, it’s the very essence of the original American myth, the City on the Hill. The preamble of the US Constitution speaks of building a ‘more perfect union’, a shining New Jerusalem to act as a beacon to the oppressed in all nations and a refuge for all who reach its shores.

Obama understands – and requires that his followers remember – that this city is neither myth nor metaphor, and cities don’t build themselves. He asks them instead “to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.”

Every ni-Vanuatu knows what it means to be discriminated against in one’s own country. They know the trials, the travails and above all the tedium of building that more perfect union. Barack Obama’s election is not just a victory for people of colour, it is a victory of human ideals.

For the first time in a lifetime, Americans looked past their own selfish interests and chose the change they need. For the first time in a lifetime, they have joined hands to clean out the shambles of self-interest and willful ignorance. They have at last begun rebuilding their city on the hill.

We must all learn from this moment. This is the change we need.

After decades of violence and suffering, Timor-Leste begins to bloom

There is no view quite so striking in Timor-Leste as a bougainvillea in full flower on a dusty plain. Almost every village house has one, as if to put an exclamation point on the landscape, not simply to announce but to cry out, “I’m here, I’m alive!”

After more than 35 years of violence and catastrophic suffering, at their own hands and those of a cruelly indifferent world, it’s nothing short of a marvel that the Timorese can smile at all. But on September 21st, the world’s youngest nation did just that, and more. For the first time in the country’s history, they gathered to celebrate Peace.

The decision to commemorate International Peace Day this way was a gambit, calculated finely by Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao. When the FRETILIN opposition threatened to ratchet up the cycle of dissent and the potential for violence by holding protest rallies, he beat them to the punch. He, his cabinet, international representatives and over 2000 onlookers gathered openly in the grand square in front of the Palacio do Governo for the celebrations.

Entering the grounds of the Palacio, I expected to encounter a large military presence. But, unlike the FRETILIN, the current administration deliberately avoids any overt show of force. Security arrangements were comprehensive, quiet and discreet.

The festivities were modest, but given Timor-Leste’s brief, tumultuous history, they were as remarkable an affirmation of life as a splash of colour in an arid land.

Timor’s bloom has been as sudden as it is vivid. With its coffers filling with petroleum revenues, the national budget has grown from a paltry $40 million US to over $700 million in just two years. Public works projects are everywhere, with multi-story buildings springing up beside shattered edifices (remnants of Indonesia’s ruinous scorched earth campaign in 1999 which destroyed 70% of the nation’s infrastructure).

One of the biggest challenges facing the government today is how to spend the money at all. Ignoring accusations from other nations and international agencies that they are selling out their legacy, Xanana (as he is fondly known by all) and his cabinet have decided that the development of Timor-Leste can’t wait. They reason that they have a few years at best to change the pattern of respite, dissension and eruption that has characterised the nation since the mid-1970s.

Their approach is practical and direct. With nearly 100,000 internally displaced people still living in camps when they took office, they bridled when presented with long-term comprehensive strategies that envisioned resettlement for the majority after 8 years. The government immediately ordered cash payments to IDPs to help them rebuild their homes. It was a partial answer, one that the government admits will require significant further effort, but the move helped 60,000 people to begin rebuilding within a year.

Despite some softer gains under the joint UN/Timorese administration – peace, improved stability and periods of relative calm – the focus in those early days was very much on building the larger institutions. When power was handed over to FRETILIN movement, things went from bad to worse. Its expertise in guerilla operations and resistance did not translate into competent governance. It was Xanana himself who precipitated their removal by threatening to resign the Presidency unless the increasingly fractious Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri stepped down. He then formed a uniquely Timorese rainbow coalition and has been Prime Minister since last year’s election.

Until recently, there’d been little improvement, if any, in the day-to-day lives of Timorese. Poverty figures rose to staggering levels. Roads fell into disrepair. Health and education services were held together mostly by charities and the Catholic Church, which cemented its integral role in Timorese life during the calamitous 1970s and 80s.

The government had never played a positive role in people’s lives, but Xanana was determined to change that.

Assisted by returned members of the Timorese diaspora, he assembled a mix of politicians and public servants to form his cabinet. Together they’ve embarked on a remarkably ambitious venture – the transformation of a country that’s never known peace into a functioning multi-party democracy.

It’s a difficult prospect, to say the least. Timor-Leste’s modern history is a litany of dashed ideals.

The naïveté of the Timorese political leadership at the outset was tragic in the extreme. Infighting, factionalism and lack of planning led to chaos, which Indonesia was happy to use as a pretext for invasion and occupation. Their manipulation of the nascent independence movement of the 1970s, and the cynical decision by Portugal, Australia, the US and others to look the other way, resulted in an estimated 100-200,000 deaths in the ensuing years.

Led by Nobel laureates Jose Ramos Horta and Catholic Bishop Carlos Belo, the Timorese resistance mastered the craft of international diplomacy in the years leading up to Indonesia’s withdrawal, but once again suffered for relying on an inept and ineffectual UN during the tumultuous days following the 1999 referendum on self-determination.

Once again, Indonesia took advantage of the worst aspects of human nature to set the Timorese against themselves. The fighting and destruction that followed left 1400 dead and over 100,000 displaced.

Xanana’s government has learnt a bitter lesson: Accepting assistance is all well and good; relying on the world to remedy Timor’s ills can only lead to further disaster.

The country’s problems are manifold. The flower of a generation, those men and women who should now be guiding the machine of state, are dead, displaced or disaffected. The majority of youth are unemployed, undereducated and discontented. Every single aspect of the country’s infrastructure needs to be built anew.

But what the government lacks in experience, it makes up for in devotion, energy and – finally – the means to deliver on their promises. The natural gas fields of the Timor Gap are finally in the right hands, and their abundance is making itself felt.

Some of the spending choices leave outsiders scratching their heads in bemusement. At one end of the Palacio do Governo, for example, stands a giant video screen. Every night, street youth and the occasional late-working civil servant gather in the darkness to watch European football. Many have questioned the wisdom of this quarter-million dollar annual expenditure, but when one considers the other things these youth could be doing – and have done in the past – on Dili’s dusty, half-lit streets, the price seems cheap.

It may sound trivial to most of us, but for people to gather together in security and comfort is still replete with novelty in Timor-Leste. Xanana and his cabinet are determined to nurture this first flush of innocence reborn. Like the first tentative bud on a newly planted cutting, they tend it with care.

There are a million more still to look after. The work seems endless, and time is short. Unless Timor’s youth are given stability, peace and a purpose, they will almost certainly re-enact their parents’ descent into rancour and destruction. The world didn’t save them last time, and there’s no reason to believe it would again.

Timor-Leste is saving its own life, with little insight or assistance from the outside world. But like a bright flower in an arid land, this sudden outburst of life is an arresting sight. Or would be, if the world would stop to look.

The 1990s were a time that many in Vanuatu might prefer to forget. Internecine political disputes resulted in a government more changeable than the weather. Senior ministers fought a running legal and ideological battle with Ombudsman Marie-Noelle Patterson. They were so distracted that they utterly ignored the business of governing. Failure to table a budget in 1996 led the VMF to abduct President Lenelcau in order to force payment of nearly 100 million vatu in outstanding allowances. The gutting of the National Provident Fund by politicians and senior government officials brought angry rioters into the streets and resulted in widespread damage.

This culminated in a tragicomedy of errors involving huckster Amarendra Nath Ghosh, a bogus ‘world’s largest ruby’, and the issuance of illegal bonds that would have beggared the nation. The gemstone is the only thing of enduring value. It serves as a paperweight in the Ministry of Finance.

To the casual outsider, it beggars imagination that most of the people responsible for this ungodly mess still enjoy broad voter support. To many ni-Vanuatu, though, the question doesn’t even bear asking.

Kastom doesn’t give much weight to abstractions such as Right or Wrong. Natural Justice, especially in the form of plaintiff and defendant, doesn’t come naturally here. The simple fact is that small island communities can’t afford to have winners and losers. They need everyone to stick together, all the time. To that end, a loosely circumscribed space exists for bullying, cheating and other pathologies: As long as what you do benefits your community, do as you will. If you over-reach or turn on your own, however, you won’t be protected.

Fewer and fewer outside supporters cleave to those perennial candidates whose fingerprints remain on the serial debacle that marked Vanuatu’s teenage years. In 2004, nearly half of all incumbents lost their seat. This shift in voter allegiance represents a return to old habits. Wholesale desertion of the erstwhile champions of nationalism led to record low voter turnouts accompanied by an increasing tendency to look toward inward, not outward, to protect local interests.

Every election since 1979 has seen new parties, new faces and increasingly narrow interests brought to the electoral table. Man Vanuatu has been replaced by Man Ifira, Man Erakor, Man Santo.

The worst effects of an increasingly fragmented and insular electorate are only enhanced by Vanuatu’s unique multi-seat constituencies, in each of which several candidates are elected based on raw vote numbers. In Port Vila, with over 20,000 registered voters, experts predict that the top one or two candidates are likely to win their seats with barely a thousand votes each by combining their base language group vote with broad appeal. The bottom three or four candidates need only poll in the hundreds to creep across the line. Remember that one candidate won just 352 votes out of about nine thousand to win a seat in 1998.

This is cause for real concern. One researcher writes:

“Given the geographic, ethnic and cultural diversity of Vanuatu, an increasing emphasis on local networks and local knowledge will in all likelihood create an equally diverse Parliament with no unifying ideologies.”

Voices calling for unity of purpose are many, but few actively campaign beyond their own community. Fewer still have treated policy and principles as anything more than window dressing. Those who do face a distinct challenge. They must swim against the decidedly contrary current of family- and village-based bloc voting by identifying themselves with more abstract principles.

Efforts to organise the smaller evangelical churches into a coherent party foundered within months. The so-called Independent bloc is bound together mostly by expediency. Many of them portray themselves as opposition figures, but experience shows that the greatest cause of instability in government is individual MPs clawing past one another to secure cabinet positions and (more to the point) their perquisites.

In spite of all this, we do see one or two veterans campaigning on their performance on the national stage. With characteristic humility, PM Lini has stated that he will stand or fall based on his past performance. Likewise, Edward Natapei has left Futuna behind, relying primarily on the demise of the telecoms monopoly to garner broad support from Port Vila voters.

Facing somewhat longer odds are issues candidates like Ralph Regenvanu. He has arguably the most clearly elaborated platform in the country. Precisely because of his articulacy and his Obama-like popularity among ‘change voters’, many establishment lions have been seen pouting and puffing disapprovingly about him.

Regenvanu is seeking to ride a current of impatience for change that runs through all communities. His strategy appears to be to snatch a few votes from everybody, rather than wrap up any single constituency. Ironically, he’ll require fewer than 1000 votes of the 21,000 or so on offer to succeed, if past elections are any indication.

The prospect of a coherent, effective, policy-driven government is fast receding. Community affiliation appears still to trump ‘western’ ideals. This system of localised political debt will make it far too easy for short-term opportunism to triumph over principle and long-term gain.