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.

Last week’s column on the relationship between chiefs, politicians and public servants provoked a good deal of discussion at the nakamal over the course of the week. Nobody contested the idea that we need to stop treating core government services as gifts to be doled out to political supporters. But there was some divergence of opinion regarding what changes, if any, were required.

Perhaps most interesting of all, nobody questioned the involvement of cabinet ministers in ensuring service delivery. The question was not whether the Minister should get involved in service delivery, but how he should do so.

Students of government from overseas might find themselves squirming at the very thought of such a question. The strong separation of politics and administration is one of the basic principles of the Westminster tradition. Many – if not most – of the major scandals in Vanuatu politics since Independence have been the result of the politicisation of roles and responsibilities in public service delivery.

A number of legislative measures have been taken over the course of the last few years to mitigate some of the worst abuses. Just this week, a bill was introduced outlining the role of the Telecommunications Regulator. Among the key details was the process by which a new Regulator should be appointed. Some MPs were heard to complain that, not only is a candidate not allowed to be a member of a political party, he or she cannot have any direct family members who are members either.

A Finance amendment bill which passed earlier this year likewise created a stronger distinction between Ministerial and Departmental budgets, effectively making it tougher for ministers to arbitrarily dictate the allocation of public money.

All this is well and good. Everybody recognises the merit of introducing a little more consistency and predictability into the use of public money. But these measures are of limited value if all they do is move the centre of power from the Minister to the DG. Nobody wants to see the BBC’s satire ‘Yes, Minister’ played out in Bislama.

The key, as one commentator astutely put it, is to ensure that DGs are clear on the fact that their role is to serve the Minister, enacting policies designed by the politicians to serve the public need. This requires monitoring and evaluation processes which, frankly, don’t properly exist yet.

The Ministers, of course, should be enacting policies that are driven by their constituents. And, as one chief put it, Ministers need to remember not only where they come from, but where they are. They might have been elected by the people of Tanna or Pentecost, but they inherit a national constituency from the day they first sit down at the Cabinet table. Their nasara, he said, stretches from Aneityum to the Torres islands.

His solution? Make better use of existing political resources. The chief did a quick stock-take of all the levels of political operatives currently in play, and remarked how rarely PAs and others close to the Minister ever go into the field. Rather than sit back and wait to be approached, the chief said, these operatives should be actively working the field, listening to community leaders, working more actively to earn their support. A quick pre-election whip-round just doesn’t cut it any more.

Taking the political game into the field and working with a wider constituency confers a significant electoral advantage, too. Improved government services and more efficient spending actually ensure that there is more wealth to be delivered to communities, doing much to improve re-election chances. It would of course place some limits on opportunities for self-enrichment, but that’s the kind of problem most of us are happy to live with.

At the core of all of this is the requirement that we begin to think of our political leaders as representatives, guided by their people, rather than as Bigmen, operating more or less in the opposite direction.

Rank has a very specific meaning here in Vanuatu, and respect of rank is axiomatic in most social and political interaction. When I observed that I found it curious to see chiefs – especially those in the municipalities – subordinated to politicians, I was gently chided. The chief accepted without protest that a Minister should enjoy an elevated status. Indeed, his rank is tied closely to kastom, evidenced by the fact that most of them have chiefly titles, even though not all of them descend from traditional chiefly lineage.

The difference, the old chief pointed out, is that political rank is ephemeral. Without rancour, he observed: “When the Minister sits looking down at me from his chair, he should remember that in four years’ time, he will be back in my village, and I will be sitting in my chair looking down at him.”

Our political leaders need to remember not only where they came from and where they are today. They need to give some consideration to where they will be tomorrow. They came from the people, and inevitably, they will have to go back to them. The people and their chiefs, meanwhile, endure.

The chief sat down, massaged his swollen hand in its cast and regaled me with the story of how he got the road cleaned up.

Numerous neighbourhoods in Port Vila are notorious for the condition of their roads. Some become impassably muddy, some become lakes when it rains, some are worn down to rocky tracks suitable only for goats. In a few cases, the road should never have been constructed where it was. In others, years of neglect have worn away what little engineering might have gone into them in the first place.

This chief was not the first – and will certainly not be the last – individual to wage a personal campaign to see conditions improved in his neighbourhood. His approach was typical, too. He worked his way through a network of brokers, often smoothing the conversation with kava, cigarettes and other blandishments, until he finally got the ear of the Minister. A brief, impassioned appeal to the big man, accompanied by a review of voter numbers and allegiance, was greeted in the end by the assurance that something would be done.

Sure enough, within a few days, the Minister is striding through the department offices, commandeering trucks, equipment and men to the site in question and ordering them to clean things up right quick.

The chief was rightly proud of what he’d achieved on behalf of his community. I must say I admire him, too, for his patience and commitment. Others would have given up or walked away long before.

The cast on his arm, you see, was the product of a confrontation between the chief and a drunken lout who, following a public chastisement, attacked him with a club, breaking his arm in two places. That might have been enough to make a smaller person turn his back on his community.

I fear I am a smaller person than he.

Now, I don’t want to take anything away from that process of patronage and mutual support that underlies many of the power relationships in Vanuatu. But here’s the thing: Why should anyone have to beg for road repairs?

Why, for that matter, do our neighbourhood chiefs have to tolerate the significant loss of status that town life has conferred on them, forcing them to plead, hat in hand, to the same government officials who can’t even keep them safe in their own streets?

No one doubts for a moment that government resources are less than anyone would want. No one denies the fact that our aspirations will exceed our ability, likely for generations to come. But it’s precisely because of this that using these resources to prime the patronage pump seems so wrong.

Another example: I happened across a community meeting recently whose attendees came to the decision that they would write a letter to a Minister, requesting his support for electrification in their neighbourhood. Now, every grassroots endeavour requires an influential champion to help move things along. I find it curious nonetheless that assistance from the Minister of an unrelated portfolio is considered useful in convincing Unelco to extend its services to the other side of the road.

Surely a simple collection of signatures and spending commitments would be enough to make the case? And surely it would make more sense to meet with Unelco first?

On the face of it, that seems like a more appropriate plan. And, half-ironically, it might actually work, if anyone bothered to try it. But that’s simply not how things work here.

Regular, scheduled and reliable government services are actually deleterious to the position of some of our highest ranking members of society. Without the ability to bestow – and withhold – gifts, they lack the leverage necessary to maintain their rank. If, heaven forbid, people should actually come to expect that police will patrol the neighbourhoods, that roads will eventually be serviced (maybe late, but not never)… well, that would be the end of it.

If the people of Vanuatu were to begin thinking about access to power, water and other basic infrastructure as their right, rather than a privilege to be bestowed pre-election from some big man or other, how would the party bag men keep a hold on their constituency?

It’s a perversely counter-intuitive situation, but it amounts to this: Vanuatu has grown exactly as it knows best, but by applying its own most effective social tools, it’s closing its eyes to certain possibilities. And the most significant of these are reliable, consistent basic services.

In fairness, it must be said that there are more than a few in high office who care quite deeply about this problem, and who would do more about it if they could. There are several projects underway to bring a modicum of predictability and reliability to public services. The most notable are the sub-projects designed to strengthen Public Works in their ability to service and maintain the new MCA roads.

But too often, our big men are content to manoeuvre within the confines of the traditional patronage systems and to make a gift out of that which is rightfully ours.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

When Isaac Newton first formulated his third law of motion, he codified a long-observed phenomenon. Wits have suggested a fourth law: ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

At the Lowy Institute’s recent conference, The Pacific Islands and the World, attendees witnessed two contrasting views of Vanuatu. The gathering, timed to coincide with the Pacific Forum, was attended by dignitaries from major global institutions as well as government leaders from throughout the region. It was billed as an opportunity to discuss the impact of the global economic crisis on vulnerable Pacific Island nations.

By all accounts, though, Vanuatu has been less affected than the global economic giants. Mid-year numbers do indicate a slight slow-down, but in real terms, our economy’s still growing fairly well. In a recently published briefing paper by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy, Nikunj Soni and the Australian National University’s professor Stephen Howes point to tourism and construction as the leading drivers of this growth.

But they are quick to note that the environment is as critical to this success as the actual business opportunities. One noteworthy chart clearly shows the rise in economic activity starting in 2003, about the same time as major budgetary and macro-economic reforms began to take hold in Vanuatu.

The briefing paper goes on to highlight the fact that none of this growth would have been possible without social stability. That may seem like so much common sense to some. Civil disturbance and political turmoil are seldom on a tourist’s must-see list. Likewise with home buyers.

But what brings this stability about?

What is it about Vanuatu that has allowed it to avoid civil strife like that which recently wracked the Solomon Islands? How, despite the incessant game of political musical chairs, do we still manage to avoid the coup/counter-coup culture that has beset Fiji since its independence? How do we avoid the overtly racist violence and rioting that have left the business communities in numerous PNG cities in a state of siege?

There are a hundred possible answers, all of them partial.

The most coherent interpretation of the source of Vanuatu’s stability was presented at the Lowy Conference by MP Ralph Regenvanu. His talk discussed the Custom Economy. “The traditional economy,” writes Regenvanu, “constitutes the political, economic and social foundation of contemporary Vanuatu society.”

Regenvanu goes on to observe that the one of the reasons urban dwellers have avoided hardship is precisely because their meager earnings are subsidised by traditional family networks that provide access to “food and other resources and… provide manual labour, child care and aged care, [as well as] dealing with their disputes in the traditional way.”

The traditional economy is innately conservative. It rewards egalitarian behaviour and benefits the community more than to the individual. Free market capitalism, on the other hand, rewards personal initiative and the accumulation of wealth and resources.

As a recent World Bank report observed, land sales – one of the drivers of our recent economic boom – are usually conducted on a context that leaves traditional land-owners at a distinct disadvantage.
It’s tempting to say that Vanuatu’s economy is eating its children. The very conditions that make growth possible are being undermined by the growth itself.

Newton’s fourth law in action.

The increasing – but certainly not intractable – tension that exists between the traditional and modern economies needs to be reconciled. Before that can happen, though, a great deal more research will be required.

The process of understanding will be a messy, decidedly un-scientific affair. While Vanuatu’s economic managers have made great strides in systematising their economic analysis, their tools and metrics just don’t translate usefully into the custom economy. While the movement of cash can ultimately be tracked as closely as time and resources allow, the same cannot reasonably be said about the often intangible inputs and outputs of the kastom economy.

It’s one thing to draw up a spreadsheet of VAT revenues per sector and use them to extrapolate domestic business activity. It’s another thing entirely to track the movement of mats and yams between families and to infer from them the potential for employment stability brought about by renewed alliances.

But the situation is far from hopeless. This year’s census data, combined with the results of the agriculture survey, will no doubt provide some valuable insight into land use and agricultural activity. This is turn can help us begin to quantify the phenomenon that MP Regenvanu has been describing for years now.

But we will almost certainly find that scientific analysis will only get us so far. We know that a tension exists between the modern and custom economies. We’re going to need something more than a few spreadsheets and graphs to learn how to diffuse the tension between them and allow each to exert appropriate amounts of inertia and momentum on the other.

Vanuatu’s policy makers have no choice but to weave science and kastom together, respecting the laws of both if they want to be able to ensure both prosperity and stability in Vanuatu.

Even in the decades before Jimmy Steven’s Nagriamel movement, land has been at the core of ni-Vanuatu politics and society. Many battles have been fought – and far too many lost – over land rights.

Justin Haccius, a legal researcher for the World Bank’s Jastis Blong Evriwan project, has been looking at this issue for some time now. The conflict between kastom and law, he says, is one of the central issues affecting Vanuatu society today. The problem, as he sees it, is simple: “The system of the majority is not the system of the State.”

In a briefing note titled “Coercion to Conversion: Push and Pull Pressures on Custom Land in Vanuatu” Haccius highlights some of the pressures brought to bear on kastom land owners in their efforts to derive value from their land without becoming completely disenfranchised in the process.

Kastom varies widely from island to island, which makes it difficult to codify it in legal language. Nonetheless, certain commonly held principles are ignored by colonial legal tradition. At the core of the problem is the conflict between rigorous legal strictures and the fluid relationship in kastom between ownership and land use rights.

Haccius writes, “Land is generally owned by a family group, with allocations for use made by a patriarch….” This fluidity allows for compromise and accommodation, but that fluidity disappears when land is leased. The legal framework surrounding leasehold title requires a single, identifiable owner, and generally confers exclusive land use and access rights to the lessee.

The process of identifying an owner is often messy, to say the least. It compounds existing tensions at the village level as individuals and families position themselves to profit from land sales. The exclusive nature of land leases often leads to a winner-take-all scenario in which the person identified as the land owner reaps all the benefits, leaving others at a loss.

Shortly after Independence, the Minister of Lands was given the right to deal in disputed lands. While the purpose at the outset was to avoid upsetting agricultural production on plantations, the practice has since become commonplace. “Absent effective checks and balances this wide ranging power is open to abuse,” states the report.

The report notes that a 2008 Private Member’s Bill to remove this power was defeated in Parliament “on the grounds that disputes could not be allowed to hinder development.” But what is the point of development if it disenfranchises those who deserve most to benefit?

Haccius sees two forces at work here: ‘Push’ pressures pit family members against one another as they vie amongst themselves to parcel and sell their land. Economic necessity exerts a ‘pull’ pressure on land owners as well. Lands sales are often the only way kastom land owners can gain access to the cash economy. As families are drawn inexorably deeper into the cash economy, the pressure to give up access to their land increases.

This dynamic creates a system in which kastom owners operate at a perpetual disadvantage. “Custom-owners need a quick sale. Seeking better offers, marketing land or prolonging negotiations is as likely to produce contesting claimant owners attracted by a cash sale.” Negative outcomes from such a scenario include lengthy court cases, disenchanted buyers and possible intervention by the Minister of Lands.

This gives the advantage to land speculators willing to overlook their own scruples in pursuit of a quick property flip. They swoop in, sweet talk one or two individuals, and before long a few pigs are dead and one villager has a new Hilux and some walking around money. His extended family and their children, meanwhile, have lost their birthright.

Jastis Blong Evriwan is a World Bank-funded project designed to create a better understanding of the issues of social justice at the grassroots level. The goal of the project, says Haccius, “is to train local researchers so that the skills stay in the country. We recognise that the knowledge is there, but the skills” don’t always exist. Too often, he says, when foreign consultants come, they take away the knowledge and skills with them.

By partnering with the Ministries of Justice and Lands as well as with grassroots organisations, Jastis Blong Evriwan aims to join extensive local knowledge with professional legal research and advocacy training in order to create more enlightened and effective policy-making on the national stage. “The research is not to introduce new ways of doing thing, it’s to inform – and reform – existing efforts.”
The formal legal system currently holds a monopoly on development. That shouldn’t be the case.

Haccius believes that kastom shouldn’t be seen as a problem but a resource.

By working closely with local organisations and providing expert training to 3 or 4 local individuals, Jastis Blong Evriwan hopes to build what Haccius calls “bridges of dialogue” between grassroots and the state.

These efforts are timely, even overdue. With a little luck and a lot of learning on both sides, efforts like this might be enough to start the transition for ni-Vanuatu from spectators in Vanuatu’s development to full partners in the wealth and growth of the nation.

After more than a month’s delay, prison escapee John Bule’s body was finally put to rest this week. While his family may have some degree of solace now that they can properly mourn his passing, and in spite of Government entreaties to allow the justice system to work, many feel that much remains to be said about how we treat our prisoners.

In a searing letter to the Editor earlier this week, one man described how his children and their nanny had been terrorised by knife-wielding thieves. The nanny was only saved from rape or worse by the man’s timely arrival.

“If we had Capital Punishment,” he writes, “I would gladly pull the trigger on this criminal.”

I know exactly how he feels. Nearly a decade after the fact, I have only to think about one man and I begin to shake with rage.

Years ago, I lived in a frontier town smaller than Port Vila. I found evidence that one of its residents had been molesting children for over a decade, and that one of them, a 12 year old girl, had since committed suicide.

I sat at home for hours, trying to decide whether to call the police, or simply to pull my rifle from its locker and shoot him myself. In the end, I picked up the telephone, not the gun.

When we talk about respecting the rights of criminals and the rule of law, it’s easy to lose sight of why we argue for them. For me, it’s definitely not out of some namby-pamby desire to sit around the campfire singing Kumbayah. It’s not out of kindness at all.

It’s about who we are as a society, and who we want to be.

Shortly after Bule died, I talked for hours with a chief from Paama. I wanted to learn how such an affair would be dealt with in kastom. The chief replied emphatically that these events could not have happened in the past.

Two generations ago, Bule would never have been allowed to stray as far as he did. According to this chief, a serial transgressor would have faced an escalating series of fines and penalties, authorised by the chief and enforced by the young men of the village. Bule would either have been intimidated sufficiently to come back into the fold – or he would have been executed. Either would have occurred long before his final arrest, detention and unsanctioned death.

Bule reached this point of deadly crisis because a gap has appeared in society, where neither kastom nor the law operate as they should. The distance from island to town, the newfound mobility affecting Vanuatu society, has left so-called ‘town’ chiefs with little power to enforce their views. While many chiefs – this one included – serve a useful and active role in their communities, that role has become more advisory than authoritative.

Because Bule had passed beyond kastom’s ken, the chief felt there was nothing he could do but wash his hands of the whole unfortunate affair. “Bule i mestem rod long taem finis,” he told me. By ignoring the counsel of his family and his community, Bule had arrived in a place where helping hands could no longer reach him.

The chief refused to be drawn into a discussion of the propriety of the actions of those who arrested Bule. That, he said, was the Law, and had nothing to do with kastom.

A society is defined by how it treats those in its care. In Vanuatu, that often means that community rights trump the individual’s. In the Western legal justice system, individual rights are paramount. This creates a tension that subverts the ability of the community to police itself. In Vanuatu’s case, it erodes the chief’s mandate with regard to justice and social order, placing police and legal justice in his place. If they fail, the entire system fails.

But legal justice ignores something central to kastom: victim’s rights. Kastom requires reconciliation of community members; it keeps miscreants from straying too far, sometimes forcibly.

It does have its shortcomings, and its emphasis on peace-making rather than justice is often baffling, even appalling, to outsiders. But it is effective in one critical respect: It ensures that the community remains largely healthy and peaceful for all.

More than anything else, kastom’s continuing influence has kept Vanuatu from falling into the same pit of lawlessness and disorder as PNG and the Solomons.

It is not, therefore, the mere idea that members of the Vanuatu Mobile Force beat and killed Bule that I find troubling. It is the fact that, by allowing some to act without restraint, without any rules whatsoever, we as a society are moving further towards a culture that sanctions lawlessness. We have only to look at Port Moresby, with its rampant, uncontrollable violence and its often deadly law enforcement, to see where Port Vila will be in a decade.

If, that is, we don’t take steps now to bring our troublemakers back within society’s grasp.

Human rights are not abstract issues. How we treat people – all people – defines who we are.

A week ago today, four men entered the offices of the Vanuatu Daily Post and attacked publisher Marc Neil-Jones, punching him hard enough to fracture his nose and then kicking him while he was down.

Asked about the assault, Neil-Jones half-smiled and described it in philosophical terms, suggesting that this kind of treatment comes with the territory. “This isn’t the first time this has happened to me,” he said, then added wryly, “of course, I’m older now than I was.”

Neil-Jones was beaten because his staff did their job, reporting on events and recording their views, for the public good and for posterity.

This column isn’t about the events that led to the attack. It’s not about prisons, politics or even publishers. This column is about getting results. It’s about resolving issues instead of exacerbating them.

Notwithstanding its reputation as a happy place, Vanuatu is no stranger to violence in day-to-day life. Many is the time an impatient and angry man engaged his fists before his mouth. As one contrite young man once explained, “I didn’t really want to fight, but my knuckles where itchy.” (Actually, ‘Hand blong mi i sikras.’)

Be that as it may, in all my years here, I’ve never heard of a chief clubbing someone on the head for speaking his mind in the nasara.

I don’t mean any disrespect to the true nakamals of Vanuatu, nor to those who preside over them. But I can think of nothing else that compares so closely to the role of the media as the village nasara. Our newspapers, TV and radio stations all exist to allow us a public platform to inform ourselves, to share our views and yes, even to disagree.

I’ve heard a lot of angry, impassioned – and sometimes careless – words spoken in the dozens of kastom meetings I’ve attended. Only once have I ever heard a chief raise his voice.

Even then, the issue was dealt with using words and words alone.

All of us here in Vanuatu, ni-Vanuatu and expat alike, would do well to learn from this example. If any one of us fails to venerate 3000 years of kastom, what claim can we make to wisdom of any kind?

Let’s ignore for a moment the specific events that led to this embarrassing loss of control. Enough of who said what to whom. The bottom line is this: This kind of violence serves no purpose and has no useful effect. No matter whether one man’s words caused another to be fired, beating him up isn’t going to get the job back. And it’s a poor way to exact payment for the loss.

Worse, it only confirms people’s worst suspicions about the perpetrators’ character.

An inconvenient but necessary aspect of democracy is that every single individual has the right to be wrong. Because we have freedom of speech, we have the right to say things that others might consider ill-advised. Every one of us has the right to say what we think, based on whatever insight we choose to apply. It’s an awkward, imperfect and often messy aspect of our society, but it lies at the core of our principles, at the core of kastom itself.

Winston Churchill famously said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms.” The amount of talk required to resolve an issue in the nakamal sometimes tries the patience of best of us. But nobody doubts its purpose.

As expressed in kastom, respect is not contingent on age, experience or factual correctness. True, it flourishes when the garden of wisdom is well-tended, but it is innate to each of us without precondition.

You can argue that professional journalists have an additional burden placed upon them when they offer news and opinion. We expect them to corroborate the information they receive, avoid unreliable sources and weigh their words. But here’s the thing: even if they don’t – even if the paper they publish is only good for lighting fires – even then, they still deserve the basic respect that we show to all human beings.

Words have consequences; there can be no doubt of that. And when they are published in the Vanuatu’s newspaper of record (such as it is), they take on additional weight. But when all is said and done, they are still words.

They deserve a response in kind. Whatever its purported shortcomings, the Daily Post does not failed to publish corrections, opposing opinions and even letters angrily denouncing stories published within its covers. No matter what we think about this particular pulpit, we cannot deny that it belongs to us all.

Let’s use it. If there was injustice done, if events were mis-reported or people mis-characterised, the remedy is clear. Just as the cure for a night of foolish drinking is the hair of the dog that bit you, the cure for foolish talk is more talk.

More wisdom, more measured tones, more patient explanation. Our chiefs have known this for millennia. It’s time that the rest of society’s leaders learned from them.

On December 5, a remarkable document surfaced. Prison Report 2008, authored in secret by Vanuatu inmates on a contraband laptop, is a long, ambling document that alternates between history, documentary and cri de coeur as it recounts the hardships faced by those incarcerated in Vanuatu’s prisons.

At times uncritical, naive and even occasionally self-serving, the report nonetheless contains well documented reports of violence and mistreatment in our prisons.

The report paints a picture of regular physical abuse and neglect in an environment that resists our best efforts to improve it. The prisoners claim that it is precisely these conditions that not only lead them to escape but allow them to succeed.

The prisoners are frankly foolish in their expectations. They make claims for compensation to the tune of 100 million vatu and finish with a warning that if these claims are not addressed within 14 days the prisoners will walk out.

Director of Correctional Services Joshua Bong initially insisted his department had not seen the report, but has since assured the prisoners that a commission of inquiry will be established to investigate the claims. On Thursday, he indicated his intention to stop any effort to leave the prison – with or without outside help –by blockading the road in front of the Stade.

Notwithstanding all precautions taken, the prisoners made good on their threats. On Friday morning at roughly 9:30 a.m., they set the prison alight. In the ensuing chaos, they exited the building, tossed a bible astride the concertina wire atop the fence, and used that foothold to effect their escape.

Some prisoners stayed behind, but the bulk of them marched, first through the Freswota neighbourhood, then on to the Chiefs’ Nakamal, where they remained at the time this column was going to press. The police followed, but there have not yet been any reported arrests.

It is often easy to forget that even after they are sentenced, criminals still possess basic rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, states that these fundamental rights are not granted by government, nor can they be taken away.

Vanuatu’s Correctional Services Act of 2006 outlines the proper and respectful treatment of criminals with the goal of successful reintegration into society once their sentences are completed. At its heart is the contention that society has the right and responsibility to take away someone’s liberty if they break the law, but it must consider as well what happens following their release.

Translating this enlightened legislation into reality has proven difficult at best. Among the litany of accusations made by prisoners are incidents of extreme brutality. Some claim they have been beaten beyond recognition, burned on their lips and genitals with cigarettes, had their kneecaps, hands and arms broken with clubs and rifle butts. There are reports of deliberate neglect, in which prisoners with gunshot and other wounds were denied medical care for extended periods. They report being held in solitary confinement for months at a time, well in excess of the limits allowed in the Act, and of being shackled together for extended periods.

The upcoming commission of inquiry will determine the veracity of these claims, but no one I spoke to with knowledge of prison conditions expressed surprise at the accusations.

Relations between prison guards and prisoners everywhere are rife with petty abuses. No country is exempt from the innate, lamentable tendency of some people to mistreat those under their power. But the abuses described in the prisoners’ report go beyond the pale.

To make things worse, the prisons themselves were, everyone admits, in a frightful state even before being gutted by fire. The photos included in the report are frankly shocking.

Until action is taken to remedy the state of the prisons, it is hard to imagine how the ideals expressed in the Correctional Services Act can ever be achieved.

Happily, that is easily – if not quickly – resolved. New Zealand is committed to assisting in this endeavour. Made confident by the wide support shown throughout Vanuatu for a penal system premised on rehabilitation and reintegration into society, it promised material support and skills development to the transformation of Vanuatu’s prisons.

But New Zealand’s commitment is not unconditional. Says High Commissioner Jeff Langley, “New Zealand is committed to supporting Vanuatu’s Corrections Department. We have a partnership with the Government of Vanuatu that includes responsibilities and obligations on both sides…. Mutual respect for basic human rights makes our partnership possible.”

Prisoners and Correctional Services staff have endured a 3 year wait for the government to follow through on one integral aspect of the plan: the grant of land to construct a new penitentiary.

It’s hard to overstate the benefits of an improved prison environment. The most common complaint among prisoners is of the condition of Port Vila’s two jails. Dating from colonial times, these buildings are almost beyond repair. They are, by any measure, unfit for human habitation.

The inhumane conditions in which the prisoners are kept are the most frequently cited reason for their frequent escapes. Indeed, their dire condition makes escaping that much easier. Friday’s incidents offer further proof, if any were required.

A new prison creates significant opportunities. Not least is the ability to segregate prisoners. High risk individuals would have their own section. Likewise, young offenders and prisoners in remand. This last is critically important. Because they have not yet been found guilty of any crime, remand prisoners must be treated differently, especially where access to legal counsel is concerned. The prisoners’ report details cases of remand prisoners being held in the general prison population for 6 months or more without access to legal resources.

Consider the case of Jimmy Kawia, an 18 year-old from Tanna. He speaks no English, French or even Bislama. His village, made famous by the British TV documentary Meet the Natives, is largely isolated from the outside world, following a lifestyle little changed since pre-colonial times. Since his incarceration, he remains mostly isolated, barely speaking a word to the warders or inmates. It’s hard to imagine how he could have understood, much less participated in, his trial. It’s harder still to imagine his condition when he returns to his village once his 2 ½ year sentence is complete.

It’s long been known that the tensions between kastom and the criminal justice system need to be reconciled. The Malvatumauri and numerous village chiefs have demonstrated their concern in the past, and have taken steps to affect a reconciliation between the two. These actions must be recognised and integrated into the normal operation of the system.

Chiefs play an integral role in our daily lives. There is no reason why this should stop once someone steps through the prison gates. Many quiet victories have been achieved through kastom-inspired village justice and parole programmes, but, with a few notable exceptions, our prisons have been largely neglected.

The Minister of Justice has it within his power to designate Official Visitors. These individuals have the right to visit our prisons whenever they want. While they possess only moral authority over the management of the facilities themselves, that authority, properly exercised, could exert tremendous influence. Our current minister, a chief himself, must surely be aware of the benefit of our chiefs bearing witness and offering guidance to captor and captive alike.

By reminding prisoners that they still have a role in village life, that they are still under the watchful eye of society, it’s likely that many a foolish action could be prevented. Likewise, it’s easy to imagine that guards may restrain themselves from the worst abuses if they know someone is watching.

It’s easy to say that prisoners deserve what they get, that they’ve made their bed and now they should lie in it. And it’s true, to a degree. But there is a point past which a man ceases to be a man. The measure of our society, of our capacity to care for one another, is made according to where we draw that line. There is nothing in kastom or natural justice that condones crossing that threshold.

The great comfort of kastom is that every person has their place, in life, in the village, in the world. The government needs to commit to building a new prison and to allowing our chiefs to continue to watch over their children. If it does –when it does – it will ensure that conditions will improve, both for our prisoners and for society as a whole.

Poetry is what gets lost in the translation – Robert Frost

This quotation is one of those handy catch-all phrases that scholars love to use to explain – and often excuse – people’s inability to capture the essence of a statement when it’s translated between languages and cultures. Examples of miscommunication between peoples are everywhere.

One of the most startling examples of the limits to cross-cultural communication occurred during US-Russian nuclear talks. Disarmament expert Geoffrey Forden writes:

‘It turns out that when the US START II treaty negotiators tried to explain to their Russian counterparts the need for a “strategic reserve” of nuclear warheads, they called it a hedge. The Russian interpreters alternately translated that as either “cheat” or “shrub”.’

You can imagine the confusion and consternation this would have caused. More than poetry was at stake in this particular translation.

The continuing confrontation between the government of Vanuatu and business interests over recent amendments to the Employment Act is being exacerbated by exactly such a syndrome. Either through unwillingness or inability to bridge the gap between cultures, needs and concerns, people on both sides of the issue now find themselves staring each other down.

The fuse has been lit on an issue that could have explosive impact on ni-Vanuatu and expat alike, but nobody seems to be able to step forward and quench it.

The majority of business owners recognise the need for improved economic conditions, in the abstract at least. But ask them about the details and one quickly encounters significant intransigence. In one particularly spirited discussion I was reminded that much of Vanuatu’s cash economy was supplemented by informal transactions at the family and village level. That’s true, but does nothing to diminish the fact that Vanuatu’s minimum wage is too small to live on.

Recent studies have shown that many village livelihoods are significantly supplemented by transfers of cash from family members in town. Food from the garden no longer comes free for much of our workforce.

I remain convinced that Minister Crowby introduced these recent amendments with the best of intentions. There might be something to the intimations that there’s political hay being made, but I see nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Helping one’s constituents is the very essence of a politician’s role.

It’s also likely that the details of the legislative changes were inspired by a mistaken perception of just how much of a burden local businesses can realistically bear. That too is understandable. One needs only walk the streets of Nambatri to see the stark contrast between walled expat compounds on one side of the road and corrugated tin shacks on the other. Any observer could be forgiven for believing that the distribution of wealth in Vanuatu is decidedly uneven.

But there’s a vast distance between understanding the fact of these economic disparities and understanding the mechanisms that bring them about.

Vanuatu society’s most salient feature is the collective refusal to allow any individual to raise himself so far above the others as to be out of reach. There are no kings here. Imagine how it feels, then, to walk several kilometres to work every morning, breathing the dust of countless Hilux trucks roaring past at speed.

Ask the driver about this, and they’ll reply with the central tenet of capitalist culture: If you work hard, some day you can be the one in the Hilux.

That’s true enough. But even at twice the minimum wage, that truck will be forever out of reach.

In times past, village chiefs used to carefully arbitrate the use of land and resources in order to make sure that nobody went without and nobody – himself included – got too much. Their carefully cultivated humility is a direct response to the sharp-eyed jealousy that drives island egalitarianism.

As far as I can tell, Minister Crowby is playing the role of chief. He’s spotted an inequity and decided to correct it by adjusting the proportions to be distributed to employer and employee alike. The numbers, of course, are wrong. But only when viewed through the capitalist lens.

Of course, that’s the only lens we have when dealing in a market economy. A supplier in Australia isn’t going to drop its prices just because we want to get a higher mark-up without raising our own rate, no matter how good our intentions are. They might sympathise with our plight, but their sympathy stops at the cash register.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a capitalist system, and that system cannot bear the onerous burden placed on it by these new amendments. Whatever his intentions, Minister Crowby must accept this indisputable truth.

We need to find common ground. We need to find a way to bring the market into the nasara. We need to know our place, too. Capitalism is a compelling force, but it’s not stronger than kastom here in Vanuatu. We need to recognise and validate the chief’s role, to recognise his imperatives as well as our own.

That’s not an easy job, but it’s got to start now, before these conflicting cultures clash.

One of the hallmarks of a healthy democracy is our right – and our responsibility – to question every aspect of our national institutions. If the political dialogue over the last few years is any indication, Vanuatu’s democracy is alive and kicking.

Kalkot Mataskelekele’s adult life has been devoted to promoting and defining an independent, democratic Vanuatu. The nation has benefited from his consistency, wisdom and guidance. He has long been a public proponent of a US-style system with a clear division of power between legislative and executive branches of government. He has been joined by others in suggesting that factionalism could be addressed by putting limits on the number of political parties.

Mataskelekele is one of many leaders who have remarked on numerous occasions that we should not take the structures of government for granted. He rightly points out that Vanuatu’s Westminster system was created mostly as a sop to its departing colonial masters seeking reassurance that the nascent democracy would remain recognisable to them.

In the rush to create a new constitution, important aspects of Vanuatu culture were overlooked. The consensus-driven style of leadership-from-within that typifies chiefly rule is difficult to reconcile with majority rule and a codified, winner-take-all legal system.

Most difficult of all are the contending principles of public service and entitlement.

The no-confidence motion currently pending in Parliament is yet another symptom of a sense of entitlement that subverts stability and erodes the ability of the Opposition to perform its appointed task.

No one questions Harry Iauko’s contribution to the VP, nor the mandate handed him by his record 1600-plus supporters. But it doesn’t logically follow that he automatically merits a cabinet position. The public interest is only served when cabinet positions are filled by those most able to serve.

The tiff between Iauko and party leader Edward Nipake Natapei has crossed the line from intra-party rancour to a crisis in governance. Surely there are other mechanisms to resolve this issue than bringing about the downfall of the government?

A congenital weakness in Vanuatu politics is the lack of real opposition. In most parliamentary democracies, the term ‘loyal Opposition’ is more than just a pleasant bromide, serving only to placate the loser. It’s an effective reminder that policies must be publicly, thoroughly and constructively scrutinised and critiqued. The give-and-take of parliamentary debate is the most valuable service MPs can render their constituents.

In Vanuatu, however, there is little if any critical evaluation of policy and legislation. Rather than accepting the implicit legitimacy of the ruling coalition and performing the integral public service of scrutinising its every action, the Opposition fritters away its political capital in a petty game of parliamentary musical chairs.

This stems from a system of debt and obligation that lies at the heart of Vanuatu culture. A man’s stature is often directly proportional to his ability to deliver wealth and bounty to his family and his village. Gifts of food, pigs, mats and other symbols of wealth lie at the centre of most ceremonies. But, as with so many other aspects of kastom, pigs and mats do not translate directly into western-style government.

Moana Carcasses Kalosil (ironically, a supporter of this latest motion) said in a pre-election debate that a cabinet position should mean more than 17 jobs for one’s supporters. Indeed it should. It seems, though, that the wisdom of his words remains lost on MPs on both sides of the floor.

As long as every politician’s main objective is to get his ‘fair share’ of the spoils, the guidance of our elder statesmen serves no purpose. The US, for example, has learned in the most vivid terms that even their vaunted democratic mechanisms can be subverted by greed. Regardless of the number of parties, the division of powers or the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives, the popular will is sapped by an anemic culture of government.

Instilling a sense of duty and purpose into politicians is not a simple process. Significant effort has been invested in recent years to bolster the civil service, making it more resistant to the worst aspects of this venal approach to governance. It’s taken years to make even tenuous gains, but Vanuatu’s rapidly improving stature in the Pacific community is testament to its success.

We need to begin the same process in politics.

We need to find a way to express – not just to politicians, but to the electorate as well – that everyone benefits more from the application of a principled, patient and indirect approach to good governance than they do from short-sighted, paternalistic vote-buying and nepotism. Only then can we begin a productive dialogue on how best to integrate the best aspects of kastom with the tools of western democracy.

I often feel a rush of vicarious shame when I contrast the insights of leaders like Mataskelekele with the actions of some of Vanuatu’s elected representatives. His vision of democracy and its role in society is far in advance of current practice.

My fervent hope is that one day soon the state will deserve a president as good as this.