There seems to be a nearly universal preference for narrative over fact in most (if not all) of the US debate over economic policy. People invest the issue with their own biases (a common propensity) then construct or defend the most closely aligned story.

In short, people have been led to believe that the whole situation:

a) makes sense;
b) can be simply expressed; and
c) has a straightforward solution, if only the rest of the world can be made to see it.

This explains not only the refusal even to grant that a debt policy must of necessity consider revenue generation AND reduced spending, but also the tendency to draw the Hayek/Keynes/Friedman debate as a zero-sum argument.

Government, at the best of times, is more a clusterfuck than anything else. It requires a level of opportunism and ideological/ethical/moral compromise that few of us can stomach. Tragically, it breeds people who can stomach it far too easily.

Human society requires narrative in order to make sense of this otherwise senseless situation. (We can’t all be Sartre or Clauswitz – and really, who wants to be?) But its desire for narrative has been cynically abused so consistently and for so long by propaganda that the possibility for civic (not to say civil) discourse has been reduced nearly to zero.

The increasingly (irretrievably?) fictional rhetoric driven by the various camps within the anarchic village that is Washington has made mutual understanding (and therefore compromise) impossible. We can, in other words, no longer talk usefully amongst ourselves.

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.

My name is Dan McGarry. I’ve been using the nom de plume of Graham Crumb since 1995, but today I have decided to draw aside the literary veil. I do so in solidarity with Marc Neil-Jones, publisher of the Daily Post, in order to make it clear that violence and threats have no power to silence the media.

In past columns I’ve dealt with fairly complex topics: technology, society, politics, culture and history. Today’s, however, is a simple one. It can be summed up in a single sentence:

Violence and intimidation only work when we let them.

For reasons that remain unfathomable to me, politics and power always seem to attract those who are most willing to take advantage of others. Vanuatu is no exception. Over the years, we’ve seen a long succession of Ministers and MPs who seem to value personal indulgence over everything else. We’ve seen thievery, deception, coercion and violence used so widely and so often that it’s hard to perceive what moral compass –if any– guides our political leadership.

So when a particularly unscrupulous character such as Harry Iauko arrives on the scene, it’s hard for our political leaders to know what to do. In fairness to the MP, he’s only slightly further beyond the pale than MPs Korman or Vohor, to name only a couple. As a group, it seems our leaders really have come to believe that the rule of law, respect and kastom are nothing more than useful tools, to be picked up and cast aside as convenience dictates.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: There won’t be any criminal prosecution for what Iauko did. There may yet be retribution, but it will be that special political kind that avoids doing any actual harm to anyone.

Iauko will not be punished for doing wrong; he’ll be pushed aside because he’s given his rivals an opening. In political terms, his fault is not that he’s broken the law; his mistake will have been that he overstepped and so exposed himself.

And that is why I find politics both fascinating and repugnant at the same time.

So, unlike some, I’m not going to demand action from this government. I’m simply going to do what journalists do: I’m going to bear witness.

It may be that MPs feel they have some special exemption from the law and kastom. But it is equally true that in a free society, everyone has the right to form –and to state– their own opinion. And the best way that we can do that is to remain informed, to encourage a public dialogue, to confront people with the facts.

Let the MPs think what they want; we retain the right to think what we like about them, and to say so publicly. And these days, it’s not going to be very flattering.

Violence and unlawful conduct don’t persist merely because our politicians do nothing to stop them. They persist because we allow them to. They persist because we’ve accepted the fact that the only time we ever hear police sirens is when some dignitary is being ushered around town. They persist because we allow politicians to separate themselves from us. Because we allow them to seduce us with paltry gifts and promises.

But most of all, it’s because we all –white and black alike– love to have access to the corridors of power.

No sooner are we given a glimpse of this separate, special world than we begin to fall prey to its allure. Witness how even principled members of government like the PM and Minister Regenvanu have suddenly, inexplicably, found themselves at a loss for words.

In the face of a torrent of international condemnation, the best PM Kilman was able to muster was a statement by his spokesman he would let the courts decide Iauko’s fate. No mention of the fact that in most parliamentary democracies, any minister under investigation immediately steps down – at least until the issue is resolved.

From Ralph Regenvanu? Not a peep. This from the man whose election slogan was ‘Inaf!’ Maybe he’ll amend it next time to ‘Klosap inaf. Wet smol.’

In a canny bit of manoeuvring, however, the PM pulled his Minister out of the fire just days later by shuffling him from Lands to Justice, thus enforcing his silence. No matter that this is his third portfolio in about as many months. No matter that actually governing is near-impossible while the Cabinet is playing musical chairs. No matter that, despite all these portfolio changes and all the problems he’s caused, Iauko remains at his post.

And what of the Opposition, whose job it is to challenge and question? Even Iauko’s VP arch-rivals Natapei and Molisa have yet to say a word.

Let’s forget the politicians, then. They’re obviously powerless to act, except according to the byzantine, counter-factual logic of power.

They don’t matter, anyway. They can bluster all they like, but as we’ve seen in recent months, they can’t dominate and control us all the time. Inevitably, the people win. Throughout North Africa and across the Arabian Peninsula, people have demonstrated that strong governments which rely on coercion to enforce their will can be rendered fragile as paper in the wind.

All it takes is for people to leave their fear behind them.

It’s almost comical to see how quickly bullies like Iauko can be deflated when people cease to fear them, or conversely, how police and other state officials can be rendered worse than useless when they allow their fear to cow them.

The staff at the Daily Post –and Marc Neil-Jones in particular– learned years ago that they were free to tell the truth once they left their fear behind. It’s a small act, and a fairly simple one, too. But its effects are immense.

I remember visiting the Daily Post offices a couple of days after Police Commissioner Joshua Bong had sent his thugs around to give Marc a thumping. In spite of the bashed-in nose, cracked ribs and bloody lip, Marc managed a quirky smile and a chuckle when I voiced my concern. “I’ve been deported, jailed and beaten up before,” he said. “This isn’t the worst I’ve seen.”

“I am getting a bit old for this, though,” he added wryly.

I would have thought our ministers of state had matured beyond these schoolyard bully tactics too, but apparently they’re not too old for tantrums.

We should all learn from Marc’s example: We have only to free ourselves from fear and the power of these bullies evaporates in an instant.

My name is Dan McGarry. If you don’t like what I’ve got to say, I’m okay with that. I’m not afraid.

News has leaked out in dribs and drabs over the last several months about a US-led drive to negotiate an international treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Conducted under a veil of secrecy, these negotiations have been the source of considerable speculation and not a little alarm among advocates of online freedom.

Part of the reason for the alarm is the utter lack of publicly verifiable information concerning the content of the treaty. When US organisations attempted to gain access to a copy of the draft, their government withheld them, citing national security, of all things.

Intellectual Property expert professor Michael Geist writes, “The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.”

In spite of their best efforts, however, details of the online enforcement aspects of the treaty leaked out last week, following a negotiating round in Seoul, South Korea.

The details don’t look good.

Geist summarised the broader strokes in a recent blog post, noting that the leak “provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty.”

The net effect of the proposed rules is that copyright would be radically redefined. The ability to make copies of or deconstruct other people’s content, for example, would be severely limited. Activities that breach copyright would be subject to increased scrutiny and penalties for all involved – including, potentially, Internet Service Providers who provide the connection over which such breaches occurred.

This is a real worry for ISPs. iiNet, one of Australia’s largest service providers, was recently sued by media organisations merely for allowing its customers to download unlawfully copied movies. Online rights watchdog Electronic Frontiers Australia remarked, “This lawsuit is the latest attempt by the movie industry to bully Internet Service Providers into becoming copyright police.”

ACTA would make this the norm. If the leaks are accurate, it would effectively make ISPs responsible for the conduct of their customers. While ISPs have traditionally cooperated with courts and police in their investigations, they worry that they’re being made liable for actions over which they have no real control.

Consumers find this troubling too, because such a regime would almost certainly impose a level of surveillance unacceptable to most. In the worst case scenario, it could create a situation similar to the infamous Great Firewall of China, in which everyone’s online activities are under constant scrutiny.

Pacific Island nations have thus far played no part whatsoever in these top-secret negotiations. Whatever regime emerges, however, would almost certainly be imposed on them in years to come. Australia’s copyright laws are already increasingly circumscribed by the bilateral trade agreement they signed with the US. Their participation in ACTA negotiations has been characterised as simply ensuring that they remain ‘in the tent’.

Jordan Carter of InternetNZ, a New Zealand Internet governance group, warns that Pacific Island nations need to be aware of the progress of these negotiations, as “the agreement would set a de facto standard for anticounterfeiting policy.”

Carter went on to stress that we can’t really be certain of the exact nature of this regime, as the details of both ACTA and PACER Plus have yet to be officially disclosed. Other commentators noted that it was more likely than not that ACTA’s requirements would be included in any regional trade dialogue, if only because of the perceived need in Australia to achieve a single regional solution.

If events transpire as anticipated, this could give rise to significant sovereignty concerns. EFA’s Nic Suzor states:

“The threat that we see is that sovereign states abdicate their responsibility to determine acceptable copyright policies for their own countries, and are forced into the harsh measures that are being pushed by the US copyright industry. We believe firstly that these measures mostly do not reach an appropriate balance, and second that developing copyright policy in secret trade negotiations which are essentially forced upon nation states are rarely likely to be an effective and beneficial mode of creating legislation.”

Viewed in this light, ACTA’s secretive negotiation process seems distinctly alarming. In practical terms, though, it’s unlikely that the treaty’s provisions would have significant impact on Pacific Islanders’ day-to-day lives. Like so many treaties before, it might simply be ignored. More to the point, the rest of the world might simply ignore us.

In the lead-up to its first abortive attempt at WTO accession, Vanuatu voted through laws with respect to the Berne Conventions on Copyright, but neglected to gazette them. Neither the vote nor the neglect seem to have ruffled many feathers.

A more likely scenario in which ACTA’s draconian copyright regime might make itself felt here in Vanuatu is if a foreign-owned ISP were to set up shop and simply apply the same set of rules to its Vanuatu customer base as it does to its overseas customers. In such a circumstance, however, market forces would mitigate against undue inconvenience. If people don’t like how they’re treated, they can simply cross the road to the competition.

I grew up in a border town, in a border generation. One side of the river was majority French, the other English. My elders held tight to decidedly parochial views about their respective cultures. The English felt the ascendancy of their language (and subsequent control over business, government and education) was an inevitable and unavoidable result of their conquest of French Canada in 1760. The French, on the other hand, used their language as a cultural badge of courage, an undying assertion that they had never been conquered in spirit.

During the 1960s and 1970s an intense and occasionally violent cultural revival swept the French-speaking province of Quebec. Language became a weapon, leveraging access to public and private services.

Many of these reforms were necessary, long past due. Pierre Trudeau, the bi-cultural, bilingual Prime Minister at the time, had agitated for social justice in his youth. He was, nonetheless, a strong federalist, and opposed growing cries for Quebec’s secession from the Canadian confederation of provinces.

Vanuatu and Canada’s respective histories reveal more than a few parallels. Though different in detail, many common themes emerge. In Vanuatu, French and English camps were pitted against one another in the run-up to Independence, with the largely English Lini camp charging full-blown toward freedom and numerous, largely French-speaking, elements advocating a go-slowly (or not at all) approach.

In the years following his victory, PM Lini was often wont to display his pique at his opponents. His Economist obituary mentions his apparent glee at sending at least one French diplomat packing.
The curious, often absurd duplication of services that characterised the British/French ‘Pandaemonium’ was a perfect example of the intransigence of cultures when they are pitted against one another. The two colonial Powers, ostensibly allies, were incapable of seeing eye to eye on even the most trivial administrative matters.

The common – and often vociferous – claims that the French actively supported Jimmy Stevens’ stillborn Republic of Vemarana only added fuel to a fire that had been guttering and smoking for years.

Notwithstanding its strengths, French’s permanent minority status here in Vanuatu has certainly allowed the perpetuation of some of the same kinds of injustice seen in Quebec in past generations. French has often received less attention than it should. The demonstrably superior education system has not received the recognition it deserves. The use of French in law, in government services and publications is often an afterthought.

Given my personal experience living on the cusp between two cultures, I am naturally sympathetic to Education Minister Charlot Salwai’s efforts to increase the French component in the core curriculum. Having benefited from a completely bilingual education, and having experienced the consequent benefits of a more nuanced, more cosmopolitan view of the world, I can only consider his plan to be a good thing.

That said, I am vividly conscious as well of the potential for division that language issues can create. In Canada in 1970, Quebec separatists conducted a series of murders, kidnappings and bombings that resulted in the imposition of martial law and the arbitrary arrest of thousands of activists, most of whom were guilty of nothing more than caring about their culture.

(On a more personal note, my fluency in both languages got me out of a few scrapes when some local yobbo wanted to pick a fight with a ‘frog’ or vice versa.)

Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting that Minister Salwai’s latest education policy proposals are going to result in fisticuffs in the school yard. It’s nonetheless true that on either side of the cultural divide a reactionary tendency exists that often makes dialogue a little more tense than it needs to be.

Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau dealt with the problem with a characteristic display of deftness. He rejected the famous contention that Canada was populated by ‘two solitudes’ incapable ever of truly communicating with one another. In its place he instated a policy of multiculturalism.

Vanuatu should take the same approach. In every important respect, it is the opposite of a monolithic cultural entity. In addition to older French and English traditions, we receive distinct inputs from other Pacific Islands and China, to say nothing of the deep and fruitful integration of the local Vietnamese community.

And of course, at the heart of it all lie the dozens of distinct and varied cultures that make Vanuatu such a unique amalgam of all that’s good in Melanesia.

For whatever it’s worth: If Vanuatu were not such a cosmopolitan place, it’s doubtful I would have found it as appealing as I do. I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.

Minister Salwai should be applauded for his efforts to transpose some of the undeniable successes of the French system onto its decidedly challenged English counterpart. But as he does so, he must remain constantly, vividly aware that language reaches to the root of everyone’s identity.

To speak differently is quite literally to think differently.

Defenders of English and French alike, take note: Education should celebrate diversity, building unity through understanding. Minister Salwai’s effort to achieve this deserve everyone’s support.

With the recent passage of a new telecommunications Act (awkwardly titled the TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND RADIOCOMMUNICATION REGULATION ACT), Vanuatu has taken another important step in ensuring continued success in building openness and fairness into the business of communications.

Parts of the Act, currently awaiting the President’s signature, validate and give force of law to terms and conditions already included in the licenses issued to our two incumbent telcos. It also provides an overall framework for continued growth, expansion and innovation. Most importantly, it makes permanent the office of the Telecommunications Regulator.

(Before I go on, I should make it clear that the text of the Bill was under discussion until shortly before it was voted on. The version I was able to view was not the official text. That will only become available once the Clerk of Parliament receives the signed Act from the President. That said, I’m pretty confident that those parts of the Act discussed here are unchanged.)

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this new legislation is the delegation of the right to issue telecoms licenses to the Regulator. Until the Act takes effect, this power is retained by the Minister.

John Crook, the Interim Telecommunications Regulator, has made it clear that he wants to see the process of obtaining what’s termed a Telecommunications Operator License to be as simple and direct as possible. All that should be required to start a new Internet Service Provider is to demonstrate that you have the right to operate such a business in Vanuatu, that you have the means to do so and that you’re willing to play by the rules.

We’ll likely see some reasonable limits put on this process. Contractual obligations limit the mobile telephone market to Digicel and TVL for a more years, and it’s likely that any large-scale enterprise (someone wanting to build out another national communications network, for example) would require approval by the Council of Ministers.

But, for those local businesses who’ve been waiting patiently for their ISP licenses to be approved, these are glad tidings. Approval could conceivably come within days or weeks.

Rod Smith, owner of Telsat Pacific, is excited at the prospect. One of six applicants, he’s been champing at the bit for months now, waiting for his application to be approved. Telsat intends to provide Internet services throughout Vanuatu, using a mix of satellite and wireless technologies. As the long-time provider of satellite television services, Smith feels comfortable that he can reach most anywhere with his service.

Smith described an ambitous plan to provide residential, business and roaming Internet services. His business model includes a single-sign-on service. Pay once for your Internet, and you can log in anywhere Telsat service is offered at no additional charge. Entry-level packages will start at bandwidths similar to those currently offered by TVL.

Asked how long it would take for him to be ready once his license is approved, Smith half-quipped, “I’ll have everything turned on by afternoon the next day.”

Others are just as sanguine, planning to offer wireless and other services throughout the municipal areas. It’s not clear how much price movement we’ll see in the short term. Satellite Internet is inherently expensive. While we might see more affordable packages than are currently available, they will likely be fairly modest in terms of what you can do with them.

When I discussed their mobile Internet service with Crevan Murphy, CTO at Digicel Vanuatu, he denied any interest in using GPRS to provide traditional ISP-style services. That said, an amended license agreement is currently awaiting approval. Time will tell what it contains.

TVL did not respond to recent questions concerning their future plans, beyond noting the wholesale improvements they’ve been undertaking across their entire infrastructure. Earlier briefings on their plan to extend broadband DSL service further into Port Vila’s neighbourhoods and to Tanna and elsewhere indicate that they intend to compete just as aggressively in the ISP market as they have in mobile services.

Local scuttlebutt has it that they’re currently upgrading their telephone switching equipment to support Internet protocols, too. So we might be seeing new services announced sooner than later.

With all this growth and excitement in the air, it’s comforting to know that the process will be overseen by a seasoned and able Regulator. Interim Regulator John Crook presided over some of the more contentious moments during the lead-up to the opening of the mobile market, and it’s understood that he will stay on for at least another year.

Equally important, he can finally start building out a permanent staff. Regulating telecommunications is a difficult game – there’s no small amount of geekery involved, but it’s intermixed with business, social and political considerations as well.

The new Telecoms Act takes solid steps to ensure that the office doesn’t become another VCMB, de-politicising the Regulator’s role and putting measures in place to ensure its neutrality.

Donors have suggested that in order to keep apace with technological issues, it might be desirable to create a regional ‘pool’ of technical expertise, shared between Pacific Island nations. That’s all well and good, but Vanuatu needs to invest in its own people as well.

While a solid grasp of technology is critical to managing this important national resource, it’s not sufficient in and of itself. If we want to do this right, we’ll need more than a few experienced and savvy ni-Vanuatu in the Regulator’s office and in other critical areas when these new communications services begin to make their impact felt on Vanuatu society.

When this Act becomes law, we can expect to see the same kind of radical transformation in the Internet market as we witnessed a little over a year ago with mobile services.

For most people in Vanuatu, this will be their first encounter with the Internet, a resource whose impact, potentially, will be even greater than mobile telephone revolution we’ve just been through.

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.

I met a clear-eyed and intelligent woman once. Her work was demanding and she took pride in doing it well. Her strength of will and ambition put her at odds with many more traditional types, so when she decided it was time to marry, she chose someone who wouldn’t attempt to clip her wings.

Her marriage amounted to the safest of bets.

The man she chose was nice enough, unfailingly smiling and courteous, but I found it difficult to respect him. He was one of those individuals who completely subordinated himself to others. Whatever his wife did was fine by him. I might have liked them both better if she hadn’t taken advantage of the situation and treated him like baggage.

Now, before we judge this woman too harshly, let’s recognise that this recipe is precisely the kind of match that many men in Vanuatu consider most desirable. If some consider a biddable wife to be a wise choice, why not accept that what’s good for the gander is good for the goose?

It makes us cringe because we know in our heart that it’s wrong. No matter who dominates, male or female, the inherent inequality of the relationship can’t be healthy.

Marriage – or any other relationship, for that matter – should be predicated on respect between equals. It should challenge us to be better. It should require us to be more than we already are. We derive strength and support from it, but we should be required to provide the same.

Many of the most capable and interesting men and women in Vanuatu have singularly benefited from their spouse’s sacrifice and support. Their advice and counsel may go unremarked by others, but it’s always there. Their consistency and moral guidance push their partner to greater heights than they might have achieved alone.

Notwithstanding the protestations of certain members of Vanuatu’s Electoral College, the role of the President is closer to this silent supporting role than that of any other leader.

Now, the Constitution states quite succinctly that the President “shall symbolise the unity of the nation.” That’s an interesting – if somewhat reductive – definition, but it’s been superseded by the popular conception of the President as a moral guide and elder statesman.

Indeed outgoing President Kalkot Mataskelekele raised the bar significantly when he attempted to stimulate a national dialogue on Constitutional review. Much as a considerate spouse might broach certain topics over the dinner table, he suggested that the time was right to begin considering whether existing governmental structures adequately met Vanuatu’s needs.

There’s no doubt at all that President Mataskelekele has very strong opinions on the matter, but to his credit, he recognised that the role of the President was to stimulate a national debate, not to dominate it. We need to be challenged by such ideas, but must be allowed to go wherever – and however – we choose.

We never appreciate just how much we all need a partner to keep us from going astray as in those times when we are most challenged by circumstance. There’s little doubt that Ham Lini, in choosing to support Mataskelekele’s bid for the Presidency, closely measured the likelihood of being able to rely on him, should events demand. Sure enough, two most contentious pieces of legislation to come out in recent years have spurred intervention from the President.

One suspects that when the Family Protection Act was referred to the Supreme Court, it was motivated by the desire to demonstrate to the entire nation that the ideas contained therein were completely in keeping with Vanuatu’s legal heritage. Thus, a contentious bill was finally, irrevocably legitimised in a way that no Parliamentarian could have done.

More interestingly, President Mataskelekele’s referral of the recent amendments to the Employment Act bought Parliament enough time to reduce its potentially devastating impact. Strictly speaking, it is not the President’s place to step into the political arena. He should by rights have left the PM and his cabinet to sort things out. But given the intransigence of the parties involved, Mataskelekele’s intervention was a useful and timely improvisation. An unjust law was held back without any minister losing face.

It’s only when push comes to shove that the President’s role becomes crucial. As the counselor of last resort to the nation as a whole, his moral guidance is critical to the health of the nation. It’s not surprising, then, that more than one PM has hoped to place a biddable man in the nation’s highest chair.

There is little doubt, for example, that Commodore Bainimarama was glad of a biddable President when he felt the need to abrogate Fiji’s Constitution.

The greatest danger a leader will ever face is himself. No one enjoys being stood up to, and we certainly don’t want anyone to oppose for opposition’s sake, but in times of crisis somebody has to be able to save us from ourselves.

This is the President’s most crucial role. As attractive as it may be to have a biddable man in the role, we cannot afford too many ‘useful improvisations’. Let us hope that President Iolu Abil is not as amenable as some may intend him to be.

Friday’s Daily Post featured a story that would be comical if it weren’t true. Vanuatu Ombudsman Peter Taurakoto released a report recommending the prosecution of 188 public figures for their failure to submit financial reports for the year 2007. Taurakoto also recommended that the Clerk of Parliament be prosecuted, apparently for not performing due diligence with regards to these reports.

According to the Leadership Code Act, ‘leaders’ include Members of Parliament and their political advisors, the Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs, the VMF Commander, various officers of the provincial and national governments, as well as town clerks and the Ombudsman himself.

Given the astounding number of leaders listed in the Ombudsman’s report, one is led to ask if any leaders actually did submit a statement.

The plain fact is that the Ombudsman’s report is little more than a futile gesture. The odds of everyone being prosecuted are lamentably small, and it’s almost inconceivable that some could be taken to task for this failure while others are not. It is nonetheless a useful and timely document. If nothing else, it seems calculated to make a mockery of the decorative trappings of western democracy that are draped like so much faded bunting around our national institutions.

188 leaders. That’s basically all of them. What we have here is an effective consensus among the national leadership that financial transparency is neither desirable nor necessary. And you know what? If everyone’s fine with that, then it’s going to have to be okay. Let’s at least be honest about it.
The system, such as it is, rolls on as it always has. Taken in the context of recent positive economic reports as well as obvious signs of progress throughout the country, the disclosure of this systemic failure seems almost innocuous.

This month’s bye-election in Efate Rural indicates that, for now at least, society at large is perfectly content to conduct politics as usual. In spite of sporadic efforts to build a unified and genuinely representative political presence in North Efate, those few who managed to make their way to the polls voted overwhelmingly for the status quo.

The very same ‘gift-givers’ whose judicial chastisement brought about the bye-election in the first place were returned with hardly a raised eyebrow.

But before we acquiesce completely to the knowledge that – law or no law – our leadership’s financial habits will remain hidden from public scrutiny, we need to know what we’re buying.

The main lesson to take away from these two events is that formal systems are trumped easily and effectively by the moral force of the ‘Bigman’ syndrome. This phenomenon is somewhat amorphous, so it’s something of a simplification to say it this way, but fundamentally, once a man (women only rarely get here) achieves ‘rank’ in Vanuatu society, the rules change. He can say one thing and do another, and provided that he is consistently capable of bringing wealth and opportunity to his community, nobody really cares particularly how he manages to do it.

It’s a moral force, albeit exposing a morality that differs fundamentally from that described by Enlightenment philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire. But it works.

At a certain point, people are going to have to accept what they’re not willing to change. If people can’t – or won’t – unite in order to get genuine representative democracy, then maybe they should make the best of what they’ve got.

The fact that people are buying votes is not offensive in and of itself. It’s just as easy to call the Vanuatu tradition of vote-buying (very) direct democracy as it is to call it bribery. Indeed, gift-giving has been integral to kastom since… well, since forever.

What really riles me up, though, is that these votes are sold so cheaply.

All it takes to buy a person’s vote these days is a few bags of rice, a saucepan or two and perhaps some sugar. When I hear about the prices paid for political support, I find myself thinking, ‘gee, if people only knew how their MPs and Ministers were making out, they’d expect a lot more than that!’

But the only way people will be able to measure what their vote is worth is if their leaders actually let it be known how wealthy they are. That would require something like, say, an annual report to the Parliamentary Clerk listing all their assets and liabilities.

Small wonder that our leaders don’t want to submit to this reporting regime.

The failure here isn’t in our leadership. The failure lies in society’s readiness to allow the situation to continue. For whatever reasons (and I confess they’re unfathomable to me), people seem content to sell their votes for a pittance while at one and the same time rewarding their big men with riches well out of scale with their own.

That runs counter to kastom as I’ve always understood it. Where is the communitarian spirit? Where indeed is the gleeful delight people take in making sure no one ever gets too big for his britches?
Apparently, for Vanuatu’s Bigmen, these rules no longer apply.