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Friday 30 December 2011

Politics of undermining leadership in the Solomons

·     The following "Opinion" piece was written for a number of academic friends following the recent political instability in Solomon Islands.

Lilo's politics

The recent political instability in Solomon Islands has once again highlighted the fragile nature of Melanesian politics, which is sad, but not surprising in the context of Solomon Islands. My personal observation is this –the attempt by the sacked former Minister of Finance, Gordon Darcy Lilo, to oust his cousin and caretaker Prime Minister, Danny Philip, appears to be a long term project that he was setting up to achieve following the election of this government. But it comes at an opportune time for him and his political backers to fundraise for financial inducement from Asian logging companies that have been the financial backers of every government that Lilo has joined since entering politics in 2001.

In all fairness, no one in Solomon Islands and the international community should read too much into the current political situation in Solomon Islands. At the end of the day, it is politics as usual in Honiara as politicians have already made up their mind of whom they will vote as the next Prime Minister. But as part of the new "culture" of money-politics in Solomon Islands, politicians are buying time to ensure that the betting game for their political support would inflate. Sadly a change of government or Prime Minister would not make any difference in addressing pressing issues that are slowing down the efforts of rebuilding the country’s economy, political and social stability, land reform, corruption, weak governance, holding crooks accountable, exploitation of government finance and providing a new sense of direction. Rest assure, none of the above issues will be fixed after the election of a new PM and at the end of his tenure.

And there are good reasons that the public in Solomon Islands should be weary of or pessimistic about if these two political leaders are taking control of any new executive government. Only few months ago, the current sacked Minister of Finance, Gordon Darcy Lilo (current candidate for the PM’s post), and his partner in crime, caretaker Minister of Planning and Aid Coordination, Snyder Rini, were implicated in a number of multi-million dollar corruption cases and yet no government has ever taken up the challenge of taking them on. To their credit, Lilo and Rini have been shifting political allegiances from one executive government to the other since 2001 as a way of preventing any new government from possibly investigating or taking legal action against them.

The history of Gordon and Snyder’s involvement in past controversial cases of corruption, misused of public and aid monies, facilitating crooks and giving favours to political cronies are palpable. Not that they are different from former Prime Ministers such as Manasseh Sogavare and Dr Derek Sikua. They seem to share similar political traits in their leadership style. And no one could easily forgotten Lilo and Snyder's separate decisions few months ago, as former government ministers in the then Dr Derek Sikua-led government, to release an Asian logging tag-boat and allowing the exportation of prohibited marine resources (then under a government moratorium) in contempt of a Solomon Islands High Court order and a Customs Department decision to prosecute both Asian companies for breaching the conditions of their business activities in the Solomon Islands. The only reason given by Lilo then was the companies have been contributing huge taxes to the national coffer.

But no one knows or tells me how many thousands of dollars that Lilo and Rini have both received in reciprocate from the Asian companies for intervening and acting in their best interests.

The current political climate in Solomon Islands is simply a symptom of a real poisonous government system, where corruption is a mainstay of the executive and administration governments, who will only act on self-interests. In a sense, the current political wrangling has nothing to do with policy direction or any effort to provide good governance, but all to do with self-interests. Remember this – these politicians are the same individuals who've had partly contributed to the gradual demise of the Solomon Islands and in recent months deliberately frustrated the Dr Sikua-led government and other efforts since 2003, to legislate laws that could stop political promiscuity as the basis of political instability in the democratic process of the country.

Essentially, the then role played by Lilo and Rini in preventing efforts to fix the political abnormalities in the Solomon Islands electoral system, is a true measure of their leadership credentials. So in my observation, there is no alternative solution to provide political stability as the basis of rebuilding Solomon Islands economically and politically, when the main culprits of corruption are the very people who are in national leadership positions. At present, the bureaucracy and the executive government in Solomon Islands are so corrupt that relying on them to fix our current mess will be liken to a dream.

With the way things are going, the country is running out of options to prevent itself from re-descending into total social chaos and political oblivion, similar to the cases of Sierra Leone and Mogadishu in Africa. Solomon Islands needs to prosecute and jail politicians and their cronies, who are exploiting public institutions and aid monies for their own political gain, as a deterrence to future crooks. The process of democracy won’t fix the country’s highly compromised public institutions and politicians, who will be using their political leverage to ensure that nothing is going to threaten their interests.

There is no other way…… the international community has proven since the intervention of RAMSI in mid-2003 until now that they cannot provide every single solution to very problem that our country is facing. Our leaders are not cooperating and playing their part in the process of rebuilding the nation.

·     Following the election of Lilo as the new Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Father Terry Brown, sent a news update confirming that the 29 members of parliament, who voted for Lilo, had each received $SBD500,000 from unidentified financial backers. Only Lilo knows the financiers.

Next articles:

·"Lilo's political background and his logging connection".

· "Melanesian politics and the risks of harbouring Fiji".

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