Elected Legco

In Bsip Likely

IN 1965

The British Solomon Islands

Protectorate, in 1965, is likely

to have an elected Legislative

Council, in place of the existing

fully nominated one. Proposals

for the important new move were announced in a White Paper issued in Honiara on October 22, the details of which are now open for public dis cussion.

IT is thought certain that the basic White Paper recommendations will be adopted and that the BSIP Legislative Council will be asked to endorse them at its first meeting in 1964. The Constitution will have to be amended before the new system can come into effect the following year.

The BSIP Legislative Council came into existence only in 1960. It con sists of the High Commissioner as president, 11 official members and 10 unofficial members, all nominated.

Even when the Council first came into existence there was some local criticism that some of its members should be elected.

Further Stage

The White Paper says that the Government now believes that “the time has come when consideration should be given to a further stage of constitutional advance”.

The new proposals call for a Council with: • The High Commissioner as president. • 11 official members. • 10 unofficial members, only two of whom would be nominated.

Of the remaining eight unofficial members, one member, who would represent Honiara, would be elected by universal adult suffrage on a common roll, and the other seven would be elected indirectly, by an electoral college composed of elected members of their local councils. Three mem bers would represent Malaita, two would represent the Central District and one each the Eastern and Western Districts.

The White Paper makes an intelligent and an objective survey

of what is considered to be the direction in which the BSIP will advance politically.

It says there should be no reason for the reservation of special seats in any future legislature and that a common electoral roll should be aimed for.

The dominant population, it says, are Melanesians, who are increas ing steadily and there is no threat to their dominance.

The breakdown of population (on 1963 estimates, the total is 130,000) is as follows: Melanesians . . . ••. • • 123,000 Polynesians & Micronesians 5,750 Europeans 850 Chinese 400 The Polynesian elements are generally scattered in small groups in remote islands and there is no close affinity between them in language or culture, the White Paper says.

In any case they are “in no sense a political minority”.

The Micronesians are an immigrant community, who emigrated from the GEIC because of the population

pressures there. At present they number about 750, and the number is likely to double in 1963 with further immigrants, and then to in crease steadily but slowly.

However it is the Government’s policy for them to be absorbed into the native population without any special privileges. Resettlement is being carried out in a number of different areas and some inter marriage with Melanesians is already occurring.

The White Paper says that the Chinese community is settled almost entirely in Honiara and Gizo, with small groups eleswhere, particularly in Auki and Tulagi. With few exceptions they form “a fairly com mercial community of storekeepers and small ships owners engaged in copra buying and petty trading. They rarely identify themselves closely with either the Melanesian or the European way of life in the Protectorate or in terest themselves in public or political life”.

European Vote

The European community, says the White Paper, has three main elements —official, missionary and commercial.

There are about 235 Government officials in the BSIP, the majority on short term contracts, and their numbers will diminish as local officers became qualified to take over.

It says it is open to question whether, in an overwhelmingly Christian country and with the emergence of Solomon Islander Church leaders, special (political) representation of the Church by European missionaries is appropriate.

The European commercial com munity numbers only about 110 families and individuals. It includes a number of independent plantation owners, some proprietors of private business concerns and representatives of major overseas companies in the fields of agriculture, forestry and general trading. A proportion of this community consists of aliens.

The White Paper says that although there is a Chamber of Commerce and a Plantation and Farmer’s As sociation, neither is fully representa tive, and the Primary Producers and Trade Association of Western Solomon Islands has maintained its independence.

It adds: “It is considered that there are insufficient Europeans with a personal and permanent stake in the Protectorate and an insufficient com munity of interest between those that have, to justify the reservation of special seats for Europeans in an elected legislature whether elected on a communal or common roll.

“It has, moreover, been widely demonstrated elsewhere that it is

more often in the interests of the immigrant commercial minority to avoid too close an involvement in the political life of the country.”

It adds that there could mean while be ground for the retention of nominated members representing commercial interests.

The White Paper says that the eventual aim might be to have 18 elected members and three ex-officio members, and no official members, of the Council. With the present population this would provide one elected member for every 7,000 of the total population—which is a high ratio by standards elsewhere.

At the moment, however, it is

still necessary for the Government to retain its official majority.

It says the separate representation of Honiara in the new Council is desirable because Honiara is more sophisticated, more advanced com mercially and perhaps more politically conscious than the rest of the Protectorate and so unlikely to be satisfactorily represented if sub merged in a large rural constituency.

It is an “ideal” area in which to hold the first direct elections in the

Bsip.

According to the White Paper, the best system of elections outside Honiara is for the local councils to elect representatives to form an

electoral college. Thirteen colleges, excluding Honiara, would be required for the first election. There would have to be special arrangements for the election of members to represent in the electoral college any area where there was no local council.

The size of the electoral colleges should be based, as far as is practic able, on one member for every 500 persons of total population.

The electoral college should not be restricted to electing one of its own number as a member of the Legisative Council, The White Paper concludes that the proposals fall short of the long term aim of the Government and are thus transitional, but since the BSIP people have no experience of direct elections even for the purposes of local government, the proposals in the White Paper are “a significant step forward”.