Up Front

with the Editor

How objective is objectivity? The question occurs to most journalists from time to time as they struggle to be objective in their reporting, and to most editors as they struggle to select objective reports. They realise soon enough that objectivity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

I’ve never claimed that PIM is objective, although I do say that it makes the effort to the best of its ability, its small resources and allow ing for its unconscious biases. But in the end, what PIM records as having happened in the Pacific Is lands is what PIM or its many con tributing correspondents think hap pened, and there must be anomalies in interpretation or in the collection of facts.

These thoughts occur to me after looking over the report beginning on p 5 about the events leading up to and following the election of Solomon Mamaloni as first Chief Minister of the Solomon Islands. It’s an amalga mation of reports from two corres pondents close to the scene—which is a method we frequently use to obtain a more rounded version of events.

After the story was in print we received yet a third report from a knowledgeable correspondent, too late to embody in the material, so I am now going to give readers the oppor tunity to do their own editing.

This third correspondent is far more concerned than the others about Mamaloni’s image with the public and his fellow parliamentarians. He thinks this image could have a strong bearing on possible future events.

Mr Mamaloni, he says, is the father of five children, two from his first marriage which ended in divorce, and the other three from a subsequent marriage by custom, and that his present marital state is unclear as he has been living with a girlfriend.

He adds: “Feelings are mixed about him. Elitist Solomon Islands businessmen are sporting smug smiles, while ordinary folk are apprehensive.

To the average Solomon Islander, the character of the person is important in leadership. Divorce and womanis ing and late night beer parties are not

so agreeable to a strongly religious, yet tradition-minded people.”

The correspondent acknowledges fully the new Chief Minister’s charm, ability, forthrightness, honesty and political shrewdness. But on the political problems ahead of Mr Mamaloni, who is in charge of a minority government (the 24-member House consists of nine USIPA mem bers, five PPP of whom three in cluding Mr Mamaloni are in cabinet, and nine independents), the corres pondent says that the Chief Minister is already under pressure from within the cabinet for a coalition with

Usipa.

He predicts that USIPA, the oppo sition, will turn down the offer and force the independents to put pen to paper to avow their support for the man that they placed in high office.

The correspondent sees the inde pendents in the Assembly as creating an aura of instability in the govern ment while professing to be a buffer that will ensure stability. They are in fact, he says, withholding from the Chief Minister the confidence of directing a majority government, and Mr Mamaloni is “not very happy” about his position.

As I have said, do your own editing. The only comment 1 want to make is that the move by the Solomons into the era of self government will be as bumpy politic ally as Papua New Guinea’s is at this moment, for coalitions are un easy affairs at the best of times.

Stuart Inder