Pacific Report

Court Ruling Brings Apia Political Crisis

i Invalidation by court ruling of the election of four members [ of the Western Samoa parliament has posed a new threat to I the government led by Tupuola Efi. (Political Currents.)

President Suharto In Papua New Guinea

Indonesian President Suharto paid a State visit to Papua New Guinea in June, becoming the first Asian head of State to do so. He was returning a 1977 visit to Indonesia by PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare.

’ Kiribati’S Causeway Headaches

Well-wishers of the new State of Kiribati (formerly Gilbert Islands), which comes into being this month, will hope its political progress is smoother than that of its Betio-Bairiki causeway (PIM July 1977). Due to be completed in June in time for this month’s independence celebrations, the large-scale causeway project is in deep trouble, Some estimates are that it won’t be finished by June 1980. Main problem appears to be that of the consist ency of the sand and coral particles material which was to be used as the filling for the 3 1 /2-kilometre structure. The dredge has been unable to move anything like the planned quantity of material as the pump impellers have constantly been clogged by chunks of coral. One local observer writes: ‘The ratio of sand to coral in the designated dredge area was very poor. The coral was in the form of pinnacles just below the sand flats and the sand thickness was much less than a metre in places.' So far, only about 4% of the required material has been moved. Mean while, the project, financed by an Asian Development Bank loan, has ground to a halt. The busiest people concerned with the causeway are the lawyers retained by the various contracting parties, and those taking part in Kiribati’s independence festivi ties will still be using the old, familiar ferries to travel between Betio and Bairiki.

Bumpy Paris Passage For Caledonia Law

Dissolution of New Caledonia’s government council (PIM May) struck unexpected trouble when the measure was debated by the French Parliament. Although approved over Leftwing oppo sition by the national assembly, the measure was later rejected by the senate. But after a long series of round-table meetings between representatives of the two houses, agreement was reached, with some slight modifications being made to the orig inal decision. Early elections are now on the agenda for the territory.

Un Council Looks At Trust Territory

The 1979 annual hearings of the United Nations Trusteeship Council on conditions in the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands got under way in New York on May 21. (Political Cur rents.)

Nauru Makes Some Points In Paris

President Hammer Deßoburt of Nauru, on a state visit to France, said he had been approached by Kanak pro-independence forces from New Caledonia seeking permission to set up a New Caledonian provisional government-in-exile in Nauru. The presi dent said he had not wanted to answer their request. While not disguising his own sympathies for such independence move ments, he made it clear he did not wish to interfere in France’s internal affairs. Another matter raised by the president was the desire of Air Nauru for passenger landing rights in Noumea as opposed to its existing refuelling stops.

Remembering Those Who Perished At Sea

A mission sponsored by the Japanese Government has been in Papua New Guinea studying the possibility of retrieving the bones of World War II Japanese sailors and soldiers from wrecked ships lying off Madang, Rabaul and the island of Bougainville. The mission was despatched following strong pub lic reaction to the screening on Japanese television of the documentary Rasmussen’s Charts, which contained film of the skeletons. The documentary resulted from the work of Arne Ras mussen, Air Niugini pilot and voluntary museum worker, who has long campaigned for the preservation of important war relics.

Vanuaaku Says No Boycott Of Talks’

The Vanuaaku Party in the New Hebrides has denied that it has ‘boycotted’ the work of the national constitutional planning com mittee. The party, it says, has 'suspended participation’ in the work of the committee until ‘certain technical disagreements regarding the status and powers of the committee have been sorted out’. An editorial in the party newspaper, Vanuaaku View points. concludes: ‘Our Melanesian leaders are perfectly capably of reaching common agreements under adverse cir cumstances. This ability was clearly demonstrated in the events of negotiations leading to the establishment of the present tran sitional government not forgetting that this was during a period when many outside observers were predicting civil war.’

Vila Prisoner Out On Huge Bail

Australian businessman David Neave has been released from prison in Vila, New Hebrides (PIM June) on bail of SAIS 000 (FNHI 200 000). Mr Neave faces charges of illegal possession of munitions, firearms and cannabis. (Political Currents.)

Two Johns Carry The Us Word

John Griffin and John C. Dorrance recently toured main Aus tralian centres offering ‘Two Perspectives on US Pacific Policy’.

Mr Griffin is editorial page editor of the Honolulu Advertiser, a post he has held for 14 years. Mr Dorrance is a US foreign ser vice officer who conducts seminars on security issues in the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia at the US National Defense University in Washington, DC. The tour was part of a series of programmes to run through 1979 under the title, 'The United States Presence in the Pacific’.

A Comeback For Julius Chan?

Papua New Guinea’s opposition People’s Progress Party an nounced its intention to push for the election of its leader, former Deputy Prime Minister Julius Chan, as leader of the opposition in the PNG Parliament in place of lambakey Okuk, head of a grouping of opposition members.

Franco-Australian Courtesies (I)

An article on the New Hebrides by Australian journalist Mark Baker has raised French hackles with a vengeance. Baker, Port Moresby correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, visited the New Hebrides earlier this year and later wrote of the French inhabitants of Vila as living in a colonial fool’s paradise while at the top the representatives of Paris in the condominium intrigued to delay the advent of independence. Vila’s official French weekly Nabanga reacted angrily, printing, as well as a long and negative summary of the article, an open letter signed by 12 French planters from the island of Efate. Among points raised by the planters: the first people to acquire land in the New Hebrides (‘often without opening their pursestrings’) were practically all Australians; it was mainly Australians who had depopulated New Hebridean villages in ‘blackbirding’ operations to secure labour for their Queensland plantations: the Australian possessors of New Hebridean land had then sold it for hard cash to Frenchmen, who had arrived later; every Australian journalist who visits the New Hebrides goes away with a small parcel of prejudices prepared and wrapped by the Presbyterian missions. The planters concluded: ‘As a whole, the Sydney Morning Herald article exudes francophobia, and the wish to see France disappear from the Pacific. Has France really been guilty of so many sins there? Has it massacred natives in the way others have done elsewhere in the region? The French terri tories in the Pacific are way ahead in the matter of income per head of population. The French have set up schools and hospi tals, and wherever they have established themselves the local population has grown. Who else can say as much, Mr Baker?

Must we go to leave the ground to others, and if there are “others”, who will they be?’

Franco-Australian Courtesies (Ii)

As reported in the Papeete daily Les Nouvelles, High Com missioner Paul Cousseran said of Australia after his recent visit (PIM June): ‘lt’s a marvellous country, very easy-going, very hospitable, a real paradise for its ordinary folk, who are perhaps still a little puritan and Victorian in their outlook but are keenly devoted to sport, vigorous, and with no false airs and graces a really good place to live.’ Mr Cousseran’s press conference on his Australian visit filled two pages of the newspaper.

Us South Pacific Centre Folds

The Center for South Pacific Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, has closed its doors due to ‘statewide budgetary troubles’. The Center, which has played host to many prominent citizens of Pacific countries, held annual conferences and work shops, and published a widely read bulletin, Center SPacificS. will be sadly missed. Center SPacificS said in its final issue: ‘At a time when new US embassies and consular offices are being opened throughout the Pacific area, it seems ironic that the Center for South Pacific Studies - the only establishment of its kind on continental America should be closing down.’ PIM joins sincerely in the condolences which have come to the Center from all over the world.

Fiji’S Two Voices On Tourism

Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara told a tourism con vention that the growth of tourism in the country 'must be lim ited’, and that Fiji didn’t want to be ‘swamped by rich visitors’.

Replying obliquely to his PM, Minister for Tourism Tomasi Vaka tora stressed the government's full commitment to the develop ment of tourism. One of the men in the middle, John Hulbert, representing American interests behind the Hyatt Regency Hotel being finished on Fiji’s Coral Coast, said he and others had been ‘puzzled’ by the PM’s remarks.

ALIGN WITH OUR FRIENDS’ - PNG DIPLOMAT Vincent Eri, Papua New Guinea’s former high commissioner in Australia, has firmly entered the lists of the current debate about his country’s foreign policy saying PNG should align itself with its friends and forget the sham of its ‘universalism’ foreign policy.

Mr Eri’s views are contained in a formal submission to the government from a conference of heads of PNG diplomatic missions. He cautioned that PNG should be wary in its dealings with Indonesia ‘a country controlled by military groups and with a history of instability’. Even PNG’s membership of the Commonwealth was a direct contradiction of ‘universalism’ he said. Mr Eri made no clear-cut recommendations as to how he believed PNG should align itself, but he claimed that ethnic and religious groupings had emerged as a source of great inter national solidarity. The manner in which PNG had already ad vanced to leadership among the South Pacific Forum nations was significant, he said.

Big Boxing Date For Port Moresby

World Boxing Association featherweight champion Eusevio Pedrozo of Panama will be offered SUSISO 000 to defend his title against Papua New Guinea’s John Aba in Port Moresby in July. Aba is ranked eighth in the World Boxing Council’s junior lightweight division. The PNG Government has given K 36 000 to Aba Promotions to help finance the event.

Blank Pages Tell A Story

Under the front page headline ‘Ex-MP Fined $1550 in Bribery Case' the June 5 issue of Savali, published by the Western Samoa Prime Minister’s Department, carried a blank column.

Page 2 was also blank. An editor’s note said simply; 'The report on Magistrate Court proceedings was ordered removed by the government only a few hours before it was due to be printed.

Lack of time has meant that this page and the following will be left blank.’

Sabihon Sentenced In California

Stanley M. Sabihon, the ‘mystery man’ who offered SUS 3 billion at 4% interest to a number of Samoans earlier in the year (PIM April), has been sentenced to 90 days gaol by a California court on a charge of fraud involving cheques.

Usp To Honour Indian Communities

In honour of the ‘Girmit Centenary’ anniversary of the arrival 100 years ago of the first indentured Indian labourers in Fiji the University of the South Pacific is sponsoring publication of a book on Indian communities throughout the Pacific area. As well as a chapter on the largest Indian community, that in Fiji, there will be studies of the smaller Indian communities in Solomon Islands, Nauru, Gilbert Islands, Western Samoa, Tonga, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea and French Polynesia.

Spanish Tv Men On Quiros Trail

Spanish television film producer, Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo, and cameraman Anastasio de la Calle, have visited the New Hebrides to make a film retracing the 1606 journey of Pedro

Fernandez de Quires, first European discoverer of the archipel ago, and also to show something of modern developments in the condominium. The film will form part of a series now running on Spanish national television, ‘World in Action the Great Ex plorers’.

French Polynesia’S Good Life’

The Papeete newspaper Les Nouvelles has reported that con sumption of whisky in French Polynesia has trebled in two years, and that the adult population is now smoking an average of 22 packets of cigarettes a month.

Brucellosis Hits Hebrides Herds

More than 1000 cattle have been destroyed in the New Hebrides in recent years after becoming infected with the disease brucellosis, which causes sterility in infected animals. The dis ease is passed on by contact, and can be carried from one herd to another by such agents as birds, dogs and wild pigs.

Apia Editor Fined For Contempt

Porotesamo Malifa, editor of the Apia, Western Samoa, weekly The Observer , has been fined SWS3SO plus $5O costs for con tempt of court. The charge arose from publication of an article claiming that a decision in a court case had been delayed until after the recent prime ministerial election because the judgment would be ‘devastatingly critical of the government’. The case was between government and the Apia Bottling Co.

SUPERIOR’ WHITES CAN GET OUT - PNG MP Whites who won’t change their ways to accept Papua New Guineans as equals have been told to pack up and get out by Tony Bais, member for Wewak in the PNG National Parliament.

Mr Bais, fast becoming one of parliament’s most outspoken critics of PNG’s multi-racial society, said in a national radio broadcast: ‘Foreigners and private enterprise groups run by foreigners seem to believe our laws are inferior. They believe that anything black men do is inferior and anything whites do is superior.’

Games And Hibiscus Entwined

Suva’s annual Hibiscus Festival starting on August 25 will partly overlap with the South Pacific Games to be held on August 27- September 8.

Radio A Wallisian First

For the first time in history, the island of Wallis in the Wallis and Futuna group has a radio station. The station broadcasts in Wallisian and French for two hours a day.

Kalia Successor Soon?

Beaufort Shipping of Sydney, agents for the Kalia which has been taken off the Pacific run, to the despair of Norfolk Islanders, is searching for a replacement vessel. When asked last month if a replacement vessel would be in service within two or three months, Beaufort’s Brian Rowland, said he hoped it would be sooner than that. But the next one will be cargo only. One of the attractions of the Kalla was its passenger capacity.

Adb To Help Lae Port Growth

Papua New Guinea’s plan to expand the port of Lae to meet overseas and coastal traffic demand up to 1990 will be helped by a technical assistance grant from the Asian Development Bank. Lae is the biggest commercial port in PNG. With a hin terland containing about 40% of the country’s population, it plays a key role in the PNG economy.

Big Usp-Hawaii Farm School Plan

A multi-million dollar Regional Agricultural Education Program is to be launched by the University of the South Pacific in con junction with the University of Hawaii. The scheme is designed to upgrade facilities at the USP’s agricultural school at Alafua in Western Samoa. It will provide an information and education system for school students in South Pacific countries which are members of the USP network. The US Agency for International Development (AID) has asked the US Congress for SUSI million to begin the project, and the University of Hawaii’s college of tropical agriculture has been requested to collaborate with the USP on it. The project is part of a package of activities being developed since establishment last August of a regional American foreign aid office in the US embassy in Suva.