Christine Coombe

Pim Opinion

Christine Coombe and Vanuatu

The problem between Englishwoman and PIM con tributor Christine Coombe and the Vanuatu Government which expelled her from the country late in March reveals plenty of what the old saying calls “faults on both sides”.

The government’s action in expelling Ms Coombe, and the consequent closure of her small weekly paper Voice of Vanuatu, can in no way be reconciled with the ideal of a free press. This ideal one would have assumed to be dear to the hearts of the lead ers of a new nation as vigor ously democratic as Vanuatu has already shown itself to be. The expulsion can only be condemned.

But to condemn the gov ernment’s action is not neces sarily to ignore the extent of the provocation to which the leaders of Vanuatu, and in particular Prime Minister Lini, were subjected by Ms Coombe over several weeks before she left the country.

Ms Coombe made the fun

damental mistake of allowing herself, and her paper, to be come firmly aligned in an intense domestic political squabble: she appeared to publish prominently every thing that the prime minister’s opponents served up to her, including even the outlandish charge that Prime Minister Lini was in some way linked with the U.S.-based Phoenix Foundation, which promoted the 1980 secessionist move ment on Santo.

In the end she got her come-uppance.

While regretting its charac ter, PIM can in no way sub scribe to some of the more hysterical lines pursued, for example, in the Australian media, which would have the world see Ms Coombe as a “victim” of the “dictatorship” of Father Lini: a politically naive English lady putting all feet wrong in the highly charged atmosphere of a new ly independent, nationalist, Melanesian society is more like it.