top ten

The Decade’s top ten

By Jale Moala

WHAT a decade the eighties was.

The much vaunted image of the South Seas paradise was forever changed by the rebellions and military coups which turned the region into a hotbed of ethnic violence. It saw the emergence of Vanuatu as an inde pendent nation and welcomed the dis mantling of the United States Trust Ter ritories in Micronesia which resulted in the formation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. It was the decade of poverty in the smaller states and diving inflation in Fiji.

France continued nuclear testing in French Polynesia. In New Zealand, David Lange led Labour to a landslide victory in 1984 and took the country through controversial economic reforms that finally led to his downfall five years later.

In Fiji, a Labour Coalition government came into power in 1987 only to be un seated by the region’s first military coup a month later.

There was so much happening. Cyc lones swept through Fiji, Vanuatu, Solo mon Islands and Tonga, killed many people and caused millions of dollars in damage to roads, bridges and buildings.

But life went on despite the killer disease AIDS, the Greenhouse Effect and the hole in space. Pacific Islands Monthly moved to Suva. Fiji recovered from the coup, Father Walter Lini hung on in Vanuatu and Francis Ona stayed in the

jungles of Bougainville.

For the record, Pacific Islands Monthly picked the Decade’s Top Ten, a list of the 10 most influential people or orga nisations that shaped the 80s:

Greenpeace:

SINCE its formation in 1971, Green peace has worked for an end to nuclear weapons testing. The beginning of its eighties campaign in the Pacific was highlighted by its third trip to Mururoa where it staged another protest and

gained worldwide opinion against French

nuclear testing there.

This incessant campaign by Green peace against nuclear testing and the presence of nuclear-powered and nuc lear-armed ships in the region led to two key policies that challenged superpower military presence in the Pacific. The first was the anti-nuclear policies which cata pulted David’s Lange’s Labour Party to

power in New Zealand in 1984. It brought Lange’s government into direct confrontation with the United States and resulted in the collapse of the ANZUS Pact.

The second was the signing of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty in Rarotonga in 1985. But while this treaty has received the support of the Soviet Union and China, it has not been endorsed by the United States, Britain and France.

France’s Pacific nuclear testing prog

ramme began with atmospheric explo

sions over Mururoa in 1966. Regional and international pressure forced them in 1975 to do tests underground. Since then France has done 119 tests up to the end of 1989. There were 114 tests at Mururoa and five at Fangataufa.

Greenpeace didn’t just confine its Paci fic programme to anti-nuclear issues.

Says Greenpeace Pacific Campaign Coor

dinator Bunny McDiarmid: “I would say that the 80s has been the decade when the state of the environment has gained increasing attention, not because it is fashionable, but because we have become increasingly aware that our environment is a finite system. We cannot keep pump ing poisons into the air or the water without it costing. We have been relearn ing the first law of ecology that is ‘there is no free lunch’.” Greenpeace took up the issues of the damaging driftnets, the Greenhouse Effect, the dumping of nuc lear waste and indiscriminate logging.

And the 90s? Says McDiarmid: “The 90s must be the decade that we find solutions to the major environmental

problems the world community faces.

Greenpeace believes that the real security problems we face today are environmen tal ones. The 90s will be the decade where we will win or lose possibly the biggest challenge the human race has faced.”

[Walter Uni

FATHER Walter Lini was Chief Minister of the caretaker government when New Hebrides achieved independence in July 1980 and changed its name to Vanuatu.

He has stayed in power since after lead

ing his largely anglophone Vanuaaku

Party to victories in the two post independence general elections. At 48, he is one of the younger leaders of the

region.

Lini had one of the toughest jobs of the eighties. A month after independ ence he had to seek military assistance from Papua New Guinea to quell a rebel lion by secessionists on the island of San to and Tanna.

The euphoria brought about by inde pendence was quickly dispelled by the tough economic times that followed and by the second half of the decade, after the country was hammered by a devastat ing cyclone, Vanuatu was listed by the United Nations as one of the world’s least developed countries.

Worse followed in the late 80s when world attention focussed on Vanuatu’s relations with Libya and allegations some members of the Vanuaaku Party were

receiving military training there. Lini vi

sited the United States in February 1987 and suffered a stroke that paralysed half

his body. While Lini was recovering, Vanuaaku Party general secretary Barak Sope, who served as immigration minister, and the President, George Sokomanu, tried to oust Lini in a consti tutional coup in December 1988. The coup failed, Sope and Sokomanu were jailed (and released after winning an appeal) and Lini strengthened his posi tion in government and within the party itself.

Lini takes Vanuatu into the 90s with more optimism. Tourism is headed for growth and will prop up the still shaky agricultural sector. Political stability has again given the country’s offshore bank ing business a lift. The troubles in Pana ma has brought additional ships under Vanuatu’s flag of convenience.

Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara

RATU Sir Kamisese Mara was the Fijian leader of the 80s many loved to hate.

They said he was corrupt. They said he was involved in the first coup of 1987.

But with all those allegations lacking con crete evidence, Mara must be seen in the light of his achievement in Fiji.

Mara entered the 80s after the surpris ing fall of his Alliance government in 1977 general elections and his landslide victory in the by-election that followed in the same year. He won the 1982 general elections and for the most part of the 80s Mara built a model nation in Fiji, attract ing envy from the Third World for the economic progress being achieved in his small nation of a little more than half a million people. By the end of 1986, as Fiji prepared for the general elections in

April 1987, inflation was down to a re cord low of 1.8 per cent. The economy was at its best.

Mara lost the government in 1987 to a Coalition led by Dr Timoci Bavadra. The Coalition was ousted by a military coup a month later and Mara was later approached to form an interim govern ment in December 1987.

Although his image took a plunge af ter the coup when he joined the military Council of Ministers, Mara bounced back after that and executed a remarkable re covery programme in Fiji that lifted the economy from the brink of disaster into the lap of unprecendented growth. Infla tion was highest in 1988 when it hit 11.9 per cent during the times of economic readjustment. It was down to 6.1 per cent in 1989, and dropping. Economic growth was estimated at 12.5 per cent. A sign of Mara’s bold economic policies and optimism was the slashing of income taxes by 20 per cent in the 1990 national budget.

Philip Muller

THE 51-year-old Philip Muller is direc tor of the Forum Fisheries Agency. For 10 years the Agency became the protec tor of fishing rights in the region. Mul ler, who was appointed its director in 1981, was the engineer who kept it work ing. The most notable achievement of the agency under Muller was the signing of the tuna treaty with the United States in 1987, enabling the island states to draw benefits from the presence of Un ited States purse seiners in their fisheries.

Muller, a Western Samoan, is one of the more popular heads of regional organisations. He is a hard worker and his efforts to stop the use of the con troversial driftnets by Japanese and Taiwanese fishing fleets has enabled the issue to gain international attention. He is a strong critic of the Japanese reluct ance to enter into a multilateral fishing agreement with governments of the re

gion.

ISitiveni Rabuka

AT 10am May 14, 1987 ten soldiers stormed Parliament in Fiji and arrested the month-old Coalition government of Dr Timoci Bavadra. The man who stood from the public gallery to take over was Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, Chief of Operations and third-ranking officer in the Fiji Royal Military Forces.

It was the first military coup in the Paci fic Islands and introduced into the re gion a new sense of political awareness.

Rabuka is now major general and in command of a bigger Fiji army. His coup not only ousted Fiji’s second Prime Minister since independence, it also brought the country to its knees with the economy in danger of collapse and the

political situation quickly overheating.

Bavadra died last November from cancer and his wife Adi Kuini Vuikaba was in stalled in December as leader of the In dian-dominated Coalition between the National Federation Party and Labour.

While Fiji has solved its economic crisis the problem of a new constitution re mains unsolved. Last Christmas the Pres ident, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, announced a new constitution would be ready this year.

Francis Ona

FRANCIS Ona began his guerilla war against Bougainville Copper Limited and the government of Papua New Guinea in November 1988. Since then the country is writing its history in blood with casual ties on all sides. His bloody rebellion has closed down one of the world’s biggest copper mines and his country’s biggest employer. On the international scene the rebellion has caused the price of copper to “dance”, as one commentator put it.

In a nutshell, Ona has brought to a stop 14 years of post-independence growth in Papua New Guinea. Whether he will find victory or not is another matter. What matters is that while he rules the jungles of Bougainville, he influences the future of his country.

Alain Lazare

NO athlete has been as prominent in the Pacific Islands as Alain Lazare, of New Caledonia. He has dominated long dis tance and middle distance races since the 1979 South Pacific Games in Suva. He won 23 gold medals and one silver in three South Pacific Games and two Mini Games from 1979 to 1989, having lost only once when he was beaten by Fiji’s Ilimo Daku in the 800 metres in Suva in 1979. He was hurt in 1985 and did not compete in the Rarotonga Mini Games.

He was the athlete of the 80s, always blowing like the wind, always winning. In 1987 he was hospitalised for two days after winning the last of his six gold medals at the South Pacific Games in Noumea. The same year he was selected

into the French team and finished 19th at the World Marathon Cup in Seoul, helping France finish third overall. He, however, was placed 71st in the world athletics ranking in 1988, behind Jean- Paul Lakafia, of Wallis and Futuna, who was ranked 65th. But his efforts in Seoul was the best finish by a Pacific Islands athlete in any world athletics event.

Aggie Grey

AGGIE Grey was a Swann girl. Her father was an English migrant chemist who married a pretty Samoan girl and settled in Apia. Aggie, as she is common ly known, grew to become a Pacific Is lands personality. The 80s marked her death and the growth of the family owned Aggie Grey Hotel which she built on the Apia waterfront into one of the best places to stay in the Pacific. With the help of her son Allan, Aggie’s Hotel opened its latest extension last year. It continues to provide the unique service that has made it so different from the rest. Aggie was honoured in 1983 when the Queen approved her appointment as an Honorary Companion of the Queen’s Service Order for Community Service (QSO). She was unquestionably the First Lady of the South Pacific and a legend in her lifetime.

[Undp

THE United Nations Development Prog ramme was just doing its job in the 80s and it was making people’s lives a little bit better each day. So unlike the regular donors to the region looking for political influence, the UNDP gave with out wanting anything back in return. Its work was unaffected by the political

changes taking place and its development

programme infiltrated the most remote outposts of the Pacific Islands. It was not always involved in massive multi-million dollar projects. But it was always there, building water tanks in Tuvalu or ice

making plants somewhere else.

(Albert Wendt

A MOVIE based on Albert Wendt’s novel, Flying Fox In A Freedom Tree, premiered at the Hawaii International Film Festival last month. In 1980 he re leased another novel, Leaves Of The Ba nyan Tree. Before that a movie was re leased based on his novel, Sons Of The Return Home. Wendt is currently work ing on four novels to be published soon.

The 50-year-old Samoan leads the way in a blooming literary scene in the Pacific Islands. Others have emerged like Epeli Hauofa with Kisses In The Nederends.

Cook Islander Alistair Te Ariki Campbell recently released his first novel, The Fri gate Bird, and Fiji’s Subramani put out another, The Fantasy Eaters, in 1988.

Wendt is an English professor at Auck land University. □