Women get their work done

A woman’s work is never done, goes the cliche, and for the past decade the United States Government has been making sure of it in the tiny Republic of Palau.

That’s how long the Americans have been trying to get the Palauans to ditch their nuclear-free for a Compact of Free Association which trades several billion dollars in financial aid for sovereignty over Palauan land designated for mili tary use.

The anti-Compact campaign has been waged and led by Palau’s women. The republic has a matrilineal society, and it’s been female chiefs at the forefront of the campaign since the late 19705.

Pro-constitution lawyer, Roman Bedor, says he’s been working with the women against the Compact since he left school more then a decade ago. The first women’s group was the Kital-Reng, formed when the US first began object ing to the 1979 constitution.

“The campaign for the constitution faced problems,” Bedor recalls. “The government owned the radio stations and local TV was beyond our means.”

So the women organised a house-to house campaign. In three successive votes, the constitution was supported by more than 80 per cent.

Bedor says that since then they’ve fought 10 other plebiscites on the Com pact, winning each time despite massive expenditure on “voter education” by the US Government.

“The US government ran its cam paigns as if they were in America, where men always run the community,” he says. “So they offered jobs and other incentives to all the male chiefs.” They were taken into the government, and had to rely on US advice and lawyers when dealing with the Compact. But it left the female chiefs back in the villages, free to organise.

“If the US had taken out all the older women and the female chiefs,” Bedor says, “it would have been really hard for the people of Palau to mobilise a campaign against the Compact.”

The American editor of Belau Update Newsletter , Charles Scheiner, observed the February 1986 plebiscite and found

the campaigns “almost invisible”.

“The women were going from house to house and setting up meetings to explain the legalities and try to undo the government’s politically biased voter education,” says Scheiner. “But an awful lot of work was pretty subtle, talking to each other at the markets.”

When it finally seemed the US Gov ernment had pushed through the Com pact, it was a woman’s group which came to the fore. Some original Kital- Reng members, including the second ranking female chief of Koror, Gabriela Ngirmang, filed suit in the Palau Su preme Court challenging the legality of

the US simply declaring the Compact

adopted, despite an insufficient vote. The group they formed took the name Otil A Belaud, which means “the anchor of our land”. The suits were filled in 1988.

Before the refiling, Otil A Belaud went to testify before a US Senate committee.

Gabriela Ngirmang had a heart attack in Washington, and her niece Isabella

Sumang ended up testifying.

“It was a pretty dramatic confron tation between the Palauan women and the Senators who think they know everything,” says Scheiner. “The women came out best.”

He says the Senate commitee’s chair man kept pestering Isabella to say when their law suits would be refilled. “Isabella had been very controlled,” says Scheiner.

“But finally she shot back: ‘What’s the hurry? Its our future we’re deciding here.’ ”

The latest plebiscite early in 1990 returned the lowest pro-Compact vote ever. Instead, the US Government has resorted to “direct rule”, a controversial decision to run Palau from Washington via a local representative.

Bedor sees it as a last ditch attempt by the US. “They have just announced they’re shutting down government ser vices and laying off workers on December 28. I’m fearful they’re trying to create the kind of atmosphere that led to the violence of 1987.”

Bedor believes it’s a strategy to turn the blame on Compact opponents. Now the anti-Compact movement is shifting its case to Washington, showing how well they’ve learnt a lesson in democracy. □