Getting closer to the American power base

American power base

By Ian Williams

KABURORU Ruaia, 29, is Assistant Secretary at the Kiribati Foreign Ministry, but this year he is a graduate student in International Relations, A graduate of the University of the South Pacific, his post graduate course at the F’etcher School of Law and Diplomacy near Boston is being funded by the Asia Foundation.

Ruaia wants more islanders to follow him. “We should have more people studying on the East Coast,” he told Pacific Islands Monthly , “It is here that the central power in the US lies, where they can learn how it works, and where we can make useful contracts”.

He considers that it is in America’s interest to finance and encourage such relations. “For example, in 1945, America had a ‘saviour image’, but now there’s a trend in the South Pacific to look at the US with distrust. The environmental issues, the silence on French nuclear testing, the fishing issues, and even

the incinerator on Johnston island have all contributed.”

On the other hand, if the islands want to make their mark on American politics, they have to know how it works. It is a point developed by Doctor Luella S. Christopher, an analyst for the Congressional Research Service who specialises in the Pacific. Dr Christopher, a former Peace Corps volunteer with Chamorro daughter, has been actively pushing the Unversity of West Virginia as a suitable centre for Pacific students.

One reason is sentimental. She has a family home in Morgantown near the Campus which she has renamed Pacific House and has offered as a resource centre and transit home for students from the islands.

But why West Virginia? “It already has students from overseas who find it less daunting than larger places. It’s a small place, with a lot of poverty, although the University itself is distinguished in many fields and it’s cheap. Tuition is a third of Harvand. But it is close to Washington, and the whole point is first hand exposure to the American power structure,” she enumerates, adding; “They need to expose themselves to American life if only to get the cultural impact for negotiations. In general, the Americans have to slow down, and the Pacific Islanders speed up.” She is looking for funding from private foundations for scholarships for islaand students, and

already has an enquiry, via the Peace Corps, from an interested

applicant in Tonga.

Ruaia has visited the campus and admits “the place is very good. The size may help to tone down the culture shock. It’s small, and so is the town. And that’s what people at home like.

The undergraduate courses in subjects like economics, accountancy, and computing woud be useful.” Christopher has hopes that the US government may also get involved in funding following President Bush’s pledge last year in Honolulu to step up human resource exchanges between the regions.

She has been lobbying successfully with the Pacific diplomatic com munity in Washington and hopes that the initiative will soon take off.

Dr Prentiss de Jesus, of the US Department of Agriculture’s Inter national Institute for Development, has a different approach to the problem. Rather than bring students to America, his Interna tional Institute for Development is taking American training to the

islands. A conference in February in Washington DC, launched

Pacific people ‘need to expose themselves to American life ... In general, the Americans have to slow down and the Pacific Islanders speed up’

PITI, the Pacific Islands Training Initiative, which will begin training programmes in American Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Pohnpei and Guam by the end of March, with Saipan and Palau to follow by the end of the year. Congress’s General Accountingg Office report on the Palau financial scandals was “probably the prime mover,” in starting PITI, he admits.

De Jesus has already been on a pre-assesment tour to find out what training is needed. “We are concentrating on government employees, with a mandate to look at management needs like accounting, auditing and budgeting. The agricul

tural input is in USDA’s name only.

De Jesus’s section is a self-finacing agenccy paid for from user fees, so he has hopes that the training schemes will be expanded beyond the Ameri can sphere of influence to places like Tonga, and Western Samoa, funded if necessary by bodies like the World Bank and UNDP.

The courses will be initially run by mainlanders, but stress the “training of trainers”, so “Our aim is to train

ourselves out of business”, he finishes on an upbeat note. □