Burgeoning governments
p. 40 · Read in the full issue
IN any single week in Tonga now newspaper headlines to the effect “Min ister to meet squash pumpkin growers”, “Privy Council approves quota in creases for three producers”, or “Minis ter reverses P.C. determination” cry out from the front pages of Tongan papers.
This is not very new as witness similar stories on ministerial powers and de cision reversals just before the Conven tion on the Constitution and Democracy last November.
The Tongan situation reflects a devel opment which is not unique to Tonga but common to all island states -
expanding government orbits, especially
in the political and economic spheres.
This, of course, is the opposite of international trends where a pro nounced movement in the direction of small governments is discernible every
where (except Japan and a few small countries). For the islands, it is largely a product of a recent but on-going, head on clash between capitalist-liberal ideology and missionary colonist ethos. The latter has shaped the islands’ cultural evolution since the eighteenth century. In this changing environment, the traditional island regimes and privileged classes tend to dig in and this has different consequences one being inflating governments.
In the case of Fiji, the expansion of government size is more noticeable in the political domain. In Vanuatu it is the economic area where the invasion by the establishment is more emphasised. In Tonga and the Cooks (and perhaps Samoa later) governments tend to inflate in all directions. All these will show up in the near future in the curtailment of personal liberty and as obstacles to the full exercise of freedom.
The above remarks may sound odd considering there are neither political prisoners in the Pacific (now that Jimmy Stevens is no longer behind bars) nor lively human rights movements, that is, if we follow Pacific politicians and not count the kanaka struggle in New Caledonia as one. However, the placid nature of these communities has resulted from long conditioning conditioning to the stage when the islanders implicitly accepted whatever conditions their masters willed
for them.
It went deeper than that with commoner classes reversing the normal significance of things for example, that wretchedness must be courted and made to stay. In fact Pacific social mores can be summed up as a conspiracy by people to tell lies to themselves. The ingredients of a dynamic society were therefore always in short supply especially in Polynesian communities.
Let us illustrate the case for the economy with Tonga. After the demise of the two traditional cash crops copra and banana due to a variety of causes including extended periods of low market prices, but most vitally to a bur geoning, runaway government, the
lesson is not even learned. For the government is engaged at this very moment in the same thing with vanilla and squash
pumpkin.
Regarding this last commodity, I have two very serious doubts. First, Tonga needs all the business agility it has to survive in a Japanese market and we’re talking about only a small niche of that austere place. Second, government has too much control of the whole process from production to marketing.
I never believe it possible for a country to be ‘developed’ by its government. It may appear that this is the case with some countries, but that’s all it is an appearance. When looked at more closely the real engine of growth in all cases is people’s efforts. And governments’ ‘encouragement’ to production can be just as harmful as her hostility to it.
Moreover, encouraging development in one line by guaranteeing loans, for example can get out of hand, overlooking the depressions this causes in other lines of production. This shortsightedness relates to an elementary rule of economics, yet it’s always forgotten. Look at Vanuatu.
Shopkeepers, farmers are already complaining because of the all-out but one-sided effort to boost tourism and related industries to the neglect (and detriment) of the complainants.