Education

Letters

assistance

Sir, JEMIMA Garrett gave a very useful analysis of the issues donors face in providing educational assistance to the South Pacific in the June edition of Pacific Islands Monthly. In particular, her article provides a helpful snap-shot of the ‘in-Australia versus in-region’ education assistance dilemma. But that picture is dated, and fails to acknowledge the extent to which Australia’s said policies are now changing in response to the very issues Ms Garrett highlights.

Ms Garrett’s main point is that our education assistance emphasises in- Australia training for South Pacific islanders to the detriment of the Pacific island countries’ own education systems.

In fact, Australia in the process of moving the focus of that assistance from

in-Australia to in-region training. I

reconfirmed this in talks with the Vice- Chancellor of the University of the South Pacific, Esekia Solofa, during my recent yisit to Fiji.

The change in focus is already re lected in the declining number of Pacific slanders studying in Australia. One government-funded scheme is a particu ar case in point. Under what is now

called the John Crawford Scholarship Scheme (JCSS), 212 South Pacific island students were sponsored to study in Australia in 1991. Next year the JCSS will fund only 94 students less than half the number funded two years ago.

On the other side of the coin, there are now 100 students sponsored by the Australian government or by government-funded programs at the USP, 30 at the University of Papua New Guinea and about 100 students at other post-secondary institutions in the Pacific, mainly in Fiji and PNG.

Just as importantly, the Australian government recognises the need not only to increase the number of students at regional institutions, but to improve the quality of education those students receive.

A key priority is to address the high failure rate among Pacific island students both in Australia and in the region. We are looking at that right now and will continue to improve the selection of students and bridging programs offered.

But access to high quality primary and secondary education for South Pacific islanders is fundamental if students are to be able to take up opportunities offered for post-secondary study.

At the post-secondary level, we sup port training programs such as those provided at the Fiji School of Medicine, and are also developing in-region short

courses which are a cost-effective way to Erovide at least short-term solutions for ey skill shortages. In Fiji, in conjunction with local training institutions, we will run 15-20 short courses, costing about $400,000, for the public and private sector during 1993/94.

There is the additional problem of successful students wanting to live and work in Australia thereby leaving their home countries no better off. While

Australian development cooperation is

aimed at helping the economic and social development of Pacific island countries, it is a fact of life that qualified individuals from island countries do possess skills which may be in demand in New Zealand or Australia. I know Pacific island authorities are considering making it a condition of continued study that students return to work in their home country for an appropriate period once they have completed their awards.

The focus of Australia’s education assistance to island nations is now on local education development, and sub stantial resources are earmarked to promote in-region education and train ing. We hope that such assistance will further contribute to the sharing of knowledge as well as the development of material resources which is, after all, what aid and learning are all about.

Gordon Bilney

Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Australia.

Flosse

replies

Sir,

WOULD you please inform your readers by publishing in your next edition the corrections to the report titled French Polynesia. Going to polls in your May 1993 issue by Bengt Danielsson. As far as Danielsson’s latest incoherencies are con cerned, the entire article needs to be corrected.

The general election of March 1993 does not come at all under any colonial rule in French Polynesia and does not convey any disloyalty towards the island people.

On the contrary, French Polynesia is considered a collective whole equal to any

metropolitan counterpart within the

French republic. Therefore, like all French departments and territories, every five years, it is required to elect is members to the National Assembly (the First Parlia mentary Chamber of France), while every nine years locally elected officials appoint a representative to the Senate (the second chamber of the French parliament) This entire process is done exactly in accordance with the same ballot requirements and political choices as in rest of France. Two deputes from French Polynesia represent the 200,000 Polynesian French citizens

(one depute for every 100,000 inhabitants.)

These two elected officials have the same rights and duties as their 575 colleagues of the National Assembly who represent the other 60 million French citizens (one depute for every 105,000 inhabitants).

These two elected members are bound to the very democratic laws ruling the French nation, and it would be very biased to claim that they are, as Danielsson wrote, inevi tably “anti-colonialist and anti-nuclear”.

To consider that French Polynesia is a colony and to wish for a ban on nuclear tests are two political issues openly pro posed, among others, by the numerous candidates running at each election, and are for that matter, just as freely settled by the electors. It so happens that tne majority of them does not agree with such views.

Therefore, the two outgoing deputes, Leontieff and Vernaudon, were, as far as we know, neither in favour of independence nor opened to the resumption of the nuclear tests.

The representation of French Polynesia meets every requirement of proper pro portional representation found it an demo cratic parliamentary system, and does not hamper at all the action of our two deputes who labour in the interest of French Polynesians, much in the same was as their counterparts from Bordeaux or Auvergne.

The role of a national depute, from Polynesia or elsewhere, goes beyond the simple affairs of his constituency. He also has arbitrate the political life of the French nation, which is the first mission he is entrusted with as a Polynesian elected official. His duty is to legislate and to control the government of the Republic, just as deputes from the Paris region or from the coastal Alps would.

French Polynesia is a French overseas territory endowed with a deliberative assembly comprising 41 members, elected

by all the citizens of French Polynesia. The Territorial assembly and the Territorial government, responsible to the Assembly, are endowed with more powers than a state belonging to a federal country. For in stance, there is no other tax in French Polynesia than those which are decided upon by the Territorial assembly. The areas of competence still held by the French national government (mostly matters of national sovereignty such as immigration/ naturalisation, foreign affairs, national defence, justice ...) are exceptions, which are scrupulously described by the law.

Local political life is mainly run by the two

truly Polynesian authorities mentioned

above rather than by the two nationally elected officials, though, when necessary, the latter ones along with our senator can be used to make our voice heard at the national scale by both parliament and government.

To write that Gaston Flosse is “more French than Polynesian” is indeed even more ridiculous than it is defamatory. I was born in the most isolated archipelago of

French Polynesia, the gambier archipelago,

to a Polynesian mother and a French father. There is hardly anymore else other than Right Wing extremist theoreticians to claim the right to exclude a citizen from a given community, whether he be a Jew, a Roman, an immigrant’s child, or a Poly nesian half-breed, ... on the ground that half the cells running in his bloodstream are “foreign”. The French and Polynesian laws both ban such conduct.

My winning a majority of 50.13 per cent of the votes at the first round of a two round uninominal system on March 13, 1993, was not just a “narrow” achievement. It was

rather the outstanding victory' that only

knowledgeable people, acquainted with

electoral campaigning would know, and the kind that any candidate in any country, forced to go through a second round, would envy.

And as far as Danielsson’s statements, that I owe my majority to a “half’ of the electorate made up of expatriate metropolitants ... I can only say mat this shows how much more intellectual swindle can be surpassed by ridicule.

To this effect, I should remind you that out of 200,000 inhabitants currently living in French Polynesia, only 23,000 were born in a foreign 13 per cent of the total electorate. This is assuming that they systematically used the right of vote they’re entitled to and unite their ballot papers in a total devotion in my favour ... tne fact that the nuclear tests Commission Head quarters is located in the area I’m running in should in no way deceive you any more than it has Danielsson. The local polling station reports only 140 registered electors from the headquarters.

The so-called government privileges, meaning free boat and plane trips, through which Danielsson sees “the main reason” of

my success against the outgoing depute,

Vernaudon, give no credit at all to the

Polynesian voters.

To have stated, as Danielsson has, that “The five other candidates were against me, and had declared that they favored

independence and opposed the resumption

of the nuclear tests in Mururoa”, is false..

That was just true for two candidates, and Vernaudon was not one of them. They

respectively obtained 14.8 and 1.9 per cent of the votes.

The reports by Danielsson of the results obtained in the first round of the other constituency were also false.

Leontieff was not a Flosse emulator, a “satisfied of the colonial system”. On the contrary, he was a determined opponent and ran in that constituency as the alter ego of Vernaudon, his political ally, and an outgoing deputy like him. His getting only “a fifth of the votes” just meant that such was the extent of his personal audience. His rallying in the second round showed the consequences of his assessment.

Danielsson fails to say that the political ideals he attributes to Juventitn, that is: “a home rule government similar to the one found in the Cook Islands”, are actually the ones I thought of as a possibility for Polynesia, being only an evolution of our present constitution.

It is also false to state that, in this constituency as well as in the other one, “all other candidates had agendas that looked like Oscar Temaru’s. It is deceitful to all the votes they won to those obtained by the Mayor of Faaa.”

Only two candidates out of the eight, like Temaru clamored for independence. They respectively won 3.6 and 0.7 per cent of the votes. Therefore, the arithmetical errors of Danielsson, with the purpose of proving that Flosse is in the minority is indeed

laughable.

Any experienced political analyst could

explain to Danielsson. and any of your readers somewhat familiar with the two ballot systems would know, that selections are made during the first ballot, and that elimination is decided during the second bout.

The only results to be considered, for the circumstances, are the ones that have been drawn together after the first ballot of the March 1993 general election of French Polynesia. They have disclosed, to every one’s surprise, that 24 per cent of the electors nave chosen the independence agenda, that five of the 15 listed candidates in the two constituencies proposed such an agenda. These results, which have spurred many comments at that time, as Danielsson knows too well, are quite clear, and there is no need to tinker any longer with the calculator. A fourth of the electors rep resents a problem for the future and for the structuring of the society in French Poly nesia. The public debate has been newly reinforced by comparing the merits and advantages of the evolutive home rule linked to France and the total break off that would lead to independence, a state in which most island nations of the South Pacific region has had the greatest difficulty to achieve their social and economical aims.

The question has been asked to Poly nesians. It is quite unfortunate that Danielsson disguises the issue with false arguments. Does he not realise that the answer to this question could be different from the one, he nas chosen for himself, that is the independence most Polynesians will have to decide upon, for they are the only ones who will have to bear the conse quences of such an outcome.

Gaston Flosse

President French Polynesia