All eyes are on this month’s Pacific Island Forum meeting in Cairns. As well as several other issues that will be discussed by the Forum leaders, this would be yet another occasion where the region will be looking expectantly at the outcomes of the meeting as regards one of its most prominent Pacific Island members and the first one ever to be suspended in the history of the Forum: Fiji.
This will be the third occasion since the military regime took over the reins of political power in Fiji in December 2006 that the leaders of the Forum member countries would have had the chance to come together and discuss how to deal with the situation.
In the first two instances – during the Forum meetings in 2007 in Tonga and 2008 in Niue – precious little has been achieved in terms of a cogent response from the member countries on how to deal with the situation. In 2007, following the pull out of the military leadership from the meeting at the last moment, the leaders’ response was anything but clear about how it proposed to deal with the Fijian leadership.
After a full year of a slew of individual actions by the Forum’s two economically strongest members – Australia and New Zealand – where several sanctions were slapped on Fiji, at the Forum meeting the next year in 2008, the response of at least some of the leaders seemed determined to move forward with further punitive action on Fiji. For the first time ever the possibility of suspension from the regional body was mooted.
The Fijian leadership was given another six months to come up with a schedule for elections and hold elections by the end of 2009, which it failed to accept and at a special leaders’ meeting conveyed by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare decided to finally suspend the country from the Forum.
There is no doubt that this action has divided the Forum. Several countries that had held the view that suspension was a step too far but failed to say so in 2008 when moves to suspend was gaining momentum came out more openly after the suspension was effected.
Smaller countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu that depend almost totally on Fiji for logistic connectivity and commerce and trade were naturally a worried lot and extremely apprehensive about the suspension. The Melanesian group within the Forum nations, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands began to become more vocal in displaying solidarity with the fourth member of the quartet – their suspended brethren, Fiji.
Since the suspension the increasingly strident attitude of the big boys Australia and New Zealand on at least a couple of matters including Fiji’s non inclusion in trade talks like PACER has further sought to deepen fissures within the Forum as could be seen at the latest trade ministers meeting in Samoa.
The fault lines have now been clearly drawn: on one side are Australia, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Samoa – and on the other are members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s three members PNG, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands joined by the far more worried smaller players like Kiribati and Tuvalu.
Though the line seems to be running across the Melanesia-Polynesia divide, Polynesian Tonga has clearly begun to swing toward a more sympathetic line with Fiji, going by the pronouncements of its Prime Minister Feleti Sevele.
A draft report on the progress of the Pacific Plan that was authored by a former senior adviser to the Forum Secretariat – that incidentally was leaked much to the chagrin and embarrassment of the Forum – is damning in its criticism of Fiji’s suspension from the point of view of regional cooperation and solidarity.
The growing discontent in the Melanesian camp, which was hitherto simmering beneath the surface, has now become more than obvious. This clearly betrays two things: that the Forum’s present stand on Fiji was forcefully driven by Australia and New Zealand and that so far the Melanesian leaders failed to have the gumption to show to Australia and New Zealand what they really stood for. They waffled and dithered and on occasion made tame statements about finding alternative strategies. But not once did they come out forcefully about what they really felt until now.
Given this backdrop and the fact that the strategy dictated by the Anzac nations has come a complete cropper in dealing with the Fijian situation, the Melanesian leadership must step in at this month’s Cairns Forum meeting and demonstrate a clear alternative if they decide to become vocal on their disagreement with the way the Forum has dealt with Fiji so far. Merely voicing disagreement simply won’t do. They must show a viable way forward.
Pacific leaders need to eschew their self-effacing mentality and long time tendency to fall in line with the dictates of western powers that run counter to more traditional approaches to regional problem solving.
Like it or not, all through the Fijian crisis since December 2006, there has been a strong undercurrent of Melanesian solidarity even though some leaders have on occasion criticised the Fijian military leadership especially for its tendency not to front up when given the chance as in the Forum meetings in 2007 and 2008. But the sympathetic feeling has always been there.
In Cairns they must come forth forcefully, seize the initiative and forge an agenda based on its deep filial and cultural links with Fiji to come up with a demonstrable alternative that is far more Pacific in its outlook. It must no longer cow down to an agenda that it fundamentally does not agree with and must not mince its words in pointing out that the strategy now in place has led to a cul de sac and simply has no future.
It must point out that there is little productive that can be achieved by putting the people of Fiji at an increasing disadvantage by continuing sanctions especially in an economic environment that the world finds itself in.
The Forum’s present non-strategy must change. And it is only the Melanesian block that can offer the alternative at the upcoming meeting. It must make the best of yet another opportunity – the fourth – that the leaders would have had to c ome up with something meaningful to deal with Fiji.