11 July 2019
Balancing the facts on Solomon Islands lack of development in the past two decades.
The Hon. Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare used the occasion of the 41st Independence Anniversary celebration last week to deliver a keynote address in which he said, and I quote:
“Although Solomon Islands has gained its political independent for nearly 41 years now until today not much had changed.”
He said past governments had struggled for positive change with limited success and as a result very little has been made due to lack of unity of the people to build the nation.
“I believe we failed because we neglected the importance of ‘waking the national consciousness of our people to build this nation. We drove the development agenda – but left our people behind,” the PM added...
“I strongly believe that we cannot progress far if we do not have this nationalistic pride in us as Solomon Islanders,” the Prime Minister went on to conclude.
National unity, pride in the nation and the need for positive change are concerns that I have written about in the past two decades in my many missives contributed to the local and international media and I fully endorse Prime Minister Sogavara’s concerns and his calls on the nation to unite and to move the country forward.
During 1997 and in 1998 I was associated with the present Prime Minister when he was the Finance Minister in the SIAC government and I was the Commissioner of Police. I gained the measure of the man, his love of country and his passion for the development of national unity, even in those early days, and his desire for the Solomon Islands to achieve and prosper.
I feel, as he does, the disappointment that nothing much has changed in the past 22 years since I left the Solomon Islands.
One might ask why as an ‘outsider’ I should care. I do so because I left my post as Commissioner of Police prematurely and never realised the ambitions and hopes I had for the development of the police service and the needs of the people and country as a whole, especially my concerns for youth development, health services, the environment, gender imbalances, women’s rights, domestic violence, disability rights and for educational reform.
The onset of the civil conflict which I had accurately forecast and reported on in November 1998 went unheeded and ultimately led to the political and economic collapse of the Solomon Islands.
The extent of the build-up to that dreadful and tragic conflict I subsequently recorded in my book ‘Policing a Clash of Cultures.”
The civil conflict was perhaps the single biggest drawback to the development of the nation and the consequences linger today when it comes to unsettled grievances, ongoing concerns over land issues and a struggling economy.
There was much talk a few years ago of the creation of Special Economic Zones but the ideas seem to have floundered due, I rather suspect, to the fact that large-scale resource development is difficult because of the land tenure system in which about 87 percent of the land is in customary-ownership, leaving only about nine per cent government owned and the rest by individual Solomon Islanders.
“ Only two per cent of the land is leased to foreigners. The small percentage of government-owned land means that the state has limited access to land for the purposes of national development. It also means that state power over land-based development initiatives can be (and has in the past been) seriously undermined.
“To appreciate why a large percentage of land remains in customary- ownership, one needs to have an understanding of the traditional value of land to Solomon Islanders. Land is much more than a mere economic commodity; it cannot be bought and sold like other marketable commodities. Traditionally land is of great significance and indeed the most valuable resource.
“Not only is it a source of food, but it also has historical, political, and religious significance. The land holds burial grounds, sacrificial sites, and monuments that are important to a society’s history and culture. It is not only a resource for the living, but also a vehicle for providing a link with dead ancestors. In this sense land has a religious significance which makes it the most valuable heritage of the whole community and one that is not often lightly parted with. It is usually owned by the clan or line, and not just by an individual.
“Traditionally land also has a political 12 importance that is embedded in the role that it plays in binding together the land-owning clan or line. It is a source of political and economic power for those who can successfully lay claim over large areas of land. One can do so by having knowledge of oral traditions which legitimate ownership of different portions of the land or successfully manipulating such oral traditions to legitimize one’s own claim over land.
“For Solomon Islanders, land is the centre of life. People have use-rights over portions of land because of their membership in a clan or line; traditionally there was no individual ownership of land.
“The traditional land tenure system is based on the close relationship between land and people and is similar in effect to land tenure systems found throughout Melanesia and the Pacific Islands.”
Today, Solomon Islanders of diverse cultural backgrounds share some common national problems. These include rapid population growth, increasing urbanization, unemployment, crime and social disintegration. The rapid population growth rate is important for Solomon Islands because of its limited land size and slow economic growth. At 3.5 per cent per year, the country has one of the most rapidly growing populations of the world. At this rate the population is accepted to reach 700,000 before too long. Already Honiara has a population of 65 to 67,000 inhabitants.
This problem has been further exacerbated by the fact that 52 per cent of the population are either below the age of 15 or above 60.
The rapid growth rate and young age structure of the population means that there is an increasing probability of high unemployment, insufficient schools, rising crime and other related social problems. These problems are especially profound in the rapidly growing urban centres such as in Honiara.
The Prime Minister expressed his feelings of regret at Lawson Tama but should not take on all blame, as I feel he perhaps does, as having been the PM four times, for all the factors I have highlighted have blighted the Solomon Islands in the past 20 years and real development, including industrial development, will remain frustrated by the existing land tenure system, unless changes are implemented, but most probably unlikely.
Sources include reference to the PROFILE OF INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT : SOLOMON ISLANDS, a compilation of the information available in the Global IDP Database of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
