See Comments on this post by clicking "comment" at the end.Outgoing Acting US Ambassador to NZ Dr Dave Keegan was interviewed by NZTV1's Mark Sainsbury on Sunday. He had this to say about Australian, NZ, the US and the Fiji "situation."
Keegan: The role of the US in the Pacific I think is longstanding, you know out of Hawaii which is our Pacific state, out of American territories, Guam, American Samoa, and others, but we're also not going to step in and try to recreate the kind of expertise that Australia and New Zealand bring to the table. You have a degree of knowledge and a degree of understanding of how to make things work there that we want to take advantage of and be the beneficiary of, and figure out how we can add value.
Sainsbury: But the US congressman for American Samoa Faleomavaega, now he says that - he has criticized New Zealand and Australia's attitude to the Pacific, and said America should be looking at - in terms of Fiji - that we're too tough on Fiji, America needs to take a sort of softer stance there.
Keegan: I know that Mr Faleomavaega has made that argument, Secretary of State Clinton, Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell have made it absolutely clear that in the government's assessment, New Zealand and Australia are taking a strong line with Fiji that is appropriate, and that we want to figure out how to work with your governments as we have been to continue the pressure on Fiji to move back to a real democracy.
To read the whole interview, click here. Our thanks to Pacific Media Centre for this.
Meanwhile, contemplate how our knowledge and understanding of the Pacific have really made things work since the military takeover .
Think of --
- How the Fiji situation has got progressively worse since December 2006.
- How we have not modified our approaches as the situation changed.
- How we have not accepted Bainimarama has far more support than we first realized.
- How we have failed to understand Qarase and the extreme opposition will not modify their stance unless we stop backing them.
- How we do not understand it is only Fiji's "middle ground" (not the racist extremists) that can bring about reconciliation.
- How our policies have further divided Fiji's people, and delayed reconciliation.
- How we have not acknowledged democracy cannot be achieved by an undemocratic electoral system and injust government.
- How we have failed to grasp that our stance on Fiji has accelerated Chinese influence to the detriment of our diplomatic influence and trade interests in the Region.
- How we continue to accept the Pacific Island "yes" at the Forum, and on PACER plus and PICTA, as unreserved approval of our benign leadership.
- And, most importantly, how our lack of humility -- and deep-down belief in human equality and justice -- has failed to boost our knowledge and enhance our understanding of people and nations whose cultures and histories are different than our own?
This is not to excuse the human rights and other abuses that have occurred since 2006 but, given that our Fiji policies have demonstrably failed, we must ask Dr Keegan: "Who's kidding Whom?" One must hope the incoming ambassador will have more nous.
5 comments:
While I don't disagree with one of your bullet points - that it is only Fiji's "middle ground"(not the racist extremists) that can bring about reconciliation - what I'd like to know is "Where is the middle ground?" It's now coming up three years since the coup of December 2006 and the only player at work is a military regime which, while claiming to represent the majority of Fijians based on 60% of those who support the People's Charter process (no figures offered on what proportion that is of the total population), is having to maintain its power through emergency regulations which prohibit the middle ground meeting and which prohibit the middle ground discussing a way forward in a free and fair media.
So, at the end of the day, who's kidding who?
The regime's failure to activate proceedings that would involve the middle ground is indeed disturbing, and future posts will raise this issue.
But whether or not Bainimarama is kidding everyone, there can be little doubt that Australia and NZ have not shown any special expertise in dealing with the situation -- and that was the main point of this particular posting.
Your comments are invariably useful. Thanks and best wishes,
Croz
If you have managed 'to Get It', Professor Walsh, why is it so difficult for the so-called 'experts'? They simply don't and in not doing so they display a failure of understanding and a lack of humility concerning their ignorance that is beyond astounding. In these failings, they allow all manner of space to be created for others who 'DO Get it' to move in and to prosper. We, the ordinary people of Fiji, wish to have our standard of living improved, we have just and rightful aspirations to ultimate equitable, democratic rights (which you have ignored and have been too arrogant to acknowledge). While feathering your own nests and sitting in your own too complacent ideologies you have failed the people of Fiji utterly. Now it is time to 'smarten up'. Get yourselves up-to-speed and recognise that right on your own doorstep you have allowed gross injustice and corruption (both political and institutional) to take root. So profoundly have they become entrenched that it will now take years to dis-establish. Mindsets must change: and your mindsets are pre-eminent and fundamental to such change. Leave it a day too late, and you become irrelevant in the scheme of things. We shall do it - with you or without you but it would save time and face, were we to work in concert?
A further comment would be that with regard to 'expertise' in this entire area of Pacific Island relations: the British Colonial administration insisted upon all graduate cadets studying and speaking the vernacular(s). Three years minimum of study in Fijian and Hindi (both). As a linguist myself I find this essential. Entirely necessary to the enterprise of engagement in countries where for hundreds of years the indigenous population and, in Fiji's case, an immigrant population from the sub-continent, were to be governed and developed. How might this be done without sufficient tools-of-the-trade? Even in Malaita in the British Solomon Islands (as they were), the sole Magistrate spoke and wrote the language of that island and I have known one such person. So there can be no excuse for such a formidable lack of preparation or for a tendency to make forthright statements and comments which, I must say, make the articulators appear ridiculous from this perch and perspective.
VII Generation
NZ has never bothered to train its Islands officers, or its diplomats elsewhere for that matter. It is only in relatively recent years that(some) non-European languages,cultures and histories have been taught in our universities. Today's Pacific Studies Centres cater mainly for Pacific Islanders. Most of our radio and TV announcers do not even make an effort to pronounce Maori and Island names correctly.
We are a nation of generalists with little specialist knowledge of other places and peoples.
One notable exception to this was Jock McEwan, sent to Niue after the previous Resident Agent had been hacked to death by prisoners he'd mistreated. Jock stepped off the boat speaking Niuean, and went on to produce the first Niuean-English dictionary.
The larger problem is not that we don't know but that we don't know we don't know. As the saying goes:"A man who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man, follow him, but a man who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool, despise him."
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