Land of confusion

Snyder Rini

It was a 16th-century Spanish explorer who gave the Solomon Islands their name. Alvaro de Mendana was hoping to convince his royal patrons that the South Pacific archipelago, notorious for head-hunting, cannibalism and skull worship, contained gold - perhaps even the fabled mines of King Solomon.

But in the four centuries since Mendana encountered the islands, wealth and stability have eluded the country once nicknamed the Happy Isles. The Solomons have instead had to contend with slavery, colonisation, civil war, chronic corruption and unstable government.

The latest chapter in the former British colony's sorry history has unfolded over the past 10 days. The appointment last week of veteran politician Snyder Rini as Prime Minister sparked two days of rioting and looting, during which Chinese-owned businesses in the capital were destroyed and ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan were forced to flee.

The violence was spurred by the perception among ordinary people that Rini, 46, had won the premiership with the help of dirty money from Taiwan.

Under mounting public and political pressure, Rini announced his shock resignation on Wednesday and is likely to hand over the reins of power next week to another veteran politician, Manasseh Sogavare.

So who are these two men, and what does the likely transition of power from one to another herald for the Solomons?

"Rini is deeply unpopular and widely seen as a crook," said one long-term observer of the Solomons, who asked not to be named. "He's politically astute but tainted by corruption."

Rini hails from the New Georgia group of islands, in the west of the archipelago. The region is dominated by a beautiful lagoon, which is meant to be World Heritage-listed. But there is rampant logging on the surrounding islands by Asian companies, and there are suggestions that money from timber helped him win his seat in parliament, the source said.

Rini's appointment as Prime Minister, after a secret ballot among the Solomon's 50 MPs, was greeted with public outrage because he was widely seen as a stooge of the highly unpopular outgoing Prime Minister, Sir Allan Kemakeza.

Ordinary islanders were frustrated and angry with the endless recycling of the same old faces in the country's revolving door brand of politics.

Mistrust of Rini goes back to 2000, when as Minister of Finance he granted generous tax breaks to mostly Asian-owned companies operating in the Solomons, forgiving them millions of dollars worth of import and export duties. A year later Rini was made Deputy Prime Minister when his political ally Kemakeza became Prime Minister. Kemakeza was also accused of corruption, specifically the misappropriation of large sums of money loaned by Taiwan and intended as compensation to the victims of the Solomon's civil war, which lasted from 1998 to 2003.

Among the most trenchant critics of the operation was Sogavare, 55, who by this time next week could be the Solomon's new leader. A martial arts enthusiast and the son of a Seventh Day Adventist preacher, Sogavare accused Canberra of harbouring a secret desire to recolonise his country, a charge the Australians have always regarded as preposterous.

A former secretary of finance in the Government, he studied for a master's degree in New Zealand and once listed his interests as reading, studying and watching aggressive sports - preparation for the rough and tumble of Solomon's politics perhaps?

He comes from Choiseul, a deeply traditional province in the western Solomons where crocodiles thought to embody the spirits of ancestors still lurk in creeks and swamps. He has the jet black skin common to people from that part of the country.

Sogavare has already been Prime Minister once, for an 18-month spell in 2000 and 2001. His rhetoric was about bringing peace to the Solomons and reuniting a divided nation, but in many ways his administration accelerated the process of political disintegration, and there was blatant corruption.

There was no evidence to implicate Sogavare himself in graft, but several of his ministers were allegedly involved. One of them was Snyder Rini. It is a measure of the fluidity of politics in the Solomons that two men who are now on opposite sides of the divide were once close colleagues.

If Sogavare does become Prime Minister, he will have to soften his previous hostility to the Australian-led regional assistance mission, Ramsi programme. Canberra is spending A$250 million ($299 million) a year on trying to put the country back on its feet and wants a premier it can work with.

"I think he'll moderate his views because Ramsi remains very popular among ordinary people, and provides security for the country and the political class," said Michael Fullilove, from the Lowy Institute, an independent Australian think tank.

Sogavare has also indicated that he would switch his country's diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, a move guaranteed to dismay Taipei.

The Solomon Islands problems will take years to solve, whoever is elected Prime Minister next week. Corruption is endemic, ethnic tension is rife and the economy is failing to keep up with rapid population growth, resulting in chronic unemployment and rising crime.

Little wonder that the Solomons and other Melanesian countries such as Papua New Guinea are sometimes described as a miniature Africa.