Solomons crisis dates back to hasty British handover

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN, Herald correspondent

HONIARA - It should have been the climax of a history-making day.

As British officials and minor royals sweated in their suits, 25 years ago today, the crowd at Honiara's main stadium swelled forward to see their new nation's flag hoisted aloft for the first time.

Seconds earlier the Union Jack had shot down the pole, keeping pace with the indecent haste of the British departure from one of their last colonial outposts in the South Pacific.

Then, with an awkward pause so laden with portent it was to resonate for a quarter of a century, the bright green, blue and yellow flag of the world's newest nation refused to open.

"It's true, it didn't unfurl smoothly," recalls Sir Baddeley Devesi, who as the 36-year-old Governor-General-designate was watching the progress of the flag.

"And if you listen to my speech at Independence Day you will hear the uncertainty I harboured too; I was not sure what was going to be.

"My doubts were based on a lack of proper preparation by the British Administration for economic development after independence," says Sir Baddeley.

Now retired after a distinguished career both as Governor-General for two terms and then as a minister of the Crown he'd represented, Sir Baddeley says this lack of preparation is at the heart of his nation's present woes.

Today Solomon Islands might celebrate 25 years of independence but tomorrow the county's parliamentarians will meet to debate and most likely endorse a request for outside intervention.

Much attention has been placed on the military component of the planned operation, but perhaps the more ambitious element of Australian Prime Minister John Howard's Solomons plan is the civilian one designed to essentially do what the British never did.

This will involve inserting expatriates directly into the Solomons' moribund administration to try first to re-establish some of its functions and financial integrity, but also in the long term to help the islands to develop their own capacities to operate a modest but modern state.

The Australian Institute of Strategic Studies estimated this as at least a 10-year process.

Armed with a British system of justice, a Westminster Parliament, four volcanoes and about 70 languages and scattered over a 1600km-long archipelago, the Solomons on July 7, 1978 were thrust out into the real world.

But vast social, economic and political changes were demanded of this island country in order to craft itself into a viable nation after just 85 years of British colonialism.

But little in the way of guidance, education, resources or capital was provided to its 300,000 or so people.

Augustine Manakako was one of just five graduates the British had managed to educate at the time of independence.

At 34, the young administrator from the Weathercoast of Guadalcanal was already a permanent secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs and saw firsthand the capacity of his young nation.

"Solomon Islands was not prepared for independence," he says bluntly now.

These days Manakako is retired and spends his time campaigning for funds and awareness of the plight of his people of Marasa Village on the Weathercoast, whose homes were among those raided and destroyed at the hands of the maverick rebel leader, Harold Keke.

These efforts have been made all the more poignant by the brutal slaying of a niece's young teenage son at the hands of Keke's men two weeks ago.

"Let's forget all our dreams, all out illusions, and let's get in touch with reality," Manakako says now of the plans for the Australian-led intervention.

It was Western missionaries who began unwinding the complex thread of custom that had governed the lives of the predominantly Melanesian people for thousands of years.

But most Solomon Islanders remained dependent on a lifestyle of subsistence-affluence, and loyal first to family, tribe and then their island around the time their colonial masters decided they should form a nation-state.

Speaking at a National Unity Summit last week, the Catholic Archbishop of Honiara, Adrian Smith, highlighted how little these loyalties have changed since independence and the role they've played in undermining the functioning of a modern state.

"Could it be that the strength of our tribalism is a breeding ground for the ugly face of corruption which is so visible in our society?

"If I am corrupt but share the loot with my tribal members or my extended family, there seems to be little moral judgment on such behaviour. If this is the acceptable code then it is little wonder corruption is so widespread."

Sir Baddeley, too, is anxious for his nation to move beyond what he calls a "hand-out" mentality, feeling Solomon Islanders need to accept that you can't build a nation without plain hard work.

He believes that with enough care and preparation Solomon Islands could maintain a Western democratic system. "[But] if we are not strengthened then the cultural background will override the foreign concept of the Western democracy."

Which was pretty much what happened in June 2000 when elements of the country's police force from Malaita province joined with a civilian militia to carry out a coup.

What Sir Baddeley hadn't anticipated was that he would be a Deputy Prime Minister when these forces finally overwhelmed the state.

In the days before the coup he had tried desperately to convince the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners to recommend to their Governments to send in peacekeepers.

Then, as 25 years ago, his nation could not survive without outside assistance.

"They were pretty much forgotten by all of us," says one Australian diplomat who asked not to be named.

"It wasn't until the spillover from the Bougainville crisis that we started to say, 'Hell, maybe we ought to be putting a bit more effort into the Solomons'."

It is addressing the longer-term nation building that will be the least sexy but most significant test of Australia's new hands-on approach to the region.

Reuben Moli was an assistant accountant at Solomon Islands Electrical Authority at the time of independence. He is now the premier of Malaita, home to those who both suffered from and perpetrated much of the country's current strife.

He is anxious the mistakes of independence don't get repeated now that Solomon Islands has a chance to rebuild itself through the planned intervention.

"If we are to start again, then we have to fully understand what we are doing, we need to especially explain the full benefits and effects of the intervention that will occur not only during it but afterwards."