18 June 2007
Prosperity, progress and peace do not begin in Honiara. These basics root first in the village and then they spread to our urban centres. This is the basic message that should be drawn from our first 29 years of history. Unfortunately, since 1978 independence days our political masters were determined to bring the trappings of a dynamic society by passing around the rural majority and hitch their prosperity wagon to an urban minority.
And the reason why the village is central is simple enough! The wealth base for the nation's prosperity is owned and controlled by the villager, the rural majority. He/she through the clan, line and tribe own and control the nation's rivers, lakes, land, trees, ground, reefs, fishing areas etc. in which the food, shelter, medicine, water, etc. are found to keep human existence going.
Of course, if wealth is narrowly understood as simply cash and money, then Honiara and its smaller rural versions, the provincial capitals, lie at the centre of prosperity. But dollars and cents are a human invention so as to easily count, measure and distribute the real wealth of the nation, its natural resources, especially its people. Dollars and cents, gold, silver, etc. in themselves, are not wealth but stand for real wealth.
Unfortunately during our earliest years, every government of the day traveled down the wrong path and were convinced that the Three Ps--prosperity, progress and peace--had to go through Honiara first and then on to lives of village people. The three pillars of 20th century life--cash, Honiara centric and men and men alone as decision makers--defined what it meant to live in the Solomons in the latter part of the 20th century.
Is it any wonder, then, that those who actually own Solomon Islands, the country's Resource Owners, rebelled? The Social Unrest years--1998-2003--was a national wake up call that prosperity, progress and peace that every citizen thirsts for comes only when the majority of the nation are responded to positively. The miracle that occurred was not that we had terrible things happening on the Weather Coast and a few other hot spots but that so few Solomon Islanders took up arms, rebelled and went down that same dreadful road.
2003, then, became a watershed when the national downward spiral came to an abrupt halt. RAMSI arrived, separated the chaos workers from their guns, strengthened the state's basic forces--police, courts, prisons--for unity--and gave the nation a chance to re-invent itself anew. Unfortunately, the former government failed to grab this golden opportunity to turn the nation around, strengthen the village sector though better services and jump start the economy. SIDT's 7th Report Card in August 2005 showed how low the people still marked the Kemakeza Government's in this respect.
Chinatown's April Riots of 2006 were a flashback to the 'bad old days'. This incident reflected the fear people had of a return to 'business as usual'. That the old forces of 'cash, Honiara and male domination' were once again on the rise. That the 21st century's new pillars of life--'food security, village centrality and women/youth in decision making positions'--was unraveling before their eyes.
A quick and easy survey of today's people would reveal that the present government's--Grand Coalition for Change--popularity rests on the fact that it has publicly embraced the village as central to its work. For the first time in 29 years, a government of the day has placed the rural population at the centre of its planning and will rise or fall on how well it reaches out, services and listens to these people.
That is why it is important for the Opposition to realize that there's no other way to go but to seek 'prosperity, progress and peace' by going first through the village and only when these are rooted there will the urban sector of our society grow and prosper as well. It has taken us 29 years to find this secret and now it's up to all of us to put it into practice. Focusing on 'increasing the quality of village living' is not a passing fad, a political gimmick or quick fix. It is either through and with the villager that all our well being depends or no one will gain it for long.
J. Roughan
18 June 2007
Honiara
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