Just Desserts – Reprise

30 November 2008 Dan McGarry

The passage last week of dangerously flawed amendments to the Employment Act is a classic case of government serving politics, instead of politics serving government. So distracted were all our MPs by their own internecine quarrels that they passed a broken Bill, without more than a moment’s reflection on the costs.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

Last week, I wrote about how our parliamentarians have yet to embrace the roles and responsibilities which they were elected to perform. Everyone is so intent on getting into government – or staying put, once there – that they ignore most of the political tools available to them.

On Thursday last week, distracted by a looming no-confidence vote, Parliament passed dangerously flawed legislation amending the Employment Act. The changes included improvements in maternity leave, adjustments to employer liability when a staff member resigns on short notice and changes to the way annual leave accrues.

But what got every employer’s knickers in a knot was a change to how severance is handled. The rate of accrual was increased by 300%. Worse, every worker, no matter how short their employment or the circumstances of their departure, is to be eligible.

The outcry was immediate, irate and, occasionally, irrational. Many employers immediately sacked all their staff, paid out whatever severance was due and re-hired everyone, sometimes at reduced rates calculated to discount the increased severance. Others requested that their staff resign, avoiding severance payouts entirely.

Expat workers were needlessly affected. In spite of being ineligible for severance, employment offers were shelved, contractors were shuffled between companies, salaries cut. Businesses closed briefly to process the artificial staff turnovers.

None of this was necessary. Not now at least, and in some cases not ever.

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Just Desserts

22 November 2008 Dan McGarry

A congenital weakness in Vanuatu politics is the lack of real opposition. In most parliamentary democracies, the term ‘loyal Opposition’ is more than just a pleasant bromide, serving only to placate the loser. It’s an effective reminder that policies must be publicly, thoroughly and constructively scrutinised and critiqued. The give-and-take of parliamentary debate is the most valuable service MPs can render their constituents.

In Vanuatu, however, there is little if any critical evaluation of policy and legislation. Rather than accepting the implicit legitimacy of the ruling coalition and performing the integral public service of scrutinising its every action, the Opposition fritters away its political capital in a petty game of parliamentary musical chairs.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

One of the hallmarks of a healthy democracy is our right – and our responsibility – to question every aspect of our national institutions. If the political dialogue over the last few years is any indication, Vanuatu’s democracy is alive and kicking.

Kalkot Mataskelekele’s adult life has been devoted to promoting and defining an independent, democratic Vanuatu. The nation has benefited from his consistency, wisdom and guidance. He has long been a public proponent of a US-style system with a clear division of power between legislative and executive branches of government. He has been joined by others in suggesting that factionalism could be addressed by putting limits on the number of political parties.

Mataskelekele is one of many leaders who have remarked on numerous occasions that we should not take the structures of government for granted. He rightly points out that Vanuatu’s Westminster system was created mostly as a sop to its departing colonial masters seeking reassurance that the nascent democracy would remain recognisable to them.

In the rush to create a new constitution, important aspects of Vanuatu culture were overlooked. The consensus-driven style of leadership-from-within that typifies chiefly rule is difficult to reconcile with majority rule and a codified, winner-take-all legal system.

Most difficult of all are the contending principles of public service and entitlement.

Vanuatu – The Missing Manual

16 November 2008 Dan McGarry

At a dinner party recently, I met a lovely young couple. Newly arrived in Vanuatu, I started into my standard ‘welcome to Vanuatu’ spiel, illustrating the many interesting ways Vanuatu differs from Westernised countries.

As always, there are things we forget to mention. After a few years living here, one begins to take for granted any number of Vanuatu’s mundane peculiarities. Here, for posterity’s sake, is a brief listing of things you need to know, but don’t get mentioned in the tourist literature….

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition. Some of you will recognise this as an amalgam of some earlier blog posts to a visiting friend. I’ve also updated it once or twice as the inclination struck me.]

At a dinner party recently, I met a lovely young couple, newly arrived in Vanuatu. On learning this, I started into my standard ‘welcome to Vanuatu’ spiel, illustrating the many interesting ways Vanuatu differs from Westernised countries.

But there are always things we forget to mention. After a few years living here, one begins to take for granted any number of Vanuatu’s mundane peculiarities. Here, for posterity’s sake, is a brief listing of things you need to know, but don’t get mentioned in the tourist literature….

N M P

7 November 2008 Dan McGarry

There is a time-honoured tradition here in Vanuatu, requiring that nobody get too fussed over anything. It requires as well that one think twice about the inevitable repercussions before taking ownership of anything. Whether it’s for an item or an idea, a report or a plan, taking responsibility is nearly always a liability.

There are good reasons for all this, to be sure. The only way for a group to survive in a small village – on an island, to boot – is to get along. Learning to keep one’s head down, even when silence comes at a price, ensures harmony. Being quick to forgive weakness and slow to confront ineptitude has become one of the hallmarks of Vanuatu society.

But this is the single biggest impediment facing IT service delivery in Vanuatu today.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Not My Problem.

But this is the single biggest impediment facing IT service delivery in Vanuatu today.

The Change We Seek

6 November 2008 Dan McGarry

Every ni-Vanuatu knows what it means to be discriminated against in one’s own country. They know the trials, the travails and above all the tedium of building that more perfect union. Barack Obama’s election is not just a victory for people of colour, it is a victory of human ideals.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

“This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.”

President-Elect Barack Obama spoke these words to nearly a quarter of a million people in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois on a night that I will remember as one of the highlights of my life.

Reporting on the event, even the normally sober Economist Magazine could not avoid tingeing its account with giddiness. Shyly, almost ashamedly, the anonymous author recounts how American and international journalists lost all semblance of restraint when CNN called the race. They came tumbling out of the media tent en masse to join the multitude of revelers.

How could they not be affected? Each and every one of us was changed personally, individually, by this event.

But it would be disingenuous for any journalist to declare from the pulpit of their own column, that – just this once – they’ve forsaken their dais to speak as woman or man. I will not do that. I will instead sit down on the steps to this poor podium. Indulge me while I speak from my own experience….

The Price of Freedom

1 November 2008 Dan McGarry

Australia’s Labour government recently announced that they would be implementing a two-tiered, national content-filtering scheme for all Internet traffic. The proposal as it stands is that people will have a choice of Internet connections: The first will block all Internet content considered unsafe for children. The second will allow adult content, but block anything deemed illegal under Australian law. People can choose one or the other, but they must choose one.

As with all public content-filtering schemes, this idea is well-intentioned, but fatally flawed.

National content filtering is an inefficient and fundamentally faulty technical approach that deputises the nation’s Internet Service Providers to the role of neighbourhood sherriff, something they’re not at all comfortable with. Second, and more importantly, it creates a dangerous legal and moral precedent that is difficult to distinguish from the infamous Great Firewall of China, which is regularly used to stifle social and political dissent.

Indeed, a spokesman for the online rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia recently said, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.”

After decades of violence and suffering, Timor-Leste begins to bloom