A Time and a Place

23 August 2008 Dan McGarry

Vanuatu society is among the rapidly diminishing number that still guarantee their members a place and a purpose in life. Traditional life is clearly delineated – not to say boring – in almost every way. Family ties, rank and gender define every aspect of one’s existence. If you are an adult male in a family in good standing, life is very good indeed. But the situation degrades from there.

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

On Monday, the Pacific Institute of Public Policy officially launched ‘The political parties and groupings of Vanuatu’. The 60-page booklet is a treasure trove of information about Vanuatu’s political past and present. It lists the major political parties along with a brief history, key membership and policies. Already, there are over 500 Bislama copies in circulation. This number is expected to double before the election.

Chiefs, government representatives and members of civil society all voiced their support for the report. Without simple, reliable information like this, voters rely on intuition and (often hollow) promises to choose a candidate. Prior to this, the task of sifting the wheat from the rhetorical chaff was near impossible.

Rebecca Olul, manager of Save the Children’s Youth Outreach project, shared some lively and nuanced insights with the audience at Monday’s presentation. Her short speech cast a jaundiced eye on the vague blandishments that sometimes pass for policy. Without resorting to rank cynicism, she encouraged readers of the report to carefully weigh their candidates’ words and actions.

The 25 year old knows the challenges facing young people today, the competing tensions between Vila and village, kastom and 21st Century culture. She combines 6 years of living and learning overseas with the intimate understanding of life in the islands that only those born into it can possess.

Filling the Cracks With Gold

16 August 2008 Dan McGarry

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

September 2nd promises to be a bloody day, in political terms. In Vanuatu’s 9th general election, at least 334 candidates will battle for one of 52 seats in 17 different constituencies. These candidates represent over 30 political parties, many new, some old. They are opposed by the largest contingent of independent candidates ever fielded. Over 80 will run.

Port Vila voters will witness nothing short of a battle royal. Some of the most venerable names in Vanuatu politics, including ex-PMs Natapei and Korman, minister Willy Jimmy and Opposition Leader Moana Carcasses, are facing numerous serious challengers. Among the most notable contenders: Constitutional Lion Silas Hakwa, Leba president Ephraim Kalsakau, firebrand Independent Ralph Regenvanu, backroom veteran Manina Packete and the ever-popular Moses Steven. In all, 46 candidates will duke it out for 6 seats.

While some seats are safer than others, no candidate can rest easy. Nationwide, roughly 8 candidates are fighting for each available spot. Even worse than the battle to be first past the post will be the positively Byzantine post-election horse-trading that ensues. Right now, it’s hard to see how an actual working government will emerge from the carnage.

Island Hopping

15 August 2008 Dan McGarry

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

Denis O’Brien, owner of the Digicel Group, graces the cover of the August 11th issue of Forbes Magazine. Their profile, titled ‘Babble Rouser’, begins with a tone of detached and vaguely supercilious astonishment at the risks that Digicel has incurred in the course of its lightning-quick expansion across the island nations of the world. It quickly sobers, though, when it reports that the Digicel Group earned $505 million in operating profit on $1.6 billion in revenue in the financial year ending March, 2008.

Forbes leaves it to O’Brien himself to explain his damn-the-torpedoes philosophy:

“Get big fast. [Damn] the cost. Be brave. Go over the cliff. [The competition] doesn’t have the balls.”

I suspect he used some word other than ‘damn’.

Most anyone would enjoy downing a beer with the honey-tongued chancer from Cork, but Denis O’Brien didn’t make the cover of Forbes merely because of a flamboyant devil-may-care attitude. He’s noteworthy because he saw an opportunity where others didn’t, and he got rich capitalising on it.

The idea is simple enough: If you give everyone – literally everyone – access to mobile services, you can make money everywhere. In O’Brien’s world, there is no such thing as low-hanging fruit. Every single market gets aggressively cultivated. The fruits of such labours are truly remarkable.

Mercenary, Missionary, Manager, Monarch

10 August 2008 Dan McGarry

In countries the world over, the political scene attracts the same kinds: There’s the Mercenary: charismatic, mercurial, willing to say or do anything as long as the price is right. There’s the single-minded Missionary: often blinded by the brilliance of his own vision. There’s the Manager, who finds herself organising others because if she didn’t nothing would ever get done. There’s the Monarch, for whom power is an end in itself, not a job but a state of being.

All of these are required in order for a government to operate, though each in its measure. Take any one away and things break down. Allow too many of a given kind… and things break down. The chemistry of government relies as much on manoeuvrability and opportunism as it does on organisation and direction.

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

Being an honest, ethical and competent MP isn’t something that a candidate can easily stump for. That’s mostly because it’s not easy to distinguish yourself from your pathologically dishonest opponent, who’s made a career of lying to everyone, even himself. It’s a rare politician indeed that doesn’t promise to be effective and to stand up for the principles of the people he’s speaking to at the moment, whatever they may be.

Despite innumerable past disappointments, honesty, ethical behaviour and competence should be assumed. They should be right there in the job description.

Should be.

Practical Policy

2 August 2008 Dan McGarry

As they’ve done for thousands of years, leaders invest their time and wealth in buying the support of the dominant personalities in their community. They do so by the most direct means possible: bags of rice, pots and pans, a favour here, a favour there. It’s simple, direct and tangible for all involved. The price of a vote is lamentably low, but that’s just a reflection of the value voters put in today’s government.

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

Election season is well underway. For most people, it’s unrolling as it always has. The usual gifts are handed out to the usual suspects. A chief receives a free vendor stall at the Independence ceremonies in exchange for delivering his community’s support. A prospective candidate rounds up a few dozen friends and spends an evening doling out kava and chatting. An MP tours from village to village with a truckload of pots, pans and bags of rice. A prospective MP buys the truck itself.

Generally, these transactions are notably free of platform or policy discussions. The tradition doesn’t really work that way. It’s not that candidates don’t have agendas; they do. Nor are they hiding anything, necessarily; it’s just that, at this level, they don’t play the policy game.

Occasionally, though, there arises that rarest of political creatures, a candidate with a conscience, and a policy platform to prove it.

Rebuilding the Nasara

31 July 2008 Dan McGarry

Mobile telephone services significantly enhance one – and only one – important aspect of Vanuatu culture. They enable family members and friends to stay in touch with one another much more easily than they could before. This has the effect of strengthening some of the bonds that keep small groups together. As such, it should be viewed as a positive reinforcement of many of the things that we hold dear.

But in Vanuatu society, there’s more to communication than conversations between family members. We’ve so far succeeded in re-creating the kitchen conversation by electronic means. But we have no nakamal, no nasara. We have no meeting place we can truly call our own.

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

About a month ago, I gave a talk [Powerpoint File] to telecommunications network operators from all over the Pacific region. It dealt with the social aspects of Vanuatu’s communications revolution. Many of the themes I touched on will be familiar to readers of this column.

In a nutshell, I talked about Digicel’s approach to so-called marginal markets and how they relied on Network Effects to generate traffic where there had been none before. Once you have more than a certain percentage of the population using a particular means of communication, everyone else is compelled to join them, simply because everybody is using it.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

27 July 2008 Dan McGarry

Few laws spend their entire existence un-amended. If changes are required, they can be made after the Family Protection Act is promulgated. To suggest any further consideration by parliament at this time ensures that it will be years before it sees the light of day again, if it survives at all.

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

NOTE: Two days after this article was published, the Daily Post front page story is of a 25 year old woman who was picked up in town by her common-law partner, taken home and beaten over the head with a piece of firewood. The man then proceeded to inflict knife wounds on her feet before severing her right arm close to the elbow and cutting her left hand so badly that only the thumb remained intact. It unimaginable that her neighbours didn’t hear her screams. The assailant was arrested 2 hours after these events took place.

When president Kalkot Mataskelekele announced that he would refer the Family Protection Act to the Supreme Court, he undertook a perilous task.

The Act, which has been crawling its way through the legislative process for nearly a decade, was passed in the final session of Parliament before elections later this year. Now, the president’s desire to ensure the constitutionality of the Act might have the unintended consequence of killing it outright.

It may be that if the Supreme Court responds with anything less than unequivocal affirmation of the Act’s constitutionality, they will leave it in legal limbo. Even the tiniest change would force it to be reintroduced as new legislation when the new Parliament is convened. This leaves the justices caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: Their only options, effectively, are to strike it down outright or accept it in its entirety.

Rural Internet Comes to Vanuatu

24 July 2008 Dan McGarry3 Comments

Pacific RICS, which stands for Rural Internet Connectivity System, is the result of the Pacific Islands Forum’s Digital Strategy, itself part of the Pacific Plan. The AusAID-funded project offers Pacific Island nations access to dedicated satellite communication services using simple, easy to install and inexpensive equipment. This project is designed to dovetail with the Oceania One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to ensure that all children in the region get their own low-cost, durable laptop.

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

This week, Ian Thomson, project coordinator for the SPC’s Pacific RICS project, came to town with some eye-catching gifts in hand.

During a public presentation on Tuesday, attended by Ministers Edward Nipake Natapei and Joe Natuman, Santo MP Sela Molisa and many others, Thomson outlined how combining affordable Internet access and invaluable learning tools like the OLPC’s XO laptop could revolutionise life in rural areas of Vanuatu.

A sample satellite system was set up in a single afternoon at Club Vanuatu, and Minister Natapei demonstrated how easy it was to use it to connect to the Internet.

Expressing his excitement about the projects, Thomson said, ‘I feel like Father Christmas! I get to give out laptops to children – who could say no to a job like that? Not only will it help them learn, but it will also help all community members to engage with Internet technology and get connected to the global network.’