DIVIDED WE FALL

The Prime Minister’s attempted coup on November 24, 2021 was desperately close. Later on, in a Motion of No Confidence against the Prime Minister, he won only after a count back, 32 primary votes to 15, after two votes abstention on the preferences of themselves.

Member Parliamentarians gathered outside the Corridors of Power
National Parliament. Honiara. November 24, 2021

Two years ago, similar circumstances too prevailed in April 24, 2019. Sogavare was declared Prime Minister, defeating Wale by polling 34 votes to nil. However, it has been noted that since the Coup of June 5, 2000, still undefeated, after winning four Prime Minister Elections, a riot often time ensued Sogavare, as the Prime Minister, and it got as hard as ever. 

The Coalition was back in Opposition.

Sogavare’s instincts about the Coalition’s call for him to resign were as sound as picking the right time to arrive almost 20 years earlier. And the point is? Just that, like another Prime Minister with a lengthy period in government, for example, Sogavare at one time thought about standing up to Canberra, but never made it. Colleagues say Sogavare was certainly serious for a while but the window closed before it ever really opened. And, it closed, irrevocably, when Danny Philip, the MP for South New Georgia Rendova Tetepare came back into national politics in August 24, 2010.

The media frenzy since the weekend over Manasseh Sogavare’s supposedly Canberra “ambitions” is nothing new. Whenever Solomon Islands is going absolutely nowhere you always get outbursts of speculative hoohah about somebody or other getting overly ambitious or being “drafted” to save the nation. Yet it never happens. Well, almost never. The voice or positive aspect on our behalf was never heard of for almost two decades. It has not happen since 15 years later, no matter what the circumstances.

In September 2002, for example, former Prime Minister Kemakeza made two requests from his embattled and unpopular government to the United Nations for international assistance. The MP for Rennell and Bellona Constituency, at that time, Joses Tuhanuku, stood up in Opposition, and supported the government’s call for Canberra to join forces and hopefully lead the Regional Assistance Mission in Solomon Islands. None of the others in the Opposition, at that time, got any further than newspaper headlines.

The suchness of life, and the sweet irony of burning down Honiara City, whatever the costs, some locals seem to relish ethnic tensions, civil unrests, and riots – burning and looting China Town, for example, officers, civil advocates, church hands, even women and children run riot, wild and gleefully excited indeed! Most of the kids were drunk, initially with kwaso of course, and later on, turn out to be full loaded with cartons of solbrew.

Now, of course we get our party getting ever more desperate for a white knight, particularly given that every Constituency is now our party – governed. Only in Honiara, can our party not find a savior, except West Honiara Constituency.

In such a climate, the Chinese, you see, came up with an amazing grace idea, that we all can be “forgiven” for looting China town today. That is if you return those bloody booty you stole from the Chinese people. Moreover, if this Chinese maxim rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages. Six days ago marked two weeks since rioters, looters, and the civil unrest began.

In addition to that, Her Majesty’s Solomon Islands Government supposedly clemency too on our poor indigenous women and children, should also mark 18 years since the Commonwealth Government of Australia committed combat troops to Solomon Islands. Obviously, or not so obviously, on the back of Soga’s great speech, at night, obviously, which is why our Prime Minister can request Canberra for assistance mission. Yet, supposedly dodge celebrations or entreaties of its own Mala’ita Province.

Nobody should be surprised.

Since the Prime Minister Sogavare does not adhere to the current terminology of Mala’ita as a big brother philosophy. It is true and self-evident that Mala’ita is the stuff of Solomon Islands national psyche. The foreign relations committee knew about this. On the other hand, RAMSI is the political and militants shame we prefer to keep in the locker. Occasionally we remember when the Sogavare government see the last of RAMSI troops out of Honiara on June 30, 2017. Or when the Sogavare government ended RAMSI conscription the first week it came to office in 2006. But only occasionally.

RAMSI is nothing to mythologize. Not the way they got here and the stated reasons why. Not the appalling way it came in defense of the Solomon Islands Government – Her Majesty’s government. Nor the shameful way we treated our China town, our National Parliament, or our Royal Solomon Islands Police Force, specifically, when we are in uniform.

And RAMSI?

Australia Defense Force on patrol in Honiara City November 26, 2021

Well, the Australian government is now in receipt of a request from the Solomon Islands Government for further military assistance. Prime Minster Sogavare told Parliament that day “We have decided,” and this after close consultation with the government of New Zealand, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea to provide an infantry company. In case there is any misunderstanding, I think they are saying, “We decided in principle some time ago we would be willing to do this if we received the necessary request from the Solomon Islands Government and the necessary collaboration with New Zealand, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.”

From one end of the spectrum. Political analysts believed it was all a farce – Divided We Fall.

The study said in part: Solomon Islands did not need the military aid, but it desire the military presence of its friends and allies in order to show the world that Australia was not alone in its efforts to fight against crime, and to some extent, to fight against Communism in Solomon Islands? As it was, for example, the case when Papua New Guinea’s token forces did not submit to the ultimate command of the crusade. Futile, bloody, despairing and utterly shabby they say.

The people of Solomon tend to forget RAMSI was our longest war recovery and, ultimately, our most divisive. Over the 14 years of the commitment, from 2003 to 2017, 5000 foreign personnel served in Solomon Islands. Some 1000 troops infantry battalion were reserved and conscripted, three of whom died, killed in action. Yet their involvement in Solomon Islands, besides all their greens, produced one of the worst-case scenarios in the public life of this country.

The 2006, and the 2021 Civil Unrests, exposed similar connotations. For example, if you look at China Town on the morning of November 25, 2021. Moreover, go back to the Civil Unrest in 2006, and take a good look. Now, you look at the thousand kids or another thousand more people running into a store together, and the cops are standing out there, not allowed to do their job. The police are not allowed to do their job, and you allow a thing like that to happen. BOOM! We have a country that has no law enforcement, has no law and order. Our police are great, they are not allowed to do their job, and they are now being hit!

People are now already being afraid, they go and shoot police, and they do not respect them. The people of our country love our police, and they do respect them, but the police are not allowed to do their job. If you allow the police to do their job, that would stop, and crime would stop. For God’s sake, they are mostly kids, running in, stealing, robbing stores, where the Chinese are closing all their stores in Honiara City, because they cannot keep them open.

One of the Chinese shops in Kukum up in smoke
November 25, 2021.

We just do not have law enforcement, our country, Solomon Islands, our beloved country is being destroyed, and it should never be allowed to happen. The Police have to be given their power back, they have to stop the crime, they can do it, and they want to do it, but they are not allowed to do it. Now, we must be caution, we have a group of people who are destroying our country, and perhaps knowingly destroying our beloved country, Solomon Islands.

All of us know this in our heart, that it is not our desire that our beloved nation, Solomon Islands should be divided, weak, and utterly helpless. Moreover, when war and political instability – cruel, costly and interminable – stares us in the face, we will not shirk our responsibilities in stating the views we think serve Solomon best. 

In general, we do not think it will help the fight against Communism. We do not believe it will promote the welfare of the people of Solomon. On the contrary, we believe it will prolong and deepen the suffering of “the Hapi Isles,” that unhappy people, probably, the war was still popular, however, we would like to end it with these prophetic words, “When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace.”

Think about it.