THE BLAME GAME

A long time ago, at the Holy Cross Cathedral Community Hall in Honiara. A black belt karate instructor was demonstrating his martial arts prowess to his trainees. Like hitting bricks, fly kick, and stuff. Afterwards, on his way out, a group of men attacked him. They put him down, and throw him into the drain alongside the main road.

Holy Cross Cathedral Community Hall in Honiara, Solomon Islands

At that age perhaps, he was still naïve about what a sewer human nature can be. He had just join in a fight he knew no more about than we knew about the people who had come both to kill, and to save him.

Sound familiar, yaar?

Of course little we knew the atrocities our people are capable of in a street fight, you know. Those were the days, yaar, and here I am writing columns for Solomon Intel. Wheather you like it or not. I mean the man I was talking to was a security guard I simply took for granted, with a blind trust we reserved for our one talks, and in laws. That he knew far more than I did.

What he told me the black belt karate instructor was facing was that the mob sought to threw him to his death. In addition, the perps were man handed by their own one talks, who actually contented, and saved him, too.

This was years before the world knew of the 2021 civil unrest in Honiara, and before such atrocities and worse came to be common currency. However, this was the early 80s, and the pain of the man – the black belt karate instructor, was as real as my disbelief. He never forgot him, though in time I did forget the security guard's name.

Then, abruptly, 21 years later, his name sprung back into memory when Mathew Wale, the Leader of Opposition officiated, in Parliament, with a host of Honourable, the Motion of No Confidence against the Prime Minister on December 6, 2021.

Honorable Mathew Wale, Leader of Opposition in Parliament. December 6, 2021. 

By melancholy coincidence, we hear they buried Mathew Wale. That was two weeks ago, before the Sogavare Government’s formal announcement that took us all by deceit or connivance into civil apprehension, again. A travesty often time repeated years later, for instance, we were some of the gung-ho correspondents police allowed to roam Honiara that day, what an incident!

However, same as before, some of us knew what would happen since 7am that day. So, equipped with my sunglasses and button phone, I used to time lag at unity square space, in which, supposedly, all ships in the province had to clear from a defined area, and within which, therefore, anything and anyone found could be identified as “person of interest.”

For my troubles, the ships were eagle-eyed at about 7:30am. I also observed that police set up their outposts at 8:00am, which consisted of a tent, a table, and four chairs. They were located at the Commonwealth street, Ashley street, ACOM Headquater road, HCC premises, and Chung wa road opposite Mokolo building.

As if that was idiocy enough, I went to SIIPHRAA office and informed my CEO of the intended protest, and civil apprehension. Since we had one similar event earlier on, when we were celebrating the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9, 2021 – it was a misfire.

“It did not add up” Solomon Islands Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Advocacy Association (SIIPHRAA) CEO said. “Well, Parliament is in session.” I pass the time and listened to the radio. The Blame Game, this futile politic to save democracy, I wonder. What would Democritus said. A venerated Honourable Minister died a week ago. His colleagues remember him. “He was an extraordinary man, much loved.” He was without a doubt, a Government’s Minister.

God save the Sogavare Government from its friends. In retrospective or otherwise, for instance, six months ago, faced with an impossible political climate, the local council (HCC) in Honiara fiddled the books to disguise the fact that Honiara’s economy was even worse than most people thought. HCC could not pay its loans and so it went another $26 million into debt and did not tell anyone, least of all voters. Neither the Councillors, nor the DCGA government, perhaps.

What follows was even worse. In mid-June, the Finance Minister intended government borrowed the extra $100 Billion without the necessary authority of the National Parliament, and the other big brother Province officials set about trying to browbeat the DCGA government into putting matters right and telling the public.

For while Harry Kuma make it publicly known what DCGA government had been up to, nobody believe he did not tell his Prime Minister. The issue was too serious. And, it was serious, like what happened in west Rennell Mine – our Member Parliamentarian (MP) is now deep in the cack. So you would have to think is his Prime Minister. For example, two Shares in Bintan Mining Solomon Islands is held in trust by Whitlam K Togamae, as far as we know, and it had since kept its mouth shut about its financial shenanigans as a creature of the government in west Rennell.

Whitlam K Togamae, 2015.

Yet, the Premier and MP for Rennell and Bellona said nothing! They blame poor indigenous landowners! However much pressure Whitlam K Togamae was putting on the Tuha Government behind the scenes to correct its deception. In addition, Rennell and Bellona MP, the Minister of Mines, and the Prime Minister allowed Rennell and Bellona governments, over the years, to be wilfully misled.

That is the political reality, irrespective of any technical excuse the Treasury now offers. As the letters of credit obligations is very strict, as far as business is concerned, and in its handling of capital, and balance of payments.

The real stupidity is that Rennell and Bellona government was dead meat, anyhow. Now, they are again under political siege on the very issue of the Government’s greatest weakness; its credibility. So much for helping friends who urinate on you, a one talk said.

In 2017, when the DCCG government went down, for example, they drag Government Budget ever since. The Leader of the Independent and most probably the Leader of Opposition knowingly allowed the Government Budget in the last weeks of December to give a quite stagnant public accounting of DCGA’s debt as at third quarter, 2021; SBD $1,780 million, and increasing, exponentially.

Nevertheless, what matters today, is that Soga took a dead aim at opposition yesterday. He never took a backward step to those who match him, let alone posturing at his expense, and yesterday afternoon, very deliberately, he gave his colleague leader a physical thumping such as our prominent leader has not experienced publicly in his tenure in national political life.

The Prime Minister’s words was a rebuttal of PKJ remarks on big brother leadership and unity. In his entreaties in Parliament, and celebrations in the Western Province Second Appointed Day, he supposedly corroborated that a political leader’s true task is to interpret events and reality to a conscientious nation. It is not to wallow in cowardice, tyranny, and violence in the hope this might find some harmony with an old chord (the gist of the matter), then he rose to his full height and with power said, “I will defend democracy with my life!”

The press thought his advisors had put him up to it, but the advisors who came hurrying towards him had not even said anything close to that catchphrase. Even by Soga’s standard, it was a remarkable act. Old diggers, of course, had at best mixed feelings. Some mocked it; a few saw it for the solemn thing it was. Inevitably, Soga was quite unfazed by the seer crowd. He was confident the simple power of his gesture would long outlive the criticism…

It beats a drone of PKJ platitudes hands down.