Doug Lorimer
In a September 18 national radio address — six days after ordering the expulsion of Australian high commissioner Patrick Cole — Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare accused Canberra of using aid and the presence of Australian troops "as leverage to dictate Australia's involvement" in determining his government's policies.
On September 12, Australian PM John Howard threatened to cut his government's aid budget to the Solomons. The next day, Canberra suspended multiple-entry visa arrangements for Solomons MPs as punishment for Cole's expulsion. Sogavare described this measure as "bullying and harsh".
Under the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), set up ostensibly to root out corruption and maintain "law and order", the only armed forces in the Solomons are some 200 Australian soldiers and 300 Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers.
The Royal Solomon Islands Police (RSIP) is under the AFP's command. Australian magistrates and prosecutors run the Solomons' court system and Australian bureaucrats dominate key government departments.
The results of the RAMSI-"guided" economic policies were summed up by Anglican Bishop Terry Brown in an article in the January 18 Solomon Star as "increasing poverty and unemployment, high school fees, a downward-spiralling economy, higher inflation and lower incomes, declining medical services, ongoing corruption in government ministries, lack of planning and implementation of how Solomon Islanders will competently run all parts of their own government, crumbling infrastructure, millions and millions of RAMSI funds spent on Australians with the money going back to Australia with minimum cash benefit for Solomon Islanders, continued centralizing of everything in Honiara, etc".
Canberra is providing A$85 million a year in "development aid" to the Solomons. Sogavare thanked " Australian taxpayers for their assistance", but pointed out that most of this aid money goes to pay the "extravagant" salaries of RAMSI's Australian bureaucrats and aid workers.
The Solomons parliament agreed to the colonial-style RAMSI operation in July 2003 after Canberra cut off all aid to the impoverished nation in 2002. During the parliamentary debate on the bill approving the RAMSI intervention, Sogavare had warned that it would "be nothing short of recolonising this country".
Cole was ordered to leave the country after he publicly agitated against a plan by Sogavare's government to set up an independent judicial inquiry into riots that occurred in Honiara on April 18-19. The riots followed the election by the parliament of Snyder Rini as PM.
Rini had been deputy PM in a government that had decisively lost the April 5 general elections. In the days before the April 18 vote, opposition MPs and their supporters accused Rini of buying MPs' votes with money provided by the country's ethnic Chinese business elite headed by Sir Thomas Chan, the president of Rini's party,
The April 30 Sydney Morning Herald revealed that Cole had been holding discussions with Chan to have someone other than Rini selected as the new Solomons PM. The SMH reported that another Australian official in Honiara had written on April 17 to a colleague in Canberra: "Cole said he had talked to Tommy and [his son] Laurie Chan as to why Rini had been selected given that they had given him assurances that he wouldn't be ... Looks like Tommy Chan's main business interest is in getting a second casino licence and he can no doubt depend on Rini for that."
Within 48 hours of the riots, Australia dispatched several hundred heavily armed troops to Honiara to protect Rini and his big-business backers. The armed AFP presence in Honiara was also boosted, from 282 to 350 officers.
Rini was forced to resign on April 27 after Sogavare and five other MPs from his Social Credit Party defected from the government coalition to the opposition.
After being elected PM on May 4, Sogavare told journalists he was concerned about RAMSI officials controlling the prime minister's office, as well as the finance ministry and the RSIP.
Shortly after the April riots, two opposition MPs were arrested by the AFP-commanded RSIP for allegedly instigating the riots. The two MPs were denied bail in the Honiara Magistrates Court by RAMSI-appointed Australian magistrate Keith Boothman on the recommendation of RAMSI-appointed Solomons director of public prosecutions John Cauchi, also an Australian.
In the week after Howard made his aid-cutoff threat, the Australian corporate media has claimed that Sogavare was involved in instigating the April riots. The only "evidence" for this is a "leaked" June 19 cabinet submission in which Sogavare noted that one proposed set of references for the judicial inquiry into the April riots "seeks ultimately to halt the investigation conducted by the [AFP-controlled] police on the cases of our two detained colleagues" and to have them dealt with by an independent judicial inquiry.
Given Cole's and his Canberra masters' involvement in the corrupt political machinations that led to the April riots, it is unsurprising Sogavare has little confidence in impartiality of the RAMSI-controlled police investigation of the two charged MPs.