Pacific: no return to Oz?

The remote island of Niue: ‘the Rock of Polynesia’ – will play host from Tuesday to the annual Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) summit. In a repeat of last year, the issue of Fiji will dominate, amid inevitable claims of Australian and New Zealand meddling. New Zealand has agreed to lift a travel ban on Fijian coup leader and interim Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama in order that he can attend the summit, and he will encounter criticism (mostly from Canberra and Wellington) over his democratic credentials.

At the last summit, Bainimarama promised fresh elections in March 2009, but in June he announced delays to the schedule – due, he claimed, to a need for revision of the electoral system. He also withdrew from a Joint Working Group on the return to democracy in his country.

The issue is one of a number in which Australia and New Zealand, the grouping’s politically and economically dominant members, find themselves pitted against the smaller members of the sixteen-state body. Their diplomatic efforts to restore democracy in Fiji were undercut by efforts from the chair by Tonga -- itself only slowly coming to terms with constitutionalism. August 14 saw the funeral of former PIF Secretary-General Greg Urwin, an Australian who ran the organization from 2003 until he stood aside on health grounds last year, and the race is on this year to succeed him – with several candidates running on a slate of avoiding domination from the antipodes. In spite of attempts by new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to promote a more harmonious Pacific policy, the PIF leadership race could re-open old wounds.