On the eve of Vanuatu’s 32nd celebration of Independence it is well worth re-visiting the moving words of the inaugural Independence Address to Vanuatu by the nation’s first prime minister, the late Father Walter Lini.
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TODAY we have reached a moment for which many of us have worked hard and prayed continuously for the last 10 years. And it was with very strong personal emotions – some 12 hours ago, just after midnight, that I became Prime Minster. Our road to independence has sometimes been exalting and at others it has been depressing. More recently it has been deeply tragic. But today we have arrived and today we shall start to travel along a different road which will be infinitely longer and very much harder. From today we are responsible ourselves for making the decisions which will influence the pattern of our lives and those of future generations of Ni-Vanuatu.
Therefore, although this is a natural time for joyous celebration it is also a time for sober reflection. Today we join an international community which is wracked by tension – we join that community as one of its smallest members. Although we shall have a voice in the councils of world institutions it will be a very small voice.
In any event, for many years to come we shall be fully occupied, here at home, kin building our own nation and improving living conditions within our own frontiers. However, within the Pacific region we shall not be strangers to the existing institutions and we shall not by any means be the smallest Pacific island state. Internationally and beyond the Pacific we hope to build on our special relationship with France and Britain.
That relationship changes, of course, today but its continuing substance will place us in a select group of communities with Anglo-French links. I am thinking especially of the other island states of Mauritius and the Seychelles but also of Canada and Cameroon. We hope that Vanuatu will be able to play a useful role in cementing relations between the French-speaking and English- speaking Pacific island states and territories.
There are may visitors here today from other countries far and near and they all could, I am sure, testify to the fact that there is no such thing as an “independent” state” “independent” that is, in the sense given in the dictionary. Indeed, all the countries of the world are becoming less and less independent in that sense.
Both financially and economically we can expect to be less independent than many states: we shall, for many years to come, depend on external aid not just for our capital or development needs but also for our ordinary government services such as education, health and so on. In order, therefore, to be politically independent we shall depend on the goodwill and generosity of foreign aid donors – especially on Britain and France.
We are entitled to hope that we shall be able to exercise freedom of choice – in other words, independence – in ways in which we provide public services and change our society as we develop. At the same time we have to face the fact that there may be external pressures on us both from large companies and foreign governments to conform to their ideas rather than our own where the two differ. This itself will be a test of our determination and ability as well as a test of their generosity of spirit and the result of goodwill, of course, be a greater or lesser degree of independence for Vanuatu.
In this and other tests we shall need guidance not only from God but from our own custom and traditional values. We are moving into a period of rapid change rather like a canoe entering a patch of rough water : God and custom must be the sail and the steering-paddle of our canoe.
It will be the responsibility of successive parliaments and government as well as the chiefs to preserve our custom but not to preserve it blindly and without reference to change. For custom has always changes will be for us to decide together : for all of us, for the government, for your elected represent representatives in parliament and for the chiefs.
Just before I finish I should like to say something about national unity. Our new republic will need the energy and the ability of each of its citizens in the tasks of nation- building and national development.
Indeed, for many years we shall need to import skills and expertise. We cannot and we must not waste our talents in internal quarrelling. The spirit of unity – like the trees which many of you planted as symbols last week – can only grow if it is nourished. The trees need water and the spirit of unity needs to be nurtured in our minds.
If we all want unity and harmony in Vanuatu we shall achieve it.
But we must work for it and I give you all my solemn assurance today that it will be the principal aim of the government which I lead. Some people are worried about the future: they want guarantees, assurances and safeguards. To these people I say that their guarantees, their assurances and the safeguards are contained in the Constitution. Wholehearted acceptance of the Constitution and the loyal and effective participation in the development of Vanuatu is everybody’s guarantee for the future.
The future of Vanuatu is bright, and its is important that we should be allowed to develop in the Melanesian way on our own.
As a nation we put our colonial past behind us an step confidently into a new future.
We will go beyond pandemonium to the independence of a free Pacific Islands territory, and look forward to taking our place among the nations of the world.
Fr Walter Lini
Port Vila, July 1980
