In 2015 cyclone Pam devastated Vanuatu, with Tanna being one of the worst-hit islands. Women bore the brunt of the devastation, forcing them to seek out new ways to survive. A realisation began to dawn that it was time for them to stand up and speak for themselves. After numerous meetings with women groups, the first ever Tanna Women’s Forum was held in October 2015. Over 1,200 attended the meeting where women demanded change to a political system that held them down, tied them in poverty, and gave them no opportunity to speak out. It was a breakthrough moment as many of these women have lived under threat all of their lives.

The women put their heads together and agreed it was time someone took the lead. I was nominated. The women agreed that I would contest the next general election scheduled for late 2016. Just days later the government announced a snap election, effectively wiping out our time to put together an election campaign. We moved ahead anyway with membership numbers now standing at 3,700. We had much confidence that we would secure one of the seven seats in the Tanna open constituency.

With very little time to prepare, I took on the challenge with much confidence. That as a solid membership of women we could succeed, and that even if we failed to win a seat, we would learn valuable lessons from the snap election experience that would better prepare us for the next general elections in 2020. I had so much confidence. I wasn’t thinking of losing; our hopes based on the registration figures signed by women across the island.

Crossing controversial territory

The first obstacle was informing community leaders of our decision to field our own candidate – a woman. Working with a chief that I have close ties to, a community meeting was arranged whereby I would declare and launch my candidacy. No one uttered a word, except a female friend who stood up, and much to my surprise, said ‘I am not in support of women being electoral representatives in parliament, and I am also against the policy of reserving seats for women’. I took this understandably as coming from someone speaking from her heart, but it also confirmed that the notion that women ‘do not belong in parliament’ were not held by men alone.

With no financial backing (other than two small personal contributions totalling 15,000 vatu) I had to dig into my own pockets to fund the campaign. I must say the election process is very expensive, with transportation in Tanna costing 20,000 vatu per day. We hired six public transport vehicles for the campaign.

We managed to visit (and revisit in some cases) 19 communities, speaking with roughly 700 men and women. Our slogan was Hemi Taem! (It is time!).

Taking centre stage during the campaigns was the most challenging. The questions and comments raised by communities were not difficult to answer, but there were also tricky ones coming from those who perceived us to be defying kastom.

‘You have not killed a fly or an ant, how can you prove that you can work like men in parliament. You are nothing but a woman.’

‘Our custom and culture perfectly points out your place – which is to look after the children, and mine (male speaking) is to do the talking. Where is your respect for this kastom? Are you from Australia that you don’t know our kastom? Who has given you this right to contest?’

‘Maybe we can vote for you in the provincial council election, but not to parliament.’

‘Our fear right now is the domestic violence law; we do not want our women to take those laws into their own hands.’

‘We don’t want to vote for women, because we don’t want women to have the right over us men.’

‘We don’t want our women to vote for women. If they do, we will divorce them.’

In a lot of places, prior to our campaign meetings, there would be community meetings most held in the nakamal where ‘consensus’ was often reached for all community members to vote for a particular candidate. In some cases, I wasn’t allowed to go and campaign – even to speak to just the women. In one case, some women called me and said, ‘Mary, please don’t come to our community as you will not be allowed to speak here’.

Discrimination and the threat of violence

The campaign revealed that culture is a main contributor to the limitation of woman’s influence in politics. I’ve seen how a lot of people are reluctant to vote for a woman. We did not receive discrimination from men alone, but women also. The discrimination we received was more on emotional violence. Discrimination against women in the society was very obvious at the time of campaigning and we observed how discrimination was somewhat based on a woman’s age, her marital status, her level of education and economic status. And as such, a woman may not be considered to be valuable or worthwhile if she does not fit the collective representation of both men and women.

Personally, I was able to endure a male-dominated political campaign period, but stories of threats of violence experienced by some women have just been unbearable. There are many of such accounts, ones that I share with a sad heart. This is one woman’s account of the threat she received from her partner the night before the poll.

I was already in bed pretending I had fallen asleep for some hours, but my husband came up and woke me up. He held a knife to my throat and demanded that I tell him who I was going to vote for. I was so afraid, I did not speak. He told me to speak or else he would beat me. I started crying. I was short of breath and was shaking. I cried out, “please help me … someone listening outside, please help me!” But nobody came to my rescue because they were afraid of my husband. He pushed me down, punched me again on my stomach and head, and said he was giving me a chance to speak or else he would beat me up. He knew of my intention to support women in this election. I begged him to let go of my throat or I was going to die, and I promised him that I was going to vote for the candidate of his choosing.

Another woman also had a similar story.

I saw you talking with those women, but I have stated clearly stated my rules and you have to follow them. We are going to vote for a male candidate and not for any woman. If you fail my words and I find out the numbers at our polling station, I will make you pay for it.

Other women were reportedly threatened by their partners to show candidate photos after they had casted their votes to prove they voted for a particular candidate. In some polling station, men threatened to divorce or physically torture their wives if results showed a significant number of women’s votes from that particular polling station.

A way forward

Political parties, as we know, are the most important institutions affecting women’s political participation. Even though our group knew we could have more support (moral and financial) from political parties if we ran under one of them, we still made the hard choice of running as an independent candidate. We had a few reasons for this, with the main one being that bigger political parties filed their candidates in advance, leaving no space for women to contest under their ticket. Secondly, women still have a long way to learn about the processes and lobbying involved in politics.

In spite of the challenges women continue to face, I see a new generation of powerful women flourishing in Tanna. Women with a strong sense of identity and power. Through our journey, many have come to understand that participation in the electoral processes involves much more than just voting. It is time to exercise the democratic rights that have either been ignored or violated over the last 36 years. Through our journey in politics, many have come to appreciate that through political participation women can have the freedom to speak out for the first time in the island’s history, which they’ve done through campaigning, assembling, associating and participating.

I have seen the power of ordinary women who have stood up against injustices to say they are tired. I have seen the faces of those who shed tears because of so much ill-dealing and threatening within their homes and communities. We have started a journey where we will continue to celebrate the united power of women who have taken the first steps to uncovering the multiple forms of discrimination and injustices. We shall continue to seek the empowerment of women to a level where they can think and speak for themselves.

Recent history also shows that the level of representation has decreased alarmingly, with the total vote of winning candidates dropping to a low of 36 per cent in 2012. This figure rebounded slightly this year (41%) partly because fewer candidates ran. However, it still means more people voted for candidates who did not get elected than those who did.

Vanuatu election timeline 1979-2016

With the number of parties contesting the 2016 election (35) at an all time high, it is interesting to note that since independence a total of 33 political groupings (plus independents) have been represented in the national legislature. Of those, 19 have been represented in two or more parliaments. Previous analysis has shown remarkable similarities in the policy platforms of parties, especially those that formed as break away factions of the established independence-era parties.

Share of parliamentary seats

Democracy in Vanuatu is seemingly delivering a kind of micro federalisation. While this is reflective of the reality on the ground, it does not bode well for nation building and presents a significant challenge for parties to consolidate or grow their share of the popular vote. In the most recent election, only four parties secured over five per cent of the popular vote (i.e. total vote for all of their candidates) and most saw their vote share decline from the previous election. Some countries set a minimum threshold of five percent for a party to take a seat in parliament.

Share of popular vote

There seems to be widespread acceptance that the electoral roll is inaccurate and needs updating. The state of the roll means the turn out figures are unreliable. However, when we look at the number of votes cast compared to the last election, it is evident that voter numbers were down across the board.

Votes by constituency

Throughout the campaign we heard many candidates and voters alike discuss the need for political reform. There is a clear need to re-set the system to address the representation and stability issues, and to give the government of the day a mandate to get on with the task of governing the country. The challenge for the political actors is to connect with what the people want, while building a national debate about the development needs of the country – and then for the parties to respond to these needs.

In the meantime, the country awaits the parliamentary vote next week to find out who will be the next prime minister.

Vanuatu Prime Ministers 1980-2016

The audience and esteemed panel of adjudicators were impressed by the high standard of debate, especially considering participants only had one day to prepare for the grand final topic. Jonathan Guyant of Vanuatu was particularly persuasive, putting a personal face to the topic and what it means to be ‘successful’ in Melanesia. He was awarded Best Speaker for the grand final debate.

Below is the transcript of his presentation.

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The affirmative team quote Kofi Annan, and praise the effects globalisation may have on countries all around the world.

Now I could say I disagree – but don’t take my humble student word for this. Take this quote from the Nobel prize winning economist – yes an economist, we are talking about the economy here – and he states that ‘globalisation as it is, is not a force for good. People should govern markets – markets should not govern people. Globalisation and its drawbacks have led us to cross roads and it’s high time we changed direction’.

Distinguished guests, adjudicators, chairman, members of the opposing team, dear audience, a very good morning to you all. We would firstly like to thank PiPP for organising this debate competition. The motion for today’s final is that Melanesia must globalise to succeed.

My team and I find fault in this. We believe the Melanesian countries do not necessarily need to globalise in order to succeed.

do you wish to preserve the identity of your beloved Melanesia? Or do you want to be just another random face on the ever-expanding international body of this globalised world?

My name is Jonathan. I will define the key terms in the motion, introduce our team and the points we have come up with. I will also present our first point, concerning the economic setbacks that globalisation could bring to our Melanesian nations. Kali, our second speaker, will offer a rebuttal on the points given by the opposing side. She will look into the environmental impacts that accompany globalisation and will elaborate upon the fact that globalisation will be a threat to Melanesian culture and it’s custom. Aleesha, our third and final speaker will be the one to summarise all the points raised by our team and conclude our argumentation.

Jonathan Guyant presents his statement at the Grand Final of the 2015 Melanesian School Debate

Now let us take a closer look at the key terms in our motion. We feel that the affirmative team has overlooked these key terms in the motion; must, globalise and succeed. So starting with must. Must has a number of definitions, but the one that seems the most relevant to the motion, and most pertinent to us was the one stating that must describes an imperative need or duty that you are commanded to carry out. This would imply that globalisation is an imperative need or duty for Melanesia. But is it really?

Let us all reflect on Melanesia’s current status in different fields. Starting with the economy. We may refer to Melanesia’s economy as a ‘traditional economy’. This means that our countries suffer little from global financial crises’ that conversely greatly affect the wealthier globalised nations. Here in Vanuatu, 80% of the population live in rural areas. In the Solomon Islands, 78% live in rural areas. In Papua New Guinea the number goes up to 87%. And finally Fiji – yes Fiji – still has 47% of its population living in rural areas.

Ladies and gentlemen, this means that over half the population in Melanesia live in rural areas and rely on this traditional economy.

The next term is globalisation. The Financial Times define this as a process by which national and regional economies, societies and cultures have become integrated through the global network of trade, communication, immigration and transportation. This signifies that all of those things are facilitated though the opening of borders between countries. At first glance, one might think that it holds the answers to many of the worlds needs. But we would just like to clarify that the way you phrase a sentence can have different meaning and influence any given person’s opinion. What I mean by that is, opinions vary form one person to another, sometimes very drastically. It all depends on your perspective.

For instance, if you look at globalisation from the eyes of a money-crazed giant, trampling the forest beneath its feet, searching for ways to enrich itself at the expense of poorer countries, all the while totally disregarding their local culture and customs. Then of course you’ll jump on the globalisation bandwagon. What could the consequences possibly be? If you’re the giant that is.

What I’m trying to say is – globalisation is located in the giant superpowers of this world. The US, Western Europe and increasing emerging countries like China who are all main actors in this race to the bottom.

Consider what huge economic setbacks globalisation could bring to Melanesia. One of them is free trade. It’s supposed to eliminate unfair bias to newcomers and raise the economy in both developed and developing countries. But does it really do so?

Maybe for rich countries, just maybe. But not for us. Let us instead consider fair trade. When we open up markets without regulations our own key industries and businesses may suffer, for example sugar cane, copra or garment industries. Our livelihoods will suffer at the profit of a multi billion-dollar corporation. Also this lack of regulation leads to substandard working conditions and low pay. People, this happens when you cut costs at the expense of human rights.

The recent Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement and PACER-Plus are suppose to offer an opportunity to help Pacific countries benefit from enhanced regional trade and economic integration. But do they do this for Melanesia? They encourage competitiveness yes, but do not create a level playing field for the countries that are involved. These economic policies can also lead to labor migration. When there are fewer employment opportunities at home, people will move away in search of jobs. This decreases the labor force and can also lead to a brain drain of our young educated and talented people.

The third and final term that I will define is success. Once again, success can be defined in many ways. But success cannot be measured – you cannot rate success in any way shape or form. This term is defined by the Merriam Webster online dictionary as the correct or desired result of an attempt. Now see we disagree. Others may say that success is the absence of failure. Again we disagree. Today, my team and I want to win. If we loose will we have failed? I don’t know yet, because success is a feeling. Success is the love that you see in your family and friends eyes, and the love that you give back. Success is the smile on your lips as you shrug off the defeat. Success my dear friends is anything you want it to be, and is discarding Melanesian ways, customs and traditions the path to success? Do you think that in the future you will be able to buy success at the next KFC or Adidas store they open in town? Do you really want to sacrifice your Melanesian identify just for the sake of globalisation.

To conclude my team and I believe that Melanesia must not resort to globalisation. But ladies and gentleman, what do you think? Do you wish to preserve the identity of your beloved Melanesia? Or do you want to be just another random face on the ever-expanding international body of this globalised world.

Photo credit: National Geographic

While there appear to be far more democracies in the world than ever before, the CPJ’s executive director Joel Simon says there is a sinister new threat.

And this is in some respects more troublesome than the old style dictatorships. Simon describes this new scourge in a recent book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Press Freedom, as the ‘democratators’, those leaders who profess to be democratic but are actually subverting their mirage of open governance. As Simon says:

“What are these differences between dictators and democratators? Dictators rule by force. Democratators rule by manipulation. Dictators impose their will. Democratators govern with the support of the majority. Dictators do not claim to be democrats – at least credibly. Democratators always do. Dictators control information. Democratators manage it.”

Simon points out that democratators win elections yet while they may be free, they are not really fair, meaning they are decided by fraud.

He has a growing list of leaders that fit this label, including Latin American “populists” like Rafael Correa of Equador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, “European backsliders” like Viktor Orban of Hungary and Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed former president of Ukraine, and African leaders such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

Also high on Simon’s list of media threats is the way terrorism has impacted on how big media groups currently go about their global news-gathering. Conscious of the ever-present threat of ritualised kidnappings and bombings, journalists are sometimes forced to report from bunkers and are less enthusiastic about meeting uncertain sources in case they might be abducted.

Even the appearance of journalists sometimes makes them look like an extension of the military – with helmets, flak jackets and camouflage fatigues. This accentuates their targeting by fundamentalist groups who regard them as an extension of the ‘state’.

China is the elephant in the room when it comes to freedom of information. While China’s leaders embrace the internet, they believe they can, and ought to, control the web. It is clear that China has the technological means and resources to make internet control a reality.

Chinese authorities use monitoring and filtering to keep a lid on the cyberspace “conversation” to prevent repercussions.

United States responses to the Wikileaks scandal in 2013 and the massive surveillance revelations by Edward Snowden encouraged allegations of hypocrisy from critics pointing out that Washington’s commitment to internet freedom dragged when its own geopolitical interests appeared threatened.

Earlier this month, I had the good fortune to be in Brussels as one of the people giving feedback at a stakeholders meeting for a massive European Union-funded research project on the media reporting on six major violent conflicts around the world, including the Syrian civil war and conflict in Burundi.

While there I happened to pick up a new “Euro” style newspaper called Politico, which steered me to a remarkable media development in Spain with the headline “He brings news of the future”

“Who was he?” asks the subeditor in me when it was always drummed into us to have a name in the headline. (The online version changed the headline).

This was the story of Pedro J. Ramírez, one of the leading editors in Spain, who had been in charge of El Mundo for 24 years. But he was sacked by his newspaper’s owners.

Why? Because under his leadership, El Mundo pursued a robust investigation into corruption implicating the governing Popular Party and the Prime Minister [Mariano Rajoy].

When he was fired, Ramírez used his massive €5.6 million pay-out to help fund a new online newspaper, El Español. His pay-out plus record-breaking crowdfunding doubled what had been previously raised by a new Dutch publishing venture, De Correspondent.

Another interesting success story has been in France, where investigative journalist Edwy Plenel, famous for his Rainbow Warrior bombing investigation in 1985 for Le Monde, founded Mediapart.

He has assembled a team of some 60 journalists and his fearless brand of investigative journalism is shaking up the establishment.

Even in New Zealand, where the mediascape is fairly dire with hundreds of jobs cut in recent years—and a loss of 180 jobs in a recent shake-up at Fairfax New Zealand, the country’s biggest news publisher, there are stunningly innovative things happening.

The main independent New Zealand media group Scoop Media – and we at AUT’s Pacific Media Centre have a partnership project with them, Pacific Scoop – has launched a new crowdfunding business model and established a Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism. The inititiative by Selwyn Manning in launching Evening Report web portal has also been significant.

This brings me to the achievements of the University of the South Pacific and its talented new crop of graduates. Close to 200 USP journalism graduates are now contributing to the Fiji and the Pacific region’s media and related careers.

Through its long-standing award-winning newspaper Wansolwara – now 19 years old, surely a remarkable accomplishment for any journalism school in the Australasian and Pacific arena, the student journalists have played an important role in independent, engaging and truth-seeking journalism.

Personally, I shall always remember with pride my experiences with USP and Wansolwara over the five years I was with the campus – the longest by far of any expatriate educator. Wansolwara was founded by student editor Stan Simpson and lecturer Philip Cass. And Pat Craddock of the USP Media Centre was another key person in building up the programme.

One of the highlights for me was the reporting of the George Speight coup in May 2000 by the courageous USP students. They won many awards for this.

It was thanks to the groundwork and experience that I gained at both USP and previously UPNG as a journalist turned academic that I was able to go to the next level at the Pacific Media Centre.

There I have been able to blend some of the best elements of academic media studies and practical journalism that makes a difference.

A tribute too to Dr Shailendra Singh and his team, Irene Manarae, Eliki Drugunalevu and Dr Olivier Jutel. Shailen was recently the first home-grown academic at USP to gain a PhD in journalism at the University of Queensland with the first major survey of the Fiji mediascape for more than a decade. Congratulations Shailen for a very fine thesis!

My concluding message to graduating student journalists is that no matter what government, political or industry pressure you face, you should hold on strongly to your core values of truth, accuracy, honesty and courage in the public interest.

Our communities deserve the best from their media in these deceitful times. University media are among the few that can still be trusted and they should do their best to contribute to democracy with integrity.

So go for it and change the world to the way it should be!

Caption: Pacific media cover a Pacific Island Forum summit in Vanuatu, 2010. Photo: Ben Bohane/wakaphotos.com

Thus it is also an honour to be sharing the event with Monsieur Michel Djokovic, the Ambassador of France, given how important French aid has been for this programme.

France and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Lille (ESJ) played a critically important role in helping establish the journalism degree programme at USP in 1994, with the French government funding the inaugural senior lecturer, François Turmel, and providing a substantial media resources grant to lay the foundations.

I arrived in Fiji four years later in 1998 as Head of Journalism from Papua New Guinea and what a pleasure it was working with the French Embassy on a number of journalism projects at that time, including an annual scholarship to France for journalism excellence.

These USP awards this year take place during challenging times for the media industry with fundamental questions confronting us as journalism educators about what careers we are actually educating journalists for.

When I embarked on a journalism career in the 1960s, the future was clear-cut and one tended to specialise in print, radio or television. I had a fairly heady early career being the editor at the age of 24 of an Australian national weekly newspaper, the Sunday Observer, owned by an idealistic billionaire, and we were campaigning against the Vietnam War.

Our chief foreign correspondent then was a famous journalist, Wilfred Burchett, who at the end of the Second World War 70 years ago reported on the Hiroshima nuclear bombing as a “warning to the world”.

By 1970, I was chief subeditor of the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, the best newspaper I ever worked on and where I learned much about human rights and social justice, which has shaped my journalism and education values ever since.

I travelled overland for a year across Africa as a freelance journalist, working for agencies such as Gemini, and crossed the Sahara Desert in a Kombi van. It was critically risky even then, but doubly dangerous today.

Eventually I ended up with Agence France-Presse as an editor in Paris and worked there for several years. In fact, it was while working with AFP in Europe that I took a “back door” interest in the Pacific and that’s where my career took another trajectory when I joined the Auckland Star and became foreign news editor.

The point of me giving you some brief moments of my career in a nutshell is to stress how portable journalism was as a career in my time. But now it is a huge challenge for you young graduates going out into the marketplace.

You don’t even know whether you’re going to be called a “journalist”, or a “content provider” or a “curator” of news – or something beyond being a “news aggregator” – such is the pace of change with the digital revolution. And the loss of jobs in the media industry continues at a relentless pace.
Fortunately, in Fiji, the global industry rationalisations and pressures haven’t quite hit home locally yet. However, on the other hand you have very real immediate concerns with the Media Industry Development Decree and the “chilling’ impact that it has on the media regardless of the glossy mirage the government spin doctors like to put on it.

We had a very talented young student journalist here in Fiji a few weeks ago, Niklas Pedersen, from Denmark, on internship with local media, thanks to USP and Republika’s support. He remarked about his experience:

“I have previously tried to do stories in Denmark and New Zealand – two countries that are both in the top 10 on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, so I was a bit nervous before travelling to a country that is number 93 and doing stories there ….

“Fiji proved just as big a challenge as I had expected. The first day I reported for duty … I tried to pitch a lot of my story ideas, but almost all of them got shut down with the explanation that it was impossible to get a comment from the government on the issue.

“And therefore the story was never going to be able to get published.

“At first this stunned me, but I soon understood that it was just another challenge faced daily by Fiji journalists.”

This was a nice piece of storytelling on climate change on an issue that barely got covered in New Zealand legacy media.

Australia and New Zealand shouldn’t get too smug about media freedom in relation to Fiji, especially with Australia sliding down the world rankings over asylum seekers for example.

New Zealand also shouldn’t get carried away over its own media freedom situation. Three court cases this year demonstrate the health of the media and freedom of information in this digital era is in a bad way.

• Investigative journalist Jon Stephenson this month finally won undisclosed damages from the NZ Defence Ministry for defamation after trying to gag him over an article he wrote for Metro magazine which implicated the SAS in the US torture rendition regime in Afghanistan.

• Law professor Jane Kelsey at the University of Auckland filed a lawsuit against Trade Minister Tim Groser over secrecy about the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (the judgment ruled the minister had disregarded the law);

• Investigative journalist Nicky Hager and author of Dirty Politics sought a judicial review after police raided his home last October, seizing documents, computers and other materials. Hager is known in the Pacific for his revelations about NZ spying on its neighbours.

Also, the New Zealand legacy media has consistently failed to report well on two of the biggest issues of our times in the Pacific – climate change and the fate of West Papua.

One of the ironies of the digital revolution is that there is an illusion of growing freedom of expression and information in the world, when in fact the reverse is true.

These are bleak times with growing numbers of journalists being murdered with impunity, from the Philippines to Somalia and Syria.

The world’s worst mass killing of journalists was the so-called Maguindanao, or Ampatuan massacre (named after the town whose dynastic family ordered the killings), when 32 journalists were brutally murdered in the Philippines in November 2009.

But increasingly savage slayings of media workers in the name of terrorism are becoming the norm, such as the outrageous attack on Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January. Two masked gunmen assassinated 12 media workers – including five of France’s most talented cartoonists – at the satirical magazine and a responding policeman.

In early August this year, five masked jihadists armed with machetes entered the Dhaka home of a secularist blogger in Bangladesh and hacked off his head and hands while his wife was forced into a nearby room.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in figures released this year, 506 journalists were killed in the decade between 2002 and 2012, almost double the 390 slain in the previous decade. (Both Reporters Sans Frontières and Freedom House have also reported escalating death tolls and declines in media freedom.)

(To be continued next week…)

Caption: French Ambassador Michel Djokovic (third from left), Head of USP Journalism Dr Shailendra Singh (fourth from left) and Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie (fifth from right) with the prizewinners at the University of the South Pacific journalism awards. Image: Lowen Sei/USP

We want to hear what people across the Pacific think about these new goals. This short survey explains the new goals and gives people across the Pacific the chance to rate their relevance and help track progress. The more we know about the goals, the more we can hold our leaders to account to implement them.

Your response will remain anonymous and will help assess where Pacific countries and territories currently stand in relation to the goals, and provide feedback to our leaders and policy makers as progress is made – or not as the case may be.

We aim to keep the survey running (online and offline) over the next couple of years and will periodically report on results. These reports will be made public and shared with national governments and regional organisations.

This survey is an initiative of the Pacific Institute of Public Policy in association with RMIT University, and has been approved by the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee. More information about the survey is available in the Participant Information Sheet.

If you are 16 years or older, from a Pacific country or territory, and happy to participate you can have your say by starting the survey here.

Many of the worlds great leaders know the value of debating and reasoned argument. The Pacific too is a natural home to debate, given its strong oral tradition. Chiefs are often chosen on their ability to speak eloquently and balance opposing arguments in any village discussion. But it has only been recently that formal debating has begun in Pacific schools. We now have a Melanesian Cup debating competition for the high schools across Melanesia and it is hoped that in coming years Polynesia and Micronesia will join so that we can create a truly region-wide Pacific debating competition.

The Pacific Institute of Public Policy (PiPP) has long advocated for informed and inclusive debate on key regional policy issues. Over the years it has provided various platforms for debate and the exchange of ideas. To this aim, we have worked tirelessly and passionately with policymakers, academics, regional experts, university students and the general public to identify home grown solutions to our development challenges.

I have been following the Vanuatu schools debate competition, the country’s national debate rounds ahead of the annual Melanesian Cup which will be a showdown of the best speakers in Melanesia.

The debate series has seen an intriguing display of potential leadership talent.

George Worworbu, a debater in the 2014 Melanesian school debate competition in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, wants to be a diplomat when he grows up. He says: “I have gained so much confidence. It has changed my life”

As the school debate series unfolded across Melanesia, it was clear that exposing students to academic debates at an early stage does train them to ‘think on their feet.’ In a region with much discontent for the current status quo, national education curriculums in Pacific island countries would do well to actively promote debatting to toughen the oral and analytical skills of emerging leadership and encourage critical thinking.

A future Prime Minister of Solomon Islands? Denmark Pahu makes his mark in the Melanesian competition after winning the overall Best Speaker award.

For the second year running, PiPP is hosting the Vanuatu Schools Debate Competition. Despite disruptions from cyclone Pam, twenty secondary schools from the SHEFA and SANMA province were registered for this years competition. Students’ performance this year has significantly improved due partly to workshops with teachers around the basics of debating, debate rules, structure and importantly the dissection of the judging criteria. Now equipped with sound understanding of the debate process, teachers have the foundations to initiate debate competitions within their own schools.

Debate is defined as a method of formally presenting an argument in a disciplined or formal manner. There are different debate styles, which include Parliamentary debates involving legislatures; debates between candidates of high office such as the U.S presidential debates and then there are competitive debates, which is the type of debate that is used to train and educate young people.

Debating can be traced back to the philosophical debates of ancient Greece including Protagorus, the ‘father of debate.’ Modern forms of debating and the establishment of debating societies occurred in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18^th century, which saw a culture of debating emerge in London society and the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Public debates were a popular form of entertainment in an age before television and radio.  The first student debating society was the St Andrews Debating Society, formed in 1794. The oldest and continually operating debating society in the world is the Cambridge Union Society. Founded in 1815, it is the largest alliance at the University of Cambridge and has served as a model for subsequent debating unions around the world.

Debates around public policy goes back even further with records of debating even 1,500 years ago in places like Tibet amongst Buddhist monks and in China, where it was known as ‘Pure Talk’, described here:

“[T]here rang out a great chorus of debate. They threaded their way through yin and yang, with literary embellishments sprouting in every direction. Rather than quote from the sages and ancient records, they concentrated on bringing to light the natural order of things. Tzu-ch’un and all the assembled scholars joined the attack, the points and retorts thrusted back and forth like spears. But Lu answered each and every assault with a reply that was more than adequate. They continued the entire day, until dusk fell, without even pausing for food and drink.”

Playing the ‘Devils Advocate’ in debate reinforces one’s own beliefs after being given the chance to question and defend them. The term, which is derived from an official position of the Catholic church whereby a ‘lawyer’ called the Devils Advocate argues against the ‘sainthood’ of a candidate to unearth any character flaws, is now used to refer to a process of testing the quality of an argument to identify any weaknesses in its structure.

In the Pacific, formal debating is a new thing. One of the challenges is that in some Pacific cultures not everyone can debate freely. Although there is a long tradition of free speech, women often find it hard to have their voices heard. Debating can break down traditional barriers to civic engagement. Through a gender lens, debating can be particularly rewarding for young women where in many communities, women rarely speak out. Debating provides a platform for young women to express themselves articulately and with confidence. Kyla Niras, a ni-Vanuatu female participant in last year’s Melanesian competition, says: “People listened intently when I was talking. It felt like my opinion does matter.”

According to Bloom’s taxonomy (a classification of tiers of learning created by Educational psychologist, Doctor Benjamin Bloom), debate develops the ‘higher-order psychological functions’ for the reason that it requires participants to evaluate opposing choices and so it trains participants on how to think. Passive learning on the other hand, is considered a ‘lower order of thinking’ because it dictates what to think. Essentially, Pacific educators should be ensuring a balance in the immediate objective of knowledge acquisition with the long-term goal of training the mind to think logically and creatively.

Students of Visale school in Solomon Islands during a group discussion / Marisa Pepa

Debating also develops confident, but respectful individuals. Academic research reveals that debaters tend not to be argumentative in real-life, but are tolerant of other peoples’ views. Good leaders allow for consultation and debate among their people, which can lead to consensus decision-making which is at the heart of Pacific culture.

PiPP Director of Communications, Ben Bohane, sums it up saying:

“PiPP is proud to support this important initiative which encourages our school students to develop critical thinking, public speaking and research skills, plus build the confidence of students to creatively structure persuasive arguments on any topic. These are really important skills for life and help us to create an atmosphere of tolerance for other people’s views and opinions in society. Now that we’ve established the Melanesian Cup lets hope a similar competition gets established for schools in Micronesia and Polynesia.”

Four teams from Efate battled it out on stage with compelling arguments for and against the set topic. The schools participating included Vila North, Ecole Francaise, Centreville, NTM and Central School. The first motion debated was “That kava bars should be banned from urban residential areas”, while the second debate topic was “That government has a responsibility to create jobs for unemployed youth in Vanuatu.”

Ecole Francaise won its round on the first topic while Vila North won the second and NTM won its place in the next round due to forfeiture since its opposing team couldn’t show up.

This is the second year of the national debating competition, whose ultimate winners will then go on to represent Vanuatu in the Melanesian Cup. Last year a mixture of outstanding speakers from various schools represented Vanuatu at the regional competition held in PNG, where the PNG team ended up winning the Melanesian Cup for 2014.

The debate competition is an initiative by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy (PiPP) in co-operation with the Ministry of Education and Training.

PiPP’s Communications Director Ben Bohane, who chaired the first debates, said:

“PiPP is proud to support this important initiative which encourages our school students to develop critical thinking, public speaking and research skills, plus build the confidence of students to creatively structure persuasive arguments on any topic. These are really important skills for life and help us to create an atmosphere of tolerance for other people’s views and opinions in society.”

He thanked Mr John Niroa, representing the Director of Education services for their partnership, Wan Smol Bag and all the teachers and students who worked hard to make the debates exciting and informative.

Mr Niroa said “On behalf of the Ministry of Education I want to thank PiPP and the schools involved for creating this great competition which will give our students so many skills. I was very impressed with the students performances today and our Ministry will continue to support this program into the future”.

The next round for Efate schools happens next Thursday, 23 July, from 9am – 12am at the Wan Smol Bag theatre. The debates are open to the public and the finals and semi-finals will be aired live on radio.

Next week schools on Santo will also begin their first rounds. The final winners of the Santo and Efate competitions will face each other in the grand final. Unfortunately, schools on Tanna which were going to be part of the competition this year have had to withdraw due to cyclone Pam damage and disruption.

To prepare teachers new to the activity, PiPP hosted workshops in Luganville and Port Vila in late May. The workshops aimed to provide teachers with the skills to develop an ongoing internal debate competition within their schools. Teachers came together to learn the basics of debating, understanding the individual roles, debate rules, structure and importantly the dissection of the judging criteria.

The workshops came together with a final mock debate between teachers, who scrutinized the 2014 Semi Final motion that “Tertiary Scholarships are the best way to provide employment opportunities for youth in Vanuatu.” The process was a success one, allowing teachers to put into practice the theories and rules that had been discussed the previous day, and provide insight into the challenges but also great rewards of debating.

Now equipped with sound understanding of debate process, teachers have the foundations to initiate debate competitions within their school, providing increased opportunity for student engagement. It will allow teachers to design their own motions for a debate, which could be based on themes they are studying already, or current issues that arise in the community or national news.

Through the debating process, students will be pushed to think critically about issues presented to them, using research and evidence to support their arguments. The skills learned can assist them in many future situations, including simple conflict resolution in the home, through to analysis and understanding of problems at a community or even national level.

Schools will select their best and brightest to compete against other school teams, to debate topics around education, employment, the environment and natural disasters as well as independence.

Caption: Gavika Viduka from Ecole Centreville arguing his case in support of the motion: ‘The government has a responsibility to create jobs for unemployed youth in Vanuatu’

He has a team of 17 candidates, himself included, and standing for all 17 seats reserved for ‘People’s Representation’ through his political party called the Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands.

This is the second election under the newly reformed system of government that was launched in 2010 as a “more democratic” system.

The multi-awarded political leader, most known for his tireless effort to make Tonga more democratic in the past 30 years, might just be Tonga’s next Prime Minister.

He would become the first Prime Minister to be elected by the people. The current Prime Minister, Lord Tu’ivakanō is a nobles’ representative. He was elected by 33 of the country’s nobles, and is one of 9 nobles in Parliament. He was not elected by the people.

Even though the 2010 election was more democratic in the sense that all members of Parliament were elected either as people’s representatives or nobles’ representatives, there is yet to be a Prime Minister selected by Parliament who is elected by the people as a people’s representative.

Pohiva’s party claim that if they have the majority to form a government, and Pohiva becomes the prime minister, it would be the first “government of the people” in Tonga’s history.

Pohiva is Tonga’s longest serving Parliamentarian. But his political genius is more suitably demonstrated by his ability to build a resilient peoples movement and has won unrelenting support among the people of Tonga.

He had the largest number of people’s representatives elected in 2010, 12 out of the 17 seats for People’s Representation.

The problem he faced in 2010 which prevented him from forming a government was the 9-noble seats in parliament that are not elected by the people. They are the 9 representatives elected by the 33 nobles, while over 40,000 voters out of Tonga’s 108,000 populations elect 17 seats.

The five representatives who were not part of Pohiva’s team crossed the floor to join the 9 nobles, and thus had the majority to elect the prime minister and form government.

This failure to get the majority to form a government in 2010 was viewed generally as a major setback for the pro-democracy movement. Pohiva and his group, instead of being “the government of the people”, have continued to be in opposition for the past four years.

Pohiva is determined not to have a repeat of the 2010 fiasco. He has never been in government (except for a brief 2-week stint as Minister of Health in 2011), and he has been in opposition far too long. That is why he has assembled a 17-member team whereby each one stands as a candidate for each of the 17 electoral districts. They have been meeting regularly since May to formulate their policy vision, mission and manifesto.

No other party in Tonga has been able to organize and declare their candidates so early. They are also the only ones that have fielded candidates for all the districts of Tonga.

As Tonga faces its parliamentary election in coming days, Pohiva and his team, according to the political pundits, are the front-runners. That means that if all 17 candidates of Pohiva’s team are elected, the pro-democracy party will definitely form the next government. In fact, all Pohiva needs to have a majority is for 14 of his candidates to win. That will give them the majority to elect the prime minister and form Tonga’s next government.

There are 106 candidates registered and vying for the 17 people’s representatives’ seats. The 26-seat parliament also has the 9 seats assigned for nobles, and they are in a sense “a party.”

There were 145 candidates in the inaugural democratic election of 2010. The decline in numbers this year, according to political observers, is due largely to a loss of hope by many because they really did not see much difference in the post-reform government, compared to that before the 2010 reform.

Pohiva and his team have promised to “complete the reform” that started in 2010. By this they mean the 2010 reform was not completed, as they want everyone in Tonga’s parliament to be “elected by the people”. They also want everyone in cabinet, including the prime minister to be elected by the people. One of the key changes they are pushing for is the election of noble seats by the people, if parliament continues to retain specially assigned seats for noble representation.

16 of the 106 candidates for this year are women. This is the largest number of women to stand in any election in Tonga’s history. But only one of those is a candidate for the pro-democracy party: Sipola Havili Halafihi, who is a high school teacher from Tongatapu district 7. Recent polling reveals her as the frontrunner in her electorate.

With just several days before the election, Pohiva’s party looks set to form the next government. They could win all of Tongatapu’s ten seats, the two seats from Ha’apai, and also one each from ‘Eua and Niua. That makes up 14 seats, and that is a majority.

According to the unofficial polling, only the 3 seats from the northern islands of Vava’u are still very close to call. If these are won by the pro-democracy party, that would be a landslide overall, as Pohiva and his party would have won all the 17 seats for people’s representatives.

But there are some who seriously doubt this will happen. Despite Pohiva’s popularity, there are those who are opposed to his hardline democratic stance, as well as his insistence that corruption must be stamped out of government.

There are traditional leaders and prominent members of Tonga’s elite who fear that Pohiva’s reforms could bring too much change to Tonga, while those at the top stand to be the biggest losers.

But Pohiva’s message and movement appeal to the common people, especially to those who believe as he does, that good governance is the one hope that will lift Tonga in relation to economic and social development.

“Lack of natural resources is not an issue for Tonga; lack of good governance is,” claims Pohiva.

He pledges to be a ‘government of the people’ that will place good governance as the highest priority, along with transparency, accountability, and a firm stand against all forms of corruption.