Don't overplay the China factor. It doesn't take much to destabilise Pacific governments
the president of the Micronesian state of Kiribati, Taneti Maamau, lost his governing majority when 13 of hiss crossed the floor. The defectors claim they are unhappy that in September the atoll nation of 110,000 souls, spread over 3.5m km² of the south Pacific, severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan and initiated them with China instead. Something similar may be about to happen in the more populous Solomon Islands. Its government has also just switched allegiance to China.
Why such instability? Don’t overplay the China factor. Mr Maamau complains the defectors never even raised their grievances with him. In the Solomon Islands, China hardly featured in the election campaign earlier this year. That, of course, is one of the reasons pro-Taiwans are crying foul. But relations with China have not destabilised two governments in the region because they are a burning issue. It just does not take much to destabilise Pacific governments.
In many respects, the instability is unsurprising. The Solomon Islands was never quite the failed state that Australian politicians claimed whenwas set up. But it has always been a threadbare one, with weak institutions and feeble central authority. The country is extraordinarily diverse, with 70 languages spoken across a swathe of often thickly forested islands. Many of its 50 parliamentary constituencies are rural and remote.
Here, Kiribati is an outlier. First, it has a presidential rather than a parliamentary system. Moreover, if the president is removed from office by parliament, parliament is dissolved too. That will makeYet elsewhere democracy stumbles on. It helps that judiciaries are usually independent and the press unconstrained. Would-be authoritarians, Mr Sogavare among them, struggle to retain power in the face of the threat of defection and resistance to central authority.
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