Solomon PM blasts 'scourge of politics'

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While Australia struggles to form a government, the neighbouring Solomon Islands has patched-up a new one - albeit with practically every member of a ruling party in cabinet.

This week New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully arrived in Honiara just as the cabinet had been sworn in under the leadership of new Prime Minister Danny Philips.

In an odd scene the entire cabinet sat down on one side of the cabinet room to listen, intently, to Mr Philips spell out his problems.

"This is the scourge of politics in this country," he told reporters and members of Mr McCully's delegation sitting on the other side of the cabinet.

He rules with 26 MPs in the 50 member assembly, with one having died days after last week's elections.
Mr Philips lamented the fact that in his cabinet he has six to eight political groupings, all scrambling for power.

Until they have some kind of constitutional change, Mr Philips admitted he will wake up every day wondering whether he has support.

"It will be a very difficult exercise," he said.

Mr McCully is on a five day, three-country tour of the Pacific.

He is also going to Christmas Island in Kiribati, a remote, little-visited part of the Pacific where villages carry the names London, Paris, Poland and Banana.

New Zealand is looking to develop fishing on the atoll as a way to encourage people to leave the severely overcrowded Tarawa Atoll.

The Solomons was severely divided by ethnic tensions between 1998 and 2003 which only ended with an Australian led Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI) of military and police landing and effectively taking over.
Mr Philips said he did not want RAMSI to leave and denied it was denying the country of sovereignty and independence.

But he wanted it to be reformed so as to become "more relevant to the development aspirations of the Solomon Islands."

Mr Philips denied he was at odds with New Zealand and Australian policy towards Fiji.

He said he wanted to talk with coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama because the issue of the restoration of Fiji democracy was a family and cultural issue for the whole South Pacific.

"This is where we live," he said.

Mr McCully told the Solomons cabinet that New Zealand was content to continue supporting RAMSI and direct aid.

"We want to see the best decisions made are in the long term interests of the Solomon Islands."

- © Fairfax NZ News