Voters head to the polls with Beijing’s influence in focus
HONIARA: Solomon Islanders in shanty towns and far-flung islands voted yesterday in an election that will decide whether their nation draws closer to China — with consequences for the entire South Pacific.
In t he capital Honiara, voters tramped through a muddy parking lot to cast their ballots, with many eager to have their say on the big-power rivalry that has reached their tropical shores.
Incumbent Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has wholeheartedly embraced China, holding Beijing’s authoritarian government up as the key to the islands’ economic development.
His main challengers view Beijing’s growing influence with a mix of scepticism and alarm.
Honiara lawyer Eddie Toifai, in his 40s, welcomed the promised flood of
Chinese aid, but said it had failed to make life better, in what is one of the world’s least-developed nations.
“We have severed ties with Taiwan and we have developed ties with China,” he said from his spot in a slow-moving voting queue.
“For me, I was hoping that would bring change to this country, but I’m yet to see that happen.”
Even inside an inner-city polling centre — a co-opted art gallery — voters were reminded of the seismic geopolitical forces at play.
On one wall hung a painted portrait of former US president John F Kennedy, whose patrol boat sank nearby during World War II.
Across the room, an official from the recently re-opened US embassy in Honiara sat quietly observing as citizens cast their paper ballots.
China has funded several large projects that are impossible to miss on Honiara’s main road, including a 10,000-seat athletics stadium and a medical centre still under construction.
But in the forested hills outside the city, in a waterlogged gully known as “Mudland”, locals say it makes little difference.
Villager Robert Bara, 61, said he was worried about scraping together enough money to send his children to school.
“I have to support them financially,” he said on his way to vote inside the church that doubled as a village polling centre.
In a wooden roadside shack, where locals sell single cigarettes and betel nut for chewing, Mr Bara and his friends later laughed about their newfound role in “geopolitics”.
Naked children played on the packed dirt floor of a stilted wooden house nearby.
Many voters fret that life is getting tougher in the nation that cheerfully dubs itself the “Hapi Isles”.
“Many times we run short of medicine and places for sleeping [in hospitals]. We just sleep on the floor,” teacher Hilda Nuake said back in Honiara.
“I want scholarships for my children to study but there is nothing there. I have to tell my daughter she is better off just getting married,” said Wilma Junior.
Police from Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea are on hand to keep the peace.