Outgoing MSG head felt members' support had gone

Transcript

The outgoing Director General of the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat says declining commitment and resourcing towards the MSG secretariat from member countries played a part in his decision to leave the position.

Peter Forau, who has held the position since 2011, this week tendered his resignation, two years before the end of his term.

Mr Forau told Johnny Blades he is throwing in the towel because he feels support from the membership has decreased.

PETER FORAU: And sometimes that has to do with the person at the helm. That's how I felt and I thought for the sake of the organisation maybe I can throw in the towel and someone else can come and perhaps do a better job than I'm doing at the moment.

JOHNNY BLADES: Was it something that you discussed with the leaders themselves, if you thought that there wasn't that full commitment from some of these member governments, was it something you discussed before?

PF: No, mate, I haven't discussed it with anyone. I did signal to my government (Solomon Islands) who of course is the current chair, that I wasn't feeling that I had their support at this point in time. But of course they assured me as always that they do support me.. but you know sometimes words don't mean much if the actions are not there. And I think I was reading between the lines and made the conclusion by myself that probably it was the right time to let go, which I have of course done. It's quite a sad occasion for me. I've really enjoyed working here at this organisation and I think I've put in a small contribution to it. And I was hoping that I was going to see out my entire term, which was two more terms. They gave me a new mandate last year, and I was hoping to serve out the entire term until 2017, but of course that's no longer going to happen and yeah, I'm feeling a bit sad of course at the moment.

JB: During your term there's been some great achievements for the MSG. Recently the MSG has been wrapping up this big trade agreement framework, and of course there's other things: one notable thing which the region has been watching is the West Papua membership, bringing them into the MSG fold. As the director-general, you would have had to balance things and play a central role in facilitating the talks around this very sensitive issue, with a number of different players. Was that difficult?

PF: Well mate, I can tell you it's an exciting group; an exciting group because there are many opportunities here, they can achieve a lot as a group. But their numbers are small and the challenges of being small are also with them. And with some of the issues that they've been able to take up and approve as part of our work programme has been very sensitive issues. And I don't blame anyone for that. It's just that all countries have partners, very valuable partners, and they choose who they wish to embrace as their partners, and unfortunately some of the policies or positions do not necessarily adhere to the common, collective positions of the MSG as a group. And so for example, as you rightly pointed out, the position on West Papua was an exciting one for me personally. I was hoping also that the group would embrace it. There was a lot of joy when our leaders eventually decided to accept the West Papua issue as part of our work programme. I fully understand the background as to the decision that came out in Honiara (the last MSG summit where West Papuans were granted observer status and Indonesia associate member status) which of course was a starting point. But I think everybody was hoping for something more substantive and perhaps stronger than the position that was taken in Honiara. But I like to think that it's a start. Those hard decisions were taken under my term as director-general and you're right, I had to make sure that everybody was happy with some of the decisions. They could very well have fractured our unity and lucky for us, it didn't happen that way.

JB: And what do you see as the main challenges for the MSG, going forward?

PF: It's a group with tremendous opportunities, and they can actually be the economic growth zone for the Pacific, if they organise themselves properly. All of them have sufficient natural resources to support adequate levels of economic growth that can make a difference to the lives of their citizens but as well as to the lives of everyone here in the region, because of the connectivities that we have with everybody. And I think there needs to be a choice, whether they wish the MSG to be part of their economic development processes or whether the MSG can just be an organisation that probably plays a co-ordinating role on some of the issues that perhaps can be better co-ordinated at the sub-regional level and not at the national level. I think that differentiation has not been established yet because of confusions about what is the core business of the MSG and what the other regional organisations are doing. If everybody can find a way to better understand what our core business should be, I think the differentiation between what is best co-ordinated at the sub-regional level and the national level, then I think the MSG will move forward most steadily into the future. The other issue of course is one that played a part in my departure and that is the resourcing of the organisation and again I say this with all due respect to all our members. It's just that they don't have the same numbers as the other regional organisations. They have sixteen (members) in the case of the Pacific Islands Forum; about twenty-seven in the case of the SPC (South Pacific Community), so in terms of sharing the burden of resourcing the group agencies, the others are better placed than we are. There's only five members supporting the secretariat and it's a big challenge for them. So the burden is not widely distributed and some of them are carrying the other smaller countries. For example, the FLNKS (New Caledonia's indigenous Kanak movement) you and I know they are not in a position to fully meet their financial obligations to the organisation, and so they are relying on the goodwill of the other four members to be able to meet some of their obligations. But there comes a point when that can no longer be sustainable, and I think that point had come, and some of the discussions that happened in the governing body in the last month were rather depressing, in a way that we don't normally talk like that in the group setting, in the Pacific it's quite different the way things are discussed. And I felt the usual way of discussing matters had changed a little bit... there's a little bit of personal issues being thrown in and that sort of thing. So I think it's making it a bit difficult and I don't really want to elaborate. That's the short of it. I can tell you that the resourcing issue is gradually becoming a major challenge for the group, and I think that's partly because of the emergence of some of these other challenges, climate change and the El Nino cycle is causing huge problems for our member countries, where they have to dig deeper than they used to. But I think it's a region which shouldn't have any problems with sufficiently resourcing the work programme of the secretariat.