DEAR EDITOR – The current strong support and intention of most of our MPs fordiplomatic switch from Taiwan to China only reflect poorly on the leadership that lackedintegrity, wisdom, maturity and visionary mindsets that blinded by false assumptions and self-beneficial interests at the cost of tax payers and resource owners in this nation.
This nation has demonstrated a kind of leadership that lack visionary and confidence in the mindsets towards the nation socio-economic developments with its abundantly natural resources but continue to depend heavily on the free hand out mentality assistance from foreign aid nations for its development and survival.
Since the nation gain its sovereignty through independence process 40 years ago, this trench of dependency for financial survival still an outstanding issue to be addressed by our elected political leaders.
This situation really degraded the status of our political governance and sovereignty among our foreign development partner nations and the globe at large due to the nation with poor leadership and governance that has no strategically visions for nation prosperity.
This nation has been used as luring baits for fundraising by the leaders to satisfy their own interested agenda that lead to the exhausting of natural resources and suffering of the tax payers of this nation.
If the MPs leaders who govern this nation cannot properly use the current free hand out billions of dollars aid money receives from Republic of Taiwan for the past 20 years to develop this nation,how would you convince the people of this country that Switch on to China will create huge changes in our economy – a doubtful and wistful theory and assumptions that hold no water.
The nation has experienced the horrors of corruptions within its governance through the usage of aid money by most of our political leaders that deny establishment of important infrastructures in the rural areas nation-wide that severely affect people access to earning activities leading to the poor and downfall economy of this nation.
Who are we going to blame?
The switching of diplomatic ties for foreign aid assistance is a good scenario but how best our government use and maintain the assistance to acquire sustainable development in long term is the lacking areas the government never prepare for it.
Due to poor and corrupted leadership, this nation has been falling in these criteria since gaining independence 40 years ago yet failed desperately to learn and create measures towards addressing those issues.
The switch in diplomatic tie from Taiwan to China is a very critical decision making in leadership the MPs of this nation must be mindful about it or else we are in the trap of selling the nation to the foreigner super power regimes.
The experience by locals towards the attitudes of batches of Chinese citizens making business in our country speak louder about who is Chinese and how well they can contribute towards the development of the nation.
The Chinese with their financial strength back-ground are very aggressive towards obtaining the natural resources of this nation for their own maximum benefits at expenses of the local people and government.
They are powerful towards acquiring resources due to the influence of financial strength that they incurred.
The ownership of crown land and business in Honiara and other urban centres in the nation is dominated by the Chinese while the local become spectators and slave in their own soil.
Due to limited spaces in the government land they are now moving and engulfing into the customary land tenure system sometimes influence by the bribery and corruption with land owners and the ministry of lands.
In the forestry sector, the logging operations by Chinese in the nation are so corrupted with no care attitude that resulted much in destroying our forestry resources with less or none benefits seen on the resources owners.
People in the nation are still living in poverty after logging left their lands.
The loggers and Chinese nation get maximum benefits from our resources through corrupted dealing and with our cheapest price round logs in the world market.
The Chinese continue to invest heavily in the logging sector because Solomon Islands is a poor nation that depended on the logging sector for its financial survival.
Although Solomon Islands do not have diplomatic tie with China, the over warming of Chinese citizens owning resources and involvement in business in the nation is very aggressive that threatens the future prosperity of the locals.
China is a super power with communist leadership ideologies and with an issue of huge population that if not assess properly by our political leaders can give threat to our future citizens of this beloved Solomon Islands.
We have more avenues still yet to be used to develop this nation with plenty of natural resources in the field of agriculture, fishery, tourism and mining sectors.
It is the lacking of political will and vision in our legislative leadership that denies our rights towards economy prosperity in our nation.
Solomon Islands should now stop depending entirely on aid because it is now 40 years of nation maturity after gaining independence.
Jacob Ofasia
Talise market
