OPINION: SUVA (Islands Business/Pacific Media Watch): Fiji’s capacity to polarise the region has always been evident—particularly at the time of political crisis in that country. That polarising tendency has become even more pronounced since the present political situation began to unfold in December 2006.
Though reason and good sense have prevailed in the end and not caused any drastic splits within the region, the strong undercurrents of differing opinions have often been palpable in regional developments. The long simmering Melanesia-Polynesia divide in their respective leaders’ opinions of dealing with Fiji is but one example of this.
While Melanesians have tended to be more conciliatory and often stood up for Fiji, the Polynesians have been openly critical and not shied away from publicly castigating the Fijian leadership in the regional media on a number of occasions.
The Samoan leadership has on several occasions even hinted at getting regional organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat to move from Fiji to Samoa.
Some aspects of this continuing polarisation have flown in the face of traditional ideals of Pacific Islands solidarity and tolerance based on the fuzzy but rather well accepted connotations of the Pacific Way. Perhaps, it is driven by forces of a new world-view that is based on the ideals of democracy and egalitarianism.
The latest and so far the most obvious polarisation as a result of developments in Fiji has been played out in the regional media.
The media outside Fiji has for long been critical of the Fijian administration’s strong action on its media since December 2006. Media outlets outside have doggedly protested the clampdown through their own media channel and urging the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) the region’s main media association to take up the cudgels on behalf of the Fijian media in particular and the larger regional media in general.
While PINA initially issued statements and made representations to the Fijian administration about allowing the media in Fiji to work freely, the regional media outside Fiji did not see these attempts as going nearly far enough. Over the past two years, they have consistently kept up the pressure on the PINA leadership to engage with the Fijian administration to allow the media to work freely in Fiji.
Matters came to a head at the bi-annual PINA convention in Port Vila, Vanuatu, last year when the Fijian administration sent two of its officials to the meet. A section of the members protested and wanted them to leave the proceedings but the concerned officials staked their claim to stay in the room by dint of being fully paid members of the association—which, indeed, is a bit of a rarity, with the association having to struggle for dues from members for some time now.
After that event, the voice of the regional media outside Fiji has become progressively shriller and it has increased the pressure on PINA to act. But the PINA management has chosen to take a conciliatory approach towards the Fijian administration despite a slew of developments such as the media decree that makes the future of at least one of the oldest and largest media outlets uncertain unless it is able to resolve the ownership issue in accordance with the decree’s requirement of at least 90 percent Fijian ownership.
The PINA management’s tack has obviously incensed media practitioners from the other islands—notably Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and the Cook Islands, prompting them to found a new media body.
They tentatively termed it Pacific Media Association as a working title and last month changed it formally to PasiMA, an acronym for Pasifik Media Association. According to the founders, the word also stands for a “fort” or “stronghold” in Samoan and has similar connotations in the Tongan language.
PasiMA is fronted by some of the region’s best known media veterans, who are known to have fought their own battles—often dangerously, involving personal physical attacks and imprisonment from their governments—and flown the flag of media freedom for many years.
The new media organisation announced its birth last month and said it would stand collectively “against any infringement on media freedom” throughout the region. It has invited membership from media persons from across the region.
In a show of civility of sorts, both the long existing PINA and the freshly minted PasiMA issued statements acknowledging the existence of the other and said they both had different roles to play, although both have similar agendas that have to do with regional media development, capacity building and training.
The obvious unstated difference in both organisations is their individual approaches to developments in Fiji and the manner of dealing with it.
But how exactly the new organisation deals with it is unclear. Will it disseminate reports about Fiji around the region that is forbidden to be published or broadcast in Fiji by its administration’s censorship rules? Will it take on an activist role? It is too early to say.
Unlike PINA, which despite having a memorandum of understanding with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, does not accept direct members from New Zealand (despite it being a Forum member country), the new media body has thrown open membership to the sizeable Pacific media in New Zealand—something that has been greatly welcomed by Pacific journalists working in New Zealand.
What remains to be seen is how the two parallel organisations will raise revenue—an increasingly difficult proposition with aid agencies progressively tightening their budgets over the past few years.
In any case, it has always been a hard task getting often cash-strapped media outlet members to pay their membership dues on time.
Additionally, although both organisations from the very outset have been at pains to state that they have different objectives, both in fact have the same sort of activities on their agendas: media training, capacity building and strengthening the regional media.
Obviously, they are bound to chase the same donor organisations for dwindling funds, creating another avenue for competition—and a continuing sense of rivalry.
Pacific Media Watch
