Across the Pacific, many island nations struggle with issues of sovereignty. Just this week we reported on the arrest of dozens in Fiji who allegedly planned to set up a breakaway state. Now the leader of the provincial government on one of the Solomon Islands says he plans to establish a sovereign nation, but not an independent one. An explanation, from Neal Conan in the Pacific News Minute.
The Solomon Island most Americans know is Guadalcanal. The scene of a bloody six month battle against Japan that began in 1942. Malaita lies just to the North east, across waters labelled Indispensable Strait on the map, but known to all U.S. sailors, Marines and airmen as The Slot. After the war, what was then a British Protectorate took over the huge base the U.S. constructed on Guadalcanal as its new capital city called Honiara.
The residents of the capital were almost entirely from other islands, most of them from the Solomon’s most populous island, Malaita. After independence in 1978, tensions grew between the peoples of Guadalcanal, and what they saw as outsiders who dominated the capital and the national government. Eventually, something close to a civil war erupted. A militia group in Honiara called the Malaitan Eagle Force played a major role in the fighting. Peace only came after an intervention lead by Australia.
Many Malaitians remain unhappy with their role in the government, a parliament established on the British model. This week, the head of the provincial government, Peter Chanel Ramohia told the country's prime minister that Malaita is no longer willing to wait for a promised federal system that's at least ten years off, and will go ahead with plans to establish a sovereign nation on its own. But, he stressed, they would do so in a legal manner after consultations with the national government and that sovereignty did not mean a Declaration of Independence.
