Quoting from today’s edition of the Island Sun newspaper.
According to Danny Phillip (former MP), USA has distanced itself from Solomon Islands over the past years.
He said USA has totally forgotten Solomon Islands over the past 80 years after the vicious world war two (WW2) living tones of munitions, hazardous chemicals wastes and military hardware of various descriptions in the country.
“Our people have been killed in numbers annually by unexploded ordinance and other hazardous materials – a risk that still persist in most part of Solomon Islands till today,” Phillip said.
He said, like other Melanesia countries in the pacific, Solomon Islands is the most volatile country with different culture and traditional beliefs and values which makes governance complicated and plain difficult at times.
“We tried to govern ourselves politically and economically since independent doing so with much challenges and difficulties.
“As we continue to govern ourselves we discovered many unsuspected issues and challenges related very on our diversity.
“We struggle on ways of making our tribal land, our cultural values and systems to become more relevant to the requisite of more than economic development.
“This is often our development partners left the issues for us to deal with it ourselves,” Phillip said.
He said the unresolved fundamental reforms often developed into internal challenges that have become more serious and have political overturns which cause social segregations that often developed into violence and destruction.
Phillip stressed that the need for establishing a strong and effective internal security apparatus and system to underwrite and guarantee economic development so as national assets is important.
“This alone is the basis for the expanded scope of security arrangement between Solomon Islands and China,” he said.
End of quote.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
