By Mataeliga Pio Sioa
The recent run of high level diplomatic visits to Samoa and our island region is worth noting at this particular time.
Visiting dignitaries are part of normal diplomacy but it is usually ‘few and far between’ more so for ministerial visits.
Since the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yi turned up in Apia early this year around May, three more visitors at that higher political level have followed him in.
His Australian opposite, Minister Wendy Wong, touched down at Faleolo while his flight was still trying to level off after take-off.
Our PM Fiame shot off to New Zealand in June to talk friendship with PM Jacinda Ardern and was back home looking for her glass of wine when her kiwi ‘hoa pai’ waltz in.
While US Speaker Pelosi was making the Chinese angry, the US deputy Secretary of State Sherman was in Samoa holding hands with our PM.
There is obviously some game of diplomacy being played. Whatever that is we have to know where we stand as a region and as a sovereign nation.
Are we a team player, physio, cheerleader or water boy? All of the above is possible.
We do of course know how it is being played! What the big powers are doing is as suspiciously old as our hide and seek ‘iga ve’a’ in the full moon.
The only difference is we are not the ones doing the hiding and the running around.
This is a different kind of hide and seek from what we are used to where we made high pitched bird noises in the moonlight for the searching side move in.
What the US, Australia and New Zealand are doing is tryng to keep China out of playing ‘i ve’a’ in our island region.
China is trying to make friends with the islands by offering support for their national developments either through direct grants or soft longterm loans – small interests and manageable repayments.
The US and to a large extent Australia are against what they see as China trying to win a foothold of influence in the region.
The more China becomes a world economic force the louder we hear the ‘iga ve’a’ bird calls.
These powerful players are pitching off to the moonlight like hungry wolves while us ‘little ones’ sit and watch.
They have been at it for a bit now.
But any lighthearted humour in seeing these ‘big boys’ play hide and seek at our expense, is not enough to keep the strains of our collective unity from starting to crack I the Forum family.
Kiribati has pulled out of the Forum amidst worried reactions that it is linking up with China.
The Solomon Is. had the Australians whistling up the ‘iga ve’a’ bird call first when it signed up a security deal with Beijing.
PM Fiame has since advocated very strongly for the usual Pasifika ‘consensus’ through ‘talanoa.’
Collective will rather than individual decision-making is her preferred choice for the sake of family unity.
If that is why her New Zealand ‘hoa pai’ called her a ‘bit of a rock star’ at the recent Forum leaders meeting they both attended, then she maybe on the right track.
Hopefully she is ‘on to something’ and not being ‘led on to something’.
These are the elephants coming to play in our treasured Blue Pacific estate and any misstep could flatten us out into pancake smear.
The ambiguity of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ philosophy is former PM Tuilaepa’s preferred pathway for the smaller islands to keep our neutrality.
The big powers can play ‘i ve’a’ all they want but our concern is for own good.
We have to play smart and the rules of being an intelligent player is to ‘lead from the head and not the heart.’
If collective will is deemed to be leading from the head, give it a go. If cracks start to show as it is doing with Kiribati, then the head urgently needs review.
The best way to keep these countries and their issues out of the region is to look for ways to suggest they go settle their problems themselves and not involve us.
Tuilaepa made that point. Of course, we would easily agree to the logic in it but the problem with the head sometimes is when it cannot tell fact from fiction.
Getting these major powers to take their issues and settle it outside the region is the ideal but not a trusted reality as we know too well.
When you are an ant telling two elephants to go fight somewhere else, it is not going to happen when the mammoths are busy looking to see who and where the telling off is coming from.
The trick is to make these elephants see and hear you and above all get them to agree to why it is for their own good that they do their fight somewhere else.
If we can do that the chances of getting what we want is indeed a true reality to believe in.
Good luck…and that is putting it lightly. Very lightly.