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DEVELOPMENT PLAN 8 AND THE NATURE OF DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
Warden Narsey
This paper, delivered to 1981 Economics Association Symposium (including Rashid Ali; J. Kamikamica and S. Siwatibau) on Development Plan 8 (DP8) 1981-85, was written at the beginning of
DP8’s operation and forms a useful introduction to the fuller analysis provided in Narsey’s following paper.
If we are asked to evaluate any ‘plan’, there are all kinds of basics questions one would like to ask. The plan document is entitiled ‘National Development Plan 8’, implying that we are
talking about some process of Development, as applying to the nationals of Fiji. We are talking about a strategy, a plan, Plan No. 8 - there have been other plans before DP8. Let us start with the basics.
First of all, there is no expllicit definition, explanation or articulation of what the plan means by the term ‘development’. There are, however, some sections where the objectivs of the
Government are ennuciated, and from which may be inferred some implicit definition. However, the failure to implicitly state what the desired end state is ultimately must mean that there is no objective yard stick
whereby one may measure progress (or otherwise) towards some ‘developed state’.
One may put up one’s own definition of ‘development’ and assess whether the Plan leads us towards this ideal state, or wether or not our economy is actually progressing towards this or
not. One composite idea of development arising from the Carribean school of thought sees it as a dynamic and evolving process whereby the nationals of the country creatively use their own resources to satisfy their
needs.
THE WAGE FREEZE AND DEVELOPMENT PLAN OBJECTIVES: Contradictions in Fiji Government Policy
Wardan Lal Narsey
At the Fiji Government’s Economic summit, a wide range of apparently reasoned as well as some obviously irrational arguments in support of the Government’s wage
freeze were made. A few voices wereraised in disagreement, but, surrounded by a chorus of approval for the Government’s action, these were easily ignored and their arguments swept under the carpet.
Here, I shall limit my comments to the reasoned economic arguments presented by the Fiji Government at the Summit, as summarised in the NES Information Paper, The
Wage Freeze: Summary of Government Position. The substance of the Government’s arguments at the Summit were not significantly different from those presented in the
paid advertisements in the two Fiji dailies. I have critically examined these arguments previously (``Alternatives to the Unilateral Wage Freeze``, Fiji Times, 1st February,
1985). At the Government Summit, the Hon. Minister of Finance, in replying to my comments there, stated that the Governments would be responding in detail to my
specific critisisms. However, this response still has not appeared although I believe that one department which was asked to respond, found itself in agreement with at least some of my criticisms.
SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: Denial of right in East Timor
William Sutherland
A portuguese colony since the sixteenth century, Timor soon fell victim to the wider imperialist rivalry between Portugal and Holland and eventually in 1893 a treaty
between the two Europeans powers formally divided the island between them. Holland assumed sovereignty over West Timor while Portugal retained the eastern
half. That situation lasted untill the late 1940s when the Duch relinguised control over their East Indian possesions. Indonesian attained its independence from Holland in
1949 and thereupon assumed control over West Timor. The next major change ocurred in the mid-970s. Inspired by the liberation struggles in Portugal’s African
colonies, an indigenous independence movement in East Timor began to gain ground in the early part of the decade. The revolutionary overthrow of the Portugese
government by left-wing army officers in April 1974 increased the likelihood of independence in East Timor and by the middle of that year the indigenous movement,
led by Fretilin, had more fully emerged. In December 1975, however, Indonesia invaded East Timor and in July of the following year it formally integrated the annexed
territory. Today the independence struggle continues but so too the atrocities commited by the Indonesian authorities and in that largely forgotten war the people of
East Timor have not been helped by the failure of the international community to assist them sufficiently in their fight against Indonesian rule.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA’S BORDER RELATIONS WITH INDONESIA
Ralph R Premdas
This period 1983-1984 will be remembered in the Pacific for the unprecedented in inflammation of Papua New Guinea - Indonesia relations over alleged infringements of
their border agreement. New Guinea, the world’s second largest island after Greenland, is politically divided into two separate jurisdictions, the eastern half called
Papua New Guinea which is an independent state, and the western half called Irian Jaya, after World War 2 during the days of Sukarno’s confrontation with the Dutch.
While a legal accord in 1962 gave Irian Jaya to Indonesia, a disenchanted indigenous Irianese guerilla movement has persistently sought to dismember Irian Jaya from the
Indonesia state. The guerillas group called the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM hereafter) has had a checkered career, but recently it has grown stronger, become bolder, and acquired wider international recognition.
COLONIAL CAPITALISM AND CLASS FORMATION IN FIJI : a retrospective overview
Nii K Plange
Fiji was ceded to Britain in October 1874. This had occurred finally, after two unsuccesful attempts in which European settlers in agro-commerce encouraged
cession to protect their interests. From October 1874, then, the British imperial state assumed responsibilitity for the protection of Fijian and Fiji, as one of its resources
have to be organised (or new ones introduced) for exploitation through the partnership of the colonial state, expatriate capital, co-opted traditional leaders and
cheap labour. In the process, also, profits had to be made so that the colony could ``pay its own way``, and its resources chanelled through the imperial economy to the
world capitalists system. The process of creating and maintaining these conditions had always undermined indigenous modes of article attempts to recapitulate the process of
class-formation in Fiji from the turn of the century onwards.
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