Some days you just have to laugh. Six weeks ago, Solomons PM, Manasseh Sogavare, submitted to parliament his plan to suspend the election because it couldn’t simultaneously manage the poll and few games of footy.
Australia offered support and funding to help the election, but that was rejected as interference:
The Solomon Islands accused Australia of trying to “influence” its lawmakers ahead of a vote on a constitutional amendment to delay elections until 2024, after Canberra offered to fund the Pacific nation’s next national ballot.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s office said Australia’s offer was “inappropriate” and it would not respond until the constitutional amendment had been voted on. The stern response is a setback for Australia’s push to improve relations with the Pacific nation as China expands its influence in the region.
Now, the would-be tyrant has taken his complaint about Australian “bullying” to the UN:
The prime minister of the Solomon Islands has complained that his country had been subjected to “a barrage of unwarranted and misplaced criticisms, misinformation and intimidation” since formalising diplomatic relations with China in 2019.
In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Manasseh Damukana Sogavare said the Solomons had been “unfairly targeted” and “vilified” in the media. He said such treatment “threatens our democracy and sovereignty.”
That would be me, having been frequently quoted in China and Honiara ever since I noted that the Solomons exist as a free state at the pleasure of the liberal US imperium.
In short, fresh from importing a private army of Chinese brown shirts, and attempting to suspend the election to keep himself in power, Sogavare is complaining at the American-founded and supported liberal institution of the United Nations, that Australia is an anti-democratic bully.
Admire the Orwellian chutzpah of that for a moment…
Aaaaaand…then move on. We’re all grown up enough to get the joke. But, if Sogavare does succeed in institutionalising his dictatorial power grab, then let’s not play his disordered game.
Just sail a nice big gunship up there and politely request that elections go ahead, monitored by UN and ‘Pacific family’ peacekeepers.
If the would-be Xi Jinping mini-me still won’t give the Solomon Islanders a chance to freely express their democratic will, then politely go ashore and arrest him.
