Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [34]
Since independence, Vanuatu has been ruled by what in Melanesia are called Big Men, high-ranking men from powerful tribal clans. The first was Father Walter Lini, an Anglican minister who presided over Vanuatu for its first ten years as an independent nation. Things got off to a rough start, however, when a radical American libertarian organization called the Phoenix Foundation decided that Espíritu Santo, the largest island in Vanuatu, would make for an excellent libertarian utopia. It was to be called the Republic of Vemarana. The foundation funded and armed a secessionist group led by Jimmy Stephens, which soon declared the island’s independence. As Vanuatu did not yet have an army, Lini was compelled to call in troops from Papua New Guinea to crush the rebellion. Father Lini, however, soon made himself popular by repatriating the land that prior generations of Ni-Vanuatu had sold or were coerced into giving to planters and colonists. Even today, foreigners cannot own land in Vanuatu, though they may lease it. Soon, however, Lini’s government was as riddled with corruption, cronyism, and nepotism as any banana republic’s, setting the stage for his successors. Since then Vanuatu, even by the impressive standards of Melanesia, has been notoriously unstable. Its Big Men plot and maneuver to topple any government not led by themselves. A government rarely lasts longer than a year or two before another Big Man succeeds in buying off a sufficient number of ministers of parliament to enforce a change.
Among Vanuatu’s Big Men, one has long distinguished himself—Barak Sope. He looked, in my opinion, remarkably like Idi Amin with Don King’s haircut, a shocking frizzle of gray that suggested he had some personal experience with forks and power outlets. In parliament, Sope was the distinguished representative from Ifira Island, across the bay from Port Vila. He became prime minister when his uncle, Ati Sokomanu, who happened to be the president of Vanuatu at the time, appointed him to the position. Apparently, this was illegal, and they both went to jail. One would think that attempting a coup would be enough to end a political career, but people in Vanuatu are loyal to their own, and the people of Ifira Island reelected Sope to parliament. Soon he was back in court, trying to explain why exactly he was importing thousands of machine guns, mines, and anti-tank weapons into the country from China. His correspondence on the matter was written on the letterhead of the Central Intelligence Department. Vanuatu doesn’t have a Central Intelligence Department. Sope said that he was merely trying to “defend the sacred honor of the motherland.”
Well, surely, you think, attempting to create a private militia to challenge the country’s security forces would be a career-ender. In Vanuatu, however, this got him a job as minister of finance, and here is where Barak Sope demonstrated his true genius. Say what you will about Sope, but he has gumption. He began a lucrative sideline selling Vanuatu passports, then moved on to issuing official promissory notes worth tens of millions of dollars to an Australian swindler. The financial collapse of the country was prevented only by the intervention of Scotland Yard.
The national ombudsman of Vanuatu, a courageous French-woman who had endured death threats, issued a public report stating that Barak Sope should never again be allowed to participate in the governance of Vanuatu. Barak Sope then became prime minister.
Shortly after we arrived in Port Vila, Prime Minister Sope decided that Vanuatu’s interests could best be advanced by allying itself closely with—of all the countries in the world—Laos. Vanuatu, Sope declared, would invest in Laotian agriculture and mining and help finance the country’s infrastructure. For good measure, Vanuatu would also help Laos launch satellites into space. With what? I wondered. A slingshot? Clearly, the prime minister had had a few