Change deferred again in Nauru
In many ways 2007 looks like being the year of the Pacific election, and you can now add the impoverished nation of Nauru to the mix. Pacific correspondent Campbell Cooney has this report.

Right now Papua New Guinea is in the final throws of deciding who will form government after one of the longest elections anywhere.

New Caledonia has been forced to form a new government after the resignation of its president and French Polynesia's government looks like calling a snap election, to avoid a no confidence motion.

As well Vanuatu is talking elections after 13 of its ministers were implicated in a multi-million dollar fraud, and within a fortnight Kiribati goes to the polls.

Now you can add Nauru to the mix, where the government has dissolved the 18 seat parliament in a snap election, as a way of avoiding public backlash over its reforms, which have severely cut the incomes of the once rich, now poor island nation.

In 2004, Nauru's president, Ludwig Scotty, was elected to office after campaigning on a promise of reforming the practises and conventions which have left his country technically bankrupt.

As part of that, over the past 12 months his government has been driving the process to change the country's constitution, to allow a tightening up financial controls, and to remove the volatility in its system of parliament which has meant 35 changes of government since it gained independence in 1968. Seventeen of those changes within a 14 year period.

The weaknesses of the constitution have been identified as one of the main reasons successive governments were able to mismanage, spend, and corruptly steal a financial heritage, meant for all Nauruans, valued in the billions.

But at a constitutional convention in April which allowed the public to debate the proposals there was massive opposition. But not only to the changes. A lot of the anger was aimed at the government who many feel can't be trusted to act in the public interest.

Given the experience of its people, trusting any government is now too much to ask.

At just 21 square kilometres in size, Nauru is the worlds smallest island nation. But its phosphate reserves meant that up to the 1990s its people, per capita, were amongst the wealthiest in the world, enjoying a quality of life their much larger Pacific neighbours could only dream of.

But as those reserves ran out, it became obvious successive governments had squandered that wealth. Amongst the better know wastes of money were buying a stake in a failing Australian football club, backing a London West End musical on the life of Leonardo Da Vinci - it folded after just one week - and owning a fleet of jet airliners which crisscrossed the Pacific often carrying no one but politicians and the social elite to shopping destinations.

Now, the good old days are gone, and like many of the neighbouring nations which once watched on with envy, Nauru relies on foreign aid for survival.

Most supplies have to be shipped in, which means nothing's cheap, and the only real employer of note is the government - and the fact it's technically insolvent means wages aren't high.

In 2001 Australia set up its offshore immigrant processing centre as part of its "Pacific Solution", where it sends illegal immigrants caught trying to enter its borders. In Australia its critics describe it as a cruel and unusual treatment of desperate people.

There have been some complaints about it in Nauru, mostly over the length of time some people have been kept there, but it provides some well paying jobs and as Australian aid is tied to having it there, no one's about to force it out - certainly not President Ludwig Scotty.

It's highly unlikely the centre will feature in the elections, but there's every bet the constitution will. But by going to the polls two months early Ludwig Scotty is hoping to defuse some of that fight.

The bill proposing change is before parliament, and if the election timetable had been stuck to it would have been debated and passed, and a referendum held to allow Nauru's people to vote on them.

But if the choice in the referendum aren't what the people expect, and parliament does have the final say on those choices, then there is every chance Nauru's government will feel an electoral backlash.

No prime minister or president goes to an election when they feel they have the best chance of losing. It would appear President Ludwig Scotty's sniffed the political breeze, and come to the opinion the debate and the referendum is the sort of baggage he doesn't need while trying to convince the people he's the man for them.

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