COOKS: Papa Tom Davis dies
Updated
A former Cook Islands prime minister, Sir Tom Davis has died. Another former prime minister, Sir Geoffrey Henry of the Cook Islands Party, has criticised the government for allowing Sir Tom to die in poverty and without proper recognition of his contribution to the country.
Presenter: Bruce Hill
Speakers: Sir Geoffrey Henry, former Cook Islands prime minister,
HENRY: Papa Tom was a truly extraordinary person and he's not the kind of person that you can paint in one picture on one page of the book. He is a whole book to tell the story of what a great man this is. As we say in our own language if you visited the forest of the Cook Islands you will find that one of the biggest and the tallest trees is no longer there and that's Papa Tom. That is the kind of person he has been. If one looks back over his career from being a young man, a very bright student that ended up as the first qualified medical doctor at Otago University and became the first Cook Islander to hold a senior post in the Cook Islands public service as the Chief Medical Officer. Then continued his journeys in life, sailed his own boat to Meru(?) it's called, Meru(?) stands for the evening star, to Boston to attend Harvard University to study public health medicine, ended up working for the aerospace program in the United States at NASA, specialised in human behaviour under extreme cold conditions, and then returned and became the second prime minister of this country. And not only got there, his journeys continued. He became in fact the designer of the two ocean going canoes of the Cook Islands, the Takitumu and the Te-au-o-tonga.
HILL: He was a leader in more than just the political sense wasn't he, he was also a leader in the traditional Cook Islands sense of the word?
HENRY: Bruce he was like I said an extremely talented person in many areas. Tom had no superior when it came to building canoes, and he certainly was very much steeped in his own Polynesian history. He knew about the sailing canoes of the old days and he knew how to design them.
HILL: What's the reaction been like from Cook Islanders to the news of his death?
HENRY: I can say in all honesty that he was not a well-liked prime minister but he was certainly a very effective leader of the Democratic Party because he defeated the Cook Islands Party in the 1978 elections and held his position until his old party turned against him. And the shame of it is Bruce if I may say this on radio, his own country failed to accord him the appropriate recognition and respect and allowed him to die in as a pauper and without dignity. I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out why it is the Democratic Party of today under the leadership of Sir Terepai Maoate failed to accord to his predecessor what was due to him.
HILL: What do you think was due to him? What do you think the government should have done for Papa Tom?
HENRY: Well certainly they shouldn't have allowed him to struggle financially towards the end of his life. I mean the man has given no matter what anybody's opinion .. like him or not, the man was sincere in his delivery of what he could do for the country. There's been no other doctor like him and he's been a very colourful politician. I mean he annoyed a lot of prime ministers around the Pacific including Prime Minister David Lange of New Zealand, but Tom was his own man. He knew he belonged to the Cook Islands and he was not ashamed of that, even though he and I were on different sides of the political line we respected each other. I knew how talented he was. He recognised in me as a young turk who was prepared to take him on in any direction. But we still had mutual respect. How come his own party failed to accord him the appropriate respect that I believe was due him. I don't understand Bruce, I really don't.
