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One of the best analyses I have read of the causes, historical context and contemporary legacy of Fiji's 1987 military coups.

Hi Manuel, I'm sorry if the title was offensive. It was intended to capture the main findings. The sample size was very large and there is no reason to believe it was unrepresentative, or that there was massive misunderstandings of the questions. There are also three quantitative surveys that show widespread calorific deficiencies in PNG. I hope to write more about them and it will be interesting to see the response. Regards, Stephen

Many thanks to Richard Brown for his extensive comments on our paper, and apologies for the long delay in responding. Before getting to his main point, we want to reply to Richard’s suggestion that we are too negative and ignore important data when it doesn’t suit our case. In particular, Richard says we ignore the 2019 APTC tracer survey result that 89% of respondents said that it was easy or very easy to find work, which, he says, undermines our result that APTC graduates are finding it increasingly difficult to find work. However, the APTC reports don’t make clear that this question is only asked to those in paid work. Good that most of APTC’s employed graduates said it was easy to find work, but this doesn’t speak to our finding that an increasing share of APTC graduates who need to find a job just can’t find one. Of APTC graduates who did not have a job to return to, only 9% were not in paid work at the time of the 2011-13 tracer surveys but this had grown to 35% by the 2017-19 surveys. We turn now to Richard’s more general critique. Before we summarise his position, allow us to reiterate that our analysis of APTC graduate employment outcomes is not seeking to evaluate APTC graduates’ performance in terms of their value-added contribution that they are making to their employer. Our sole focus is instead on the employment outcomes of APTC graduates, a measure of employer demand. This means that our focus is only on those graduates who are not employed while students and need to find a job on graduation—that is, job-seekers. Richard suggests we also include in our analysis those graduates who are employed while students (and at the time of graduation) but who have since gained a higher position with the same employer. In our terminology, these are a subset of what we call job-keepers, i.e., employed students, so are not included. A focus on job-keepers is not relevant to our purpose. To judge the demand for APTC graduates, we need to look at those not employed at graduation. A thought experiment might help. Imagine a scenario in which all APTC students were employed while they were studying and at the time of graduation. Then we would say, according to Richard’s method, that APTC graduates were 100% successful in finding jobs. That would be a meaningless finding. And that is why all APTC graduates who continued to be employed by the same employer while studying and after graduating need to be excluded from our analysis of demand for APTC graduates. The fact that some job-keepers have gained a higher position with the same employer is irrelevant for our purposes. They might well have moved to a higher pay level while still doing the same work. We have no way of knowing whether anyone else has been hired to do their old job. Their having a new position with the same employer cannot be taken as a sign of demand for APTC graduates. Crucially, Richard never says what question he is seeking to answer by grouping one subset of job-keepers with all the job-seekers. Our question is clear: how many APTC graduates who are not employed at the time of graduation have found paid work by the time of the tracer survey? Think of APTC as a curative pill. To test the pill, we need to see how it works on diseased (unemployed-at-graduation) patients (graduates), not healthy (employed-at-graduation) ones. To summarise, we welcome Richard’s comments but they do not alter our findings, or lessen the urgent need for APTC to face the fact that those of its graduates who need to find a job on graduating are finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Stephen Howes and Richard Curtain

There is another perspective to the 1987 coup that is seldom covered in the main stream media nor by their journalists. This view was published in "Covert Action Information Bulletin" Issue No. 29 published in Winter of 1988. Link [ https://archive.org/details/CovertActionInformationBulletin29] "I am positive that these Fijian soldiers, these so-called Fijian soldiers, who invaded our parliament were in fact U.S. marines."1 This startling claim comes from Noor Dean, Deputy Speaker of the now deposed Bavadra government. A third generation Indo-Fijian, Noor Dean graduated from Grays Inn, London, as a barrister in 1980. He was serving his first term as a member of the Fijian parliament as part of the Labour Party coalition government when the political stability of Fiji was shattered on May 14, 1987 by Lt. Col. Sitiveni Rabuka's military coup. Other allegations have arisen regarding the U.S. role in the coup. A visit by ex-CIA deputy director, now U.S. Ambas- sador to the United Nations, Vernon Walters 12 days before the coup; a mysterious U.S. C-130 transport plane flight into Fiji two days prior to the coup; and links between a U.S. Agen- cy for International Development (AID) official and far right Fijian politicians have all raised questions about the possible role of the U.S. government in the overthrow of the progres- sive Bavadra government. Reason to Intervene. Fiji was a founder in the nuclear-free South Pacific move- ment, demanding an end to port -calls by all ships that were nuclear-powered or carried nuclear weapons. The U.S. government saw this position as a fundamental threat to its naval control of the Pacific. Not surprisingly, the over-thrown labour government of Timoci Bavadra was fully behind the nuclear ban. •Max Watts is a journalist for various European and Australian newspapers and radio stations. Mark James is a reporter for Sydney Educational Radio (2SER), a respccted independent station. 1. A similar claim comes from Rosemary Gillespie., a Melbourne, Australia law student who had previously worked for the conservative Mara government, but who had revealed U.S. CIA involvement in the 1982 elections. She was arrested by a he military during a visit to Fiji on August 15, 1987. Gillespie had been gathering evidence conceming foreign involvement in the coup and had found a witness who was in parliament at the time of the coup. The witness said, "I looked into the eyes of one of the soldien: (during the coup) it was not a Fijian. He was wearing white gloves and a Balaclava (ski mask) and I could only see his eyes. He was a fair man. He was not a black man and he could not have born Indian." Gillespie was interrogated eight times during her detention and was threatened with knifing and hanging. She was later released without charge. 2. Col. Rabuka may had military help from other friends as well. Shortly before the coup, a secret shipment of Uzi mactine guns arrived from Singapore, which is a center for lsraeli arms shipments. Since: New Zealand and other nations refused to recognize the Rabuka government, Israel announced plans to open an embassy in January. From Israeli Foreign Affairs., November 1987. Subscriptions to IFA can be obtained from: lsraeli Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 19580, Sacramento CA. 95819. (...)

Dear Holly, Just to suggest positive approach the both Countries are holding in terms of the Trade Engagements of Seasonal Worker Programs; Could it be better if we could have other areas of applications, due to the administrative selection process of applicants here in Solomon Islands.

Firstly, I would like to thank you both for your time spent in preparing the report. It was well presented and arguably an informative insight of the reality in PNG. We understand the motive of informing our government, aid agencies and the general public as a whole, of the concerning subject for possible intervention or any of that sort to alleviate the issue. PNG has a totally different lifestyle; that's the first thing to consider. Only the lazy goes hungry. The concern in all the comments I suppose, is the "Title" of your report. It is offensive to us citizens who work our lands and live moderate lives. I am certain the cluster sample collected by NSO was not a good representative of the whole population and questionnaires were not interpreted well by the respondents. However, I see this report as a good indicator of PNG lacking the surveying skills in collecting reliable data for informative decision making. To conduct surveys, we must go to the remotest parts of this nation; not only during election times. Collect reliable data and provide ideal basic services for the health and well being of our nation. Thank you.

Excellent article a balanced and well thought views.

Dear Tanya, Thank you for your comment. I fully understood the need for my friend to go and collect food for his family. No one was locked in. Everyone there came as volunteers. The young man came back, and was welcomed back, when he had provided for his family. The point I sought to make was that food was scarce and that many people were hungry at that time. Hunger does not imply that they had no food, but it certainly meant that there was insufficient food to fully satisfy their hunger. Cheers, Russ

Hi Stephen, Thanks for responding. I took a look at the DHS report but it does not seem to include anthropometric data on the incidence of stunting, underweight, and wasting in children aged under-5. This is a real shame. The food security index that is presented in the report is interesting - these composite indices are less intuitive than single measures but they are supported by a carefully developed methodology and should help to smooth out measurement errors. A couple of points caught my eye when looking at table 2.17 of the DHS report. The first is that the confidence intervals for overall incidence of food insecurity in rural and urban areas overlap, so at a national level, urbanization does not appear to be improving food security outcomes. The second is that while the incidence of food insecurity does decline as you move across the wealth quintiles, the rate of decline is quite moderate - for example, 41.6% of households in the top wealth quintile have moderate food insecurity. Improving food security and nutrition are very important so thanks for drawing attention to the issue. It would be great to see more effort to collect and analyze nutrition data and to translate these insights into programs to improve nutrition outcomes. Thanks, David

Manoj and Stephen’s article has raised a very important issue and has attracted many passionate responses. Three days after publication it was referenced on Fly River Forum, a Western Province Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/flyriverforum/permalink/3552234178211444/). The poster reported that ‘Western Province has the most hunger among rural households with half the households hungry’ and provided an illustrative graph. Within a day, there have been 57 responses, both supportive and critical, with many engaging deeply with the issue of hunger. While I am personally critical of the methodology used in the survey, I appreciate this response by one of the Fly River Forum commentators: ‘It's amusing to see people defending/denying the fact that the data, to some degree, truthfully represent the situation as it is on the ground. Sampled data may not cover all areas but is enough to give us some indication of what our situation is like. Compare these results with the level of government services as well as infrastructure development, and realize that the trend of being the least developed province correlates with such food security trends. Come on guys, instead of living in denial, we should see this data representation in a more positive way. These results should be an eye-opener for us to at least realize that something is wrong somewhere.’

This sounds particularly bad, but I think other Pacific island countries also face waste management challenges, which unless addressed soon will prevent sustainable tourism achieving its incredible potential across the region. I believe Timor Leste is a member of SPTO (the Pacific Tourism Organisation). SPTO recently developed a regional Sustainable Tourism Strategy (still in draft, I think), with wide stakeholder input, and waste management is recognised as a key issue. The next step, and no mean task, will be for governments and partners to translate the strategy into national policy, and workable and effective actions on the ground. Hoping donors will recognise the huge value of funding these actions, and SPTO will continue to play a coordinating role across the region, helping share experiences for example.

Hi Peter, 50% of respondents in Western Province said that they had gone a whole day without eating, the highest in the country. That seems really good evidence of particularly widespread hunger in that province. Russ Stephenson in his comment concurs on the basis of his personal observations that hunger is not uncommon (that is, is common) in this region.