Comments

Thanks for the valuable piece, I think it demonstrates that VfM will continue to be a big part of the aid policy discussion. Donors need to get clearer on how they define VfM and what they expect of their partners. Groups such as NGOs will increasingly have to grapple with how they demonstrate value for money to donors. But another tricky - and perhaps even more important - question is what value for money means to the people or governments that actually receive aid dollars or programs. What represents value for them? I think there's a need to also explore that question as well, and if we did, we might be in for a few surprises.

It is telling that DFID's definition is “maximising the impact of each pound spent to improve poor people’s lives”. How does this relate to their role as a bilateral partner in developing capacity, leadership and ensuring country ownership? Instead it sounds more like the mandate of a short-term humanitarian NGO. It seems that this focus has gone hand-in-hand with their retreat from alignment and the <a href="http://www.bond.org.uk/data/files/publications/Country_Ownership.pdf " rel="nofollow">good-donorship principles</a>[pdf] of Paris and Busan. DFID has clearly vacated the position of "best donor" - wouldn't it be great if AusAID filled it?!

We invite you to explore our <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/page/value-money-agenda-global-health-funding-agencies " rel="nofollow">report</a> "More health for the money: A practical agenda for the Global Fund and its partners", a report of the Center for Global Development working group on value for money in global health. We are also <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/event/more-health-money-progress-and-potential-global-fund" rel="nofollow">hosting an event</a> on the Global Fund on September 25.

Frank's strutting about on the world stage is precisely an attempt to create legitimacy at home. Its a PR slight of hand, keep up the diatribe and there will not be space to consider that he was not mandated to speak on behalf of the people of Fiji. The regime has its fingers around the throat of the media, controls the judiciary and rewards state brutality. Silence does not mean consent and I guarantee you that it is on the minds of most Fijian's and on the minds of the regime as well. If his strategy is to say look at all I have done for you people, I have stood up to the Aussies and the Kiwi's, fixed all the water pipes in your village and listened to your concerns, now vote for me even though I wont tell you how much I or Aiyaz earns, or how much of your pension fund is gone, or how the economy is really doing...doesn't that qualify as a hail Mary pass from the your own 10 yard line Tom Brady? Fiji is much more than Bainimarama and Aiyaz. Their entire international and domestic policy stance is reactive. In Hindsight, Qarase had the chance to put an end to end this cycle of coups by prosecuting all the perpetrators behind the 2001 coup and more importantly, the shadowy figures behind the attempt to assassinate Frank Bainimarama during the assault on the military camp by the rouge CRW soldiers. Sadly he did not, instead he created the most bloated government Fiji has ever seen, ministers on salary without any portfolio, reduced sentences of Fijian aristocrats guilty of coup related charges and then employing them as ministers in his government all the while trying to gain control of Bainimarama and the Fiji military which was then and still is a deeply fractured and traumatized institution. The die was cast a long time ago.

If I may weigh in somewhat less belligerently, I’d also like to question your assertion that the military government is starved of legitimacy at home. If you mean that he has not found, or founded, a party to contest a putative election, then I suspect you are correct, although alternative explanations might be over-confidence or just bad planning. I question your assertion that Attorney-General Sayed-Khaiyum has no electoral base and ask how sure you are that he would not win a seat in an election. Also, what does it matter for their legitimacy if the governments other officials are military officers or were part of the events of 1987? Secondly, how do you account for the conclusion from the Lowy Institute’s 2011 research report ‘Fiji at Home and in the World: Public opinion and foreign policy’ that there is a strong measure of domestic support for the government in Fiji? For all that the people may be receiving a distorted view from the censored media and the never-ending supply of good-news stories in the Sun, or afraid to voice their true opinion, it seems a little simplistic to ignore this inconvenient evidence. It also concords with my (albeit highly unscientific) conclusion after three weeks just spent in Suva, Ovalau and Taveuni where I found a fairly consistent opinion that went along the lines of ‘We don’t much care for how Bainimarama is going about it but we like what he is doing and we definitely prefer him to the previous government.’ All that aside, I concur with your opinion about what Australia should do now, though perhaps for slightly different reasons. One way that the Fiji government has been so successful on the international stage has been by appealing to anti-imperialist sentiment, with Australia cast in the role of empire. Australia, and by now New Zealand, have run down their reserves of good will among both the people and the elite in Fiji and across Melanesia. By pretending to oversee Fiji’s return to democracy, Australia has in fact bolstered rather than undermined the interim government. It is time to adopt a position clearly defined by human rights principles, rather than by some claim to regional leadership. Travel bans should be applied only to those who are implicated in human rights abuses, and condemnation be strictly guided by universal principles rather than represent the actions of a self-appointed judge and jury. While Julie Bishop is presently in thrall to the Australia-Fiji business community, who strongly advocate normalisation of relations, it will be interesting to see what line she takes if she becomes foreign minister and is confronted by the full complexity of dealing with Australia’s relationships with Fiji and the wider Pacific island region.

Jon has written an excellent and well thought out article. Tom's sweeping statement that there has been no Arab Spring in Fiji highlights his superficial understanding of the issue. First of all silence does not mean concurrence in fact quite the opposite. Secondly, it took the Arabs decades to mobilise the people for the Arab Spring, far longer than Fiji has had its crisis. He would do well to put down the tv remote after turning off CNN, and picking a few books on history instead. The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants alike...

A simple statement of two facts will shed light on this and other Government Departments. Senior levels of the Government are populated by incompetents amenable to bribes from interested parties and it will take a great man to clean out these entrenched parasites. Our politicians are attracted to gaudily wrapped proposals that could be attractive or sold to an under-educated mass of voters and will overrule the few competent leaders that we do have. I could say this about parts of the UK economy from my reading of the Private Eye. I have to accept, that if the PE was lying, they would be bankrupted by the courts by now.

If we are to use examples to inform decision making in PNG it is important to get the facts right. The article here of the Lesotho privately operated hospital is almost entirely contradicted by John Lister's analysis <a href="http://www.globalhealthcheck.org/?p=481" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Far from being cost neutral the budget for the private hospital in Lesotho constitutes a massive 100% increase in that previously allocated to the public hospital. And all this with an unreasonably low cap on the number of patients to be seen and treated. For example, the contract stipulates a maximum of 20,000 inpatients per year but the average hospitalization rate for Lesotho is approximately 64,000 patients. Each patient over and above the 20,000 has to be paid for on top of the 100% increase in costs already paid for by the government. Does this sound like value for money? This skewing of resources towards tertiary care in the capital is to the extreme detriment of the majority of Lesotho citizens who live in rural areas. And let's also not handpick one apparently successful example (although I am unfamiliar with it so wouldn't be sure of its success) from Spain when the broad base of evidence demonstrates the these private financing and delivery deals lock governments into long term high interest inflexible debts to the benefit of profit-making companies and to the detriment of patients. In many cases these deals are bankrupting health services. The truth is that governments can borrow money at a much lower interest rate themselves rather than borrowing from private companies. In the UK where the government has gone furthest with experimenting with these types of models the evidence is very clear. Private Finance Initiatives have failed and services are being shut down directly as a result of the onerous interest rates charged. I'll leave you with a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9845691/Lewisham-A-and-E-today-where-tomorrow.html" rel="nofollow">summary </a>quote from the right wing UK newspaper the Telegraph on the ramifications: <blockquote>The blame lies with politicians and the Department of Health who pushed through the ludicrous PFI deals in the first place. It’s the fault of the lawyers and managers who drew up the grossly unfair contracts that saw the pockets of private companies being lined with large wodges of taxpayers’ money for little return. It’s the fault of every myopic MP who voted for PFI and ignored the evidence warning that it would store up problems for the future. The local community, the doctors, the nurses and even the current managers are entirely innocent in all this, and yet it is they who are having to pay. </blockquote>

@Jon Frankel "Lagging perspective", in this context of my comments, means constant rehashing the events of the past and passing it off as current events; analogous to 'old wine in new bottles'. As for your opinion about Fiji's Prime Minister being "starved of legitimacy at home"-unfortunately you have not supported your claims and I stand by my comments that highlighted this fact. "Silence may not mean consent" was probably a poor attempt to explain away the lack of protests in Suva. With regards to who 'knows Fiji better', is basically a moot point and borders on the presumption that someone claims to be the absolute authority on Fiji.

Tom Brady dislikes my 'lagging perspective' (whatever that means!), which he condemns as generated from Canberra or Wellington. Presumably, by this he means that his own views are more authentically Pacific. But they are not, as he indicates immediately by saying that there is no 'crisis of legitimacy' within Fiji and that if there were such a crisis there would be 'Arab-spring type protests erupting in Suva'. Someone who knows Fiji better would be aware of the well-known saying that 'silence is not consent'.

People ( especially those in their 50's upwards) do refer back to the colonial era as being the time when everything was good, corupt free, law and order, " The perfect time" as they say. I was born a few years before independence and saw gradual changes occur over time. I do not hold on to the colonial past where my people were called "kanakas" and the Kiaps and the white minority wielded power. It was a pathetic and a sarcastic past ... No, its wrong to say that we still hold on to that. The colonial past was very degrading and much light has to be shed to fully expose that.

Thanks Grant for that article it was a great read. and yes as a Papua New Guineans we do feel the effect of the name callings and the negetivity of this great land. One of the reasons that is very obvious is the lack of being literate. Hopefully the next generation of Papua New Guineans (those born after Independence) will make that shift. Only time will tell... With the refugees saga, I don't know what the big deal is when we have Irian Jayans strewn all over Kiunga in Western Province and Sandown Provinces. They should also be treated in the same manner as those now being processed... I deeply feel sorry for this setback.