Page 31 - Islands Business March 2023

Development Development

vis-à-vis the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. that places PIF at the apex of this regional community. Such
The political rationality of Pacific regionalism ever since its an architecture is the PIF Leaders’ specification to regional
origin in 1971 is clearly discussed by Professor Greg Fry in his planners.
Framing the Islands (2019). Essentially, Forum leaders, over This will be an interesting exercise from the perspective
the last five decades of the Forum’s existence, have found of sovereignty. In the last 50 years of Pacific regionalism, PIF
‘political significance’ in the ways and means by which they member states had not felt the need to transfer, nor share
had conducted their special brand of Pacific regionalism. In their respective sovereignty with regional bureaucrats. This
his book, Dr Fry discusses the political significance of regional explains the lack of any supra-national structures under PIF.
governance, regional political community, and diplomatic There are, of course, organisations that resulted from pool-
block. ing of regional resources, but with clear-cut member states’
It should be noted that the concept of ‘political community’ oversight, such as the University of the South Pacific. The
referred to by Dr Fry is not that of the EU integration type: question of course is whether this will remain PIF’s modus
with its supra-national structures and even with a Parliament, operandi for the next half century.
even though such has been promoted for the region by a num-
ber of regional commentators, for example, Messrs Birman editor@islandsbusiness.com
Prasad, Jim Rolfe and Wadan Narsey. As Dr Fry discussed in his
book, Pacific regionalism has its own brand of regional com- The writer is a former Fijian Ambassador and Foreign Minis-
munity by way of the Council of Regional Organisations of the ter, and runs his own consultancy company in Suva, Fiji.
Pacific (CROP) – nine agencies chaired by the PIFS Secretary The opinions expressed in this article are those of the
General. The litmus test for Pacific regionalism now is for author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this
the regional planners to conceive of a regional architecture publication.

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