Thread by @dailypostdan

A thread on this AFR story:

afr.com/companies/tele…

I’ve seen Huawei’s network and data centre plans for Vanuatu’s eGov network. They were technically deficient, and ultimately needed a top to bottom refit, some of which was AUS-funded.

The original US $20m deal smacked of backroom cronyism. It was one of the first China EXIM loans that Vanuatu took, and like many others, it materialised almost overnight, without ever passing through our planning and policy processes.

BUT… it was also born of frustration.

At that time, ADB, WB and most bilateral development partners were infrastructure-averse. Building actual things was a fraught process, and seldom succeeded.

We had a fibre optic cable coming, and needed a national backbone, along with properly connected govt departments.

Getting into bed with Huawei pretty much guaranteed an immediate response from Australia and others, who were quick to help us replace key bits of equipment, at next to no cost to ourselves.

In the Betty and Veronica theory of international development, we're Archie.

Vanuatu—and every Pacific island nation—is under-resourced, and often ignored in talks about our own future. It feels like the only way we get a word in edgewise is by directing it to one side of the geostrategic divide or the other.

It’s cynical, lamentable... and necessary.

I frankly hate it. So do many others. I’ve never liked realpolitik, and I don’t see that feeling changing soon.

But that’s what it is.

And that’s why slapping a 'debt trap’ sticker on every story like this is… just wrong.

It’s inaccurate. It’s derogatory, and belittling.

It assumes that people in PNG and elsewhere are wandering blithely into deals that have blindingly obvious—sometimes cavernous—downsides.

And to be honest, there is a little of that. There are people who are content to sell the farm for personal enrichment.

But that’s not all.

Not by a long shot.

In the midst of this are rank upon rank of people who love their country, who are smart and capable, and working with next to nothing.

Sometimes, the only way you get a data centre at all is to get one from Huawei, knowing you’re going to have issues.

Sometimes, you let the plan go forward because you know it’s not going to go too far. You know that once the problems become clear, other partners will step in to help un-fsck things (UNIX joke there).

Sometimes, you’re the one laying the trap.

Because they wouldn’t help if you didn’t.

It’s ugly, often absurd, and worthy of a Joseph Heller novel.

And all I can add is this: How do you think it feels to be a character in a plot line like that?

Sympathy, not supercilious remarks, are what’s called for.

Honestly, there are only two words wrong with that story. And they’re probably not the author’s choice: 'Debt-trap' and ‘Diplomacy’.

And yet, those two words skew the entire otherwise admirable piece.

Post Scriptum: After the dust finally settled, I helped work on the first ever live-streamed national leaders’ Q&A, where PM & Opposition Leader took questions from Sola in the Banks islands all the way to Tanna in the south.

That network helped change how we do politics.