[BRIEF NOTE] Tokelauan Events
Feb. 17th, 2006 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldJonathan Edelstein, via Errol Cavit, carried the news of the recent referendum on independence held in the South Pacific archipelago of Tokelau. Currently a territory of New Zealand, if the separatists had carried the day Tokelau would have become an autonomous state in free association with New Zealand, like Niue and the Cook Islands. As reported in The Telegraph, the move to a more autonomous Tokelau was contentious, for reasons of Tokelau's viability as much as for reasons of identity.
As it happened, though the independence supporters gained a majority of the votes cast, they failed to secure the 66% majority of the 660 registered voters needed for Tokelau to move to the free association model. Tokelau's leader, Pio Tuia, hopes for a future vote on free association. Regardless of its future political status, Tokelau still faces a variety of serious challenges, not least of which are an underdeveloped economy that has created a Tokelauan diaspora ten times as large as the homeland's population and the global climate change that may yet drown Tokelau's three atolls. How autonomous can Tokelau really be?
Four United Nations observers are on the islands to oversee the referendum, to be conducted over the next five days.
Any change in status must be approved by two-thirds of the 660 people registered to vote, and the result is due to be declared on Wednesday.
Up to 14,000 Tokelauns living overseas, about half of them in New Zealand, will be excluded, a ruling that has sparked anger among expatriates.
Tokelau has no airport. It is linked to the outside world only by telephone, the internet, and a 28-hour journey by cargo ship to Samoa.
The low-lying atolls have a subsistence economy and are heavily dependent on £3.5 million in aid from New Zealand each year. Fishing licence fees for tuna and customs charges also bring in another £1.2 million. Copra and native products, such as mats, fans, and carved wooden boxes, are the only industry.
"Independent nationhood has never to my knowledge been suggested seriously as an option," said Neil Walter, New Zealand's administrator for the islands, yesterday.
"So what they are exploring is self-government, which is full control of their own affairs with the continuing support from New Zealand."
As it happened, though the independence supporters gained a majority of the votes cast, they failed to secure the 66% majority of the 660 registered voters needed for Tokelau to move to the free association model. Tokelau's leader, Pio Tuia, hopes for a future vote on free association. Regardless of its future political status, Tokelau still faces a variety of serious challenges, not least of which are an underdeveloped economy that has created a Tokelauan diaspora ten times as large as the homeland's population and the global climate change that may yet drown Tokelau's three atolls. How autonomous can Tokelau really be?
