Page 32 - IB August 2020

Opinion Opinion

USP Vice Chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia (left) and USP graduates

WHAT IS TO BECOME OF USP?

By Ambassador Kaliopate Tavola ability cannot be envisaged, what form of ‘public good’, or
otherwise, USP is going to become?
The dust may have settled in some aspects of the saga At the establishment of the University in 1968, USP would
at the University of the South Pacific (USP) campus. Vice have been promoted as a ‘regional good’. It preceded the
Chancellor and President Pal Ahluwalia and Pro Chancellor formation of the South Pacific Forum (SPF) in 1971 – that later
Winston Thompson may have worked out a harmonious modus became the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in 2000: PIF being
operandi between them, under their respective terms of the embodiment of the regional body politic that is Pacific
reference, to patch up the unity that has been subverted and regionalism.
which is desperately needed. The fine print of the truce may At the time, the regional good that is the USP would not
have prioritised the improvement of ‘governance within the have been subjected to a series of tests (7-8 tests as a re-
institution’, as earnestly solicited by the new USP Chancellor, quirement of PIF today) to evaluate its feasibility and sustain-
President Lionel Aingimea of Nauru. And the students are back ability as a regional action. However, for decades USP proved
in their lecture rooms for lessons and assignments. a success. Under PIF’s nomenclature, USP was generally pro-
However, there are grey areas and questions left unan- moted as an example of a regional service delivery resulting
swered. There is no resolution, for example, on the debate from pooling of members’ resources. A 2014 study: “Regional
on whether or not the BDO Report and all the indictments it Service Delivery among Pacific Island Countries” by Matthew
contains can be trashed onto the historic scrapheap and best Dornan and Tess Newton Cain affirmed that USP was proving
forgotten. Further, there is an eerie silence on the political a success as a pooled service. The study also confirmed that
economy aspects of Fiji’s sizable contributions to the univer- ‘national capacity building’ was indeed an objective of the
sity budget and her prominence as a host government. Though institution. Subsequent studies have reaffirmed USP’s role not
not articulated, there were commentators who proffered only in capacity building but also in regional integration.
these aspects as extenuation for Fiji’s conduct of matters in There have been occasions in the past when USP was re-
the USP Council. ferred to as a ‘public good’. But commentators are divided on
These factors among others have been, inevitably, been this. The Pacific Plan Review Report of 2013, for example, sid-
brought up for public and regional discussions. And these ed with those who have been reluctant to treat any regional
are issues that are fundamental to the life and sustainability initiative in the Pacific as a public good. A subsequent report
of the university. So much so that the question of its future in 2015, noting that USP may already be excluding students
rings loudest as a pivotal matter for genuine reflections. The due to restriction of space and resources and therefore not
University’s sustainability as a regional good is an obvious meeting its ‘non-excludability’ requirement, suggested that
candidate for reflection. A regional good is simply that which USP may already be a hybrid. Some have determined it as a
meets the interests and needs of members. If such sustain- ‘quasi-public good’.

32 Islands Business, August 2020