US Can’t Hide ‘Dollar Diplomacy’ With ‘Hypocritical Claims’ of Non-Interference in Solomons’ Vote

The US' top diplomat to the Solomon Islands was forced to respond to a Sputnik investigative feature on a suspected campaign by Washington to interfere in the islands’ April 17 general elections, assuring there’s no truth in the matter. That doesn’t explain Washington's sudden interest in the strategic island nation, says Professor Joe Siracusa.

Sputnik’s investigation into an alleged systematic and well-funded campaign by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to gently oust Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare via elections as punishment for his gradual strategic realignment away from Washington toward Beijing apparently made some waves ahead of last week’s vote.

“We strongly refute allegations being made in known propaganda outlets that claim USAID and the US government has sought to influence the upcoming election in Solomon Islands,” US Ambassador to the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu Ann Marie Yastishock said in a statement days before the election, with her remarks picked up by US, Australian and Chinese media.

Stressing that these “categorically false” allegations of electoral interference “detract from USAID’s highly professionalized and non-partisan support of free, fair, and credible elections in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the world,” Yastishock suggested that media efforts to call out Washington’s alleged election meddling, and not the suspected interference itself, was at the root of the problem.

“The statement of the US Ambassador is extremely hypocritical,” the source who provided Sputnik with the information and documents at the heart of our investigation into the alleged USAID election interference campaign, said in a private message.

“She did not deny USAID’s support for Solomon local political and community leaders, but kept defending and glorifying their aid meet[ing] the requirements of the target country,” the source said.

The source, who previously warned Sputnik that they could not rule out a repeat of the 2021 riots which rocked the Solomons if the elections didn’t go Washington’s way, said reporting on USAID’s alleged nefarious activities may have forced the US and its local networks “to retreat for a while,” with the vote taking place “relatively peacefully” so far, and police commending the public for a peaceful polling day.

“As the counting continues and the highest position of Prime Minister has not been settled, the US and their local networks might try to stir up problems, protests and riots…It all depends on whether the results of the election can meet the expectations of all parties. The people are nervously waiting for the election results,” the source said.

Nearly a week after the vote, counting continues – in part due to the logistical issues of transporting ballot boxes from far-flung communities across the Solomons’ close to 150 inhabited islands. As of Tuesday, candidates from Prime Minister Sogavare’s Ownership, Unity and Responsibility Party were in the lead, with 23 percent of counted votes, followed by independents, with 22 percent, and the opposition Democratic Party, the United Party and the Party for Rural Advancement winning 18.7, 14.5 and 4.9 percent, respectively.

Even these interim results don’t tell the full story, however. Solomon Islanders elect their government using a first-past-the-post system, which means that whichever party wins a plurality of votes in each of the 50 constituencies up for grabs is the one that wins the seat in parliament. By this measure, the OUR Party is projected to take 13 seats so far, independents 10, the Democratic Party 8, the United Party 7, and the Democratic Alliance Party four seats. Parties will have the opportunity to form a coalition government, which requires 26 or more seats, once results are declared, making the support of independents crucial in the current election cycle.

Solomon Islands Electoral Commission data showing interim results to date following the April 17 parliamentary elections.

© Photo : Solomon Islands Electoral Commission.

No Interference?

“While the US Ambassador to the Solomons is fully entitled to her own opinion, it would be very difficult for her to explain, nor less justify, the elevation of the US presence there to Embassy level status if it were not for the Prime Minister's re-orienting of this strategic island nation towards Beijing and away from Washington,” Professor Joe Siracusa, a veteran US-born political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Curtin University in Australia, told Sputnik, commenting on Ms. Yastishock’s statement about Sputnik’s reporting.

“Can anyone in Washington explain the upgrading of the American diplomatic presence in an island state of 700,000 souls when the same Biden administration has turned its back on Moscow and Beijing in recent years? Dollar diplomacy is alive and well,” Siracusa stressed, pointing to the 100+ year record of the US “involving itself in the domestic affairs of foreign states.”

“Washington’s 'new consensus', based on mercantilism and protection, requires a strong effort to win over as many small resources-rich states as possible,” the academic explained, saying if he had to guess, the US has probably succeeded in forcing Sogavare to form a minority government, if not ousting him completely. In the days and weeks ahead, if he retains the prime minister’s chair, Sogavare will have to compromise with coalition partners to cobble together a new government.

Small Islands, Big Strategic Impact

The Solomons may be small and sparsely populated, but have big strategic potential thanks to their deep water ports and geographic location, Siracusa says.

“Washington has been asking people [in the region] to choose between Beijing and Washington and this guy [Prime Minister Sogavare] surprised everybody by choosing Beijing. He opened his new embassy in Beijing. A country of 724,000 islanders wouldn't have enough money to run an embassy. Obviously, that's a gift from the Chinese government. And, of course, the Americans wanted to reassure the Australians that they were on top of this ‘problem’, and that is why they upgraded their representation there, from a council to an embassy. The idea of having a US embassy in an island of 700,000 people strikes me as absurd. It's an absurd proposition. They are there to woo voters to bring the Solomon Islands ‘back in line’ as a pro-Western nation. And of course, the people in Solomon Islands are not stupid, they like to play off the great powers. There's no neutrality there, they might they might use this tension with Washington and Canberra to get more foreign aid. And of course, the Chinese are just pouring time and money into the place because, the Chinese have offered the Solomon Islanders a concept for economic progress that is their own recent history of beating poverty, beating scarcity, etc.,” the observer noted.

With the Solomons lying at the fault lines of a new Cold War between the US and China in the Asia-Pacific region, both countries, as well as regional US ally Australia, have watched the recent election “very closely,” seeing it as a “bellwether” of regional attitudes as the great power competition heats up.

As for Ambassador Yastishock’s claims about Sputnik’s reporting on USAID’s alleged interference campaign, Siracusa said her allegations look “ridiculous.”

“She just hyped her response to you and, of course, right now, most of the officials in Washington, they're anti-Russian, they're anti-Chinese. And so they see everything coming out of Moscow and the Beijing as being anti-American,” the scholar summed up.