Integrity Talking Points

18 September 2012

The Worldwide Governance Indicators for the member states of the Pacific Forum are concerning.

Perhaps most alarming are the ratings for the Regulatory Quality indicator. All (except Tokelau and New Caledonia for which there are no statistics) are “in the red” showing that they are below the 25th percentile of the 215 countries assessed.  The Cook Islands, Tuvalu and Kiribati are rated below the 10th percentile.

On the Government Effectiveness indicator, Forum countries falling below the 25th percentile are: Kiribati, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Niue, Timor-Leste and the Marshall Islands.

Fiji, Cook Islands and Timor Leste are below the 25th percentile for the Rule of Law indicator.

The indicators suggest that States in which New Zealand has a particular interest are not well governed.  The Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tuvalu are worse now than the data from 2006. Tonga has made some progress since the centre of Nuku’alofa was torched during civil disruption and agitation linked to the democracy movement.

Fiji and Timor-Leste have made marginal improvement in the political stability indicator over the last six years but in general, the other indicators have deteriorated.

http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/worldmap_start.asp?allcountries=1

The following chart is my collation from the dataset.