Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, the outgoing chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, is delighted to officially hand over the chairmanship of the region’s political decision-making body to his successor, the Prime Minister of Tonga, at the 53rd Leaders Meeting starting today in Nuku’alofa.
At a press conference before departing for Tonga, PM Brown said he would now have more time to focus on the local economic growth, debt management, and inflation.
However, Brown said he still had some unfinished business as the outgoing chair of the Forum.
His immediate focus is to ensure that he supports and contribute to the incoming chair, Prime Siaosi Sovaleni’s efforts to follow through the implementation plan which was adopted and endorsed at last year’s Forum Meeting in Rarotonga.
“A number of initiatives there that require member countries to follow through and I guess for us really it’s now obligating again strongly as we have always been in the past for measures to address things like high inflation costs, the debt sustainability across the region, how that can be managed as all of our countries have come out of Covid with increased debt, and ensuring that our economic growth continues on its current trajectory to ensure that our country is able to meet its demand and meet the increasing costs that we’re starting to see, impacting us as a result of inflation.”
Following the handover, Brown said there were some incomplete dialogues that he would also follow through as the former chair.
“It’s been quite a hectic year as being the chair of the Forum with a number of recent engagements that I’ve had the honour to lead the region on. And I guess a number of them have been in terms of co-chairing a number of summits that we’ve had mostly with the .US Government/President, president of Korea, again this is the first time that Korea hosted the Pacific Island countries following this system, this method that we have of collective engagement with major dialogue partners.
“And also, we had during the year, a summit with the Government of India and the Prime Minister and most recently with the Government of Japan with the PALM meeting that I was at just a couple of weeks ago.”
Brown added that while tending to his responsibility as the Forum chair to co-chair these international summits, there was also an effort after Covid to provide a sharper focus on Pacific leadership in the region.
When asked about juggling the pressure and stress of Forum chair and the Prime Minister roles, Brown said “It’s a hefty workload done.”
“Last year, I spent a considerable amount of time attending various international engagements such as the United Nations, we were at the ASEAN annual meeting, where the Forum Secretariat signed an MOU with the ASEAN and Secretariat again, a closer collaboration between our part of the world and South East Asian countries,” he added.
“The summits that I mentioned took a hefty toll as well as my own responsibilities as Prime Minister leading our country.”
Meanwhile, PM Brown said Cook Islands will not be attending the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa because the country has not been invited, and efforts to gain membership are ongoing.
