On Friday I wrote about nostalgia for former colonial administrations among now-independent Third World nations. Musing about that, I remembered an experience the DrsC had in Rarotonga, one of the loveliest of the South Sea islands. Imagine Polynesian charm overlaid with a thin veneer of proper Britishness, courtesy of its association with New Zealand.
We were being shown around the island and came to their jail, its grounds surrounded by a fence you could literally step over. Our driver/guide assured us that on a small island there is no place to escape to, no place to hide out because everyone not only knows everyone else, but is related to most of them. We marveled.
Our obvious bemusement caused the guide to tell us about their police chief problem, and its solution. They’d had indigenous police chiefs who didn’t work out as the family upsets caused by arresting and prosecuting misbehaving relatives were too intense to tolerate.
The islands’ leaders finally concluded they needed to import a police chief from New Zealand who had no relatives on island. Someone who would follow the legal code and arrest those who needed arresting.
Rarotonga was happy with how this solution turned out. They voluntarily reverted to a colonial administrator for their police force, albeit one they selected. I’d call that colonial nostalgia in action.
