Good reason for avoiding Winston Peters

Kiribati’s president & Chinese ambassador go to Catholic Church instead

In a small and remote Pacific nation there is an emissary who, when scratching away on X, refers to himself in the Third Person.

That’s warning enough that it's probably not helpful when the president of another nation says he has a full diary and skips a meeting with said entity, The Right Honourable Aotearoa Foreign Minister.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s 79-year-old foreign minister Winston Peters has spent an entire lifetime taking imaginary offence over an assortment of non-events. His ego has the tactile strength of a bubble. When Kiribati President Taneti Maamau, 64, played hard to get over meetings and failed to satisfy New Zealand’s demands for accountability, there was bound to be a temper tantrum out of Wellington.

Earlier in January Peters wanted to fly to Tarawa with assorted members of parliament and review New Zealand’s $104 million aid package. He wanted to confront Maamau over unspecified issues, and set the date and place in Tarawa. But Maamau had an earlier booking 500 kilometres away on his home atoll, Onotoa. The first ever Catholic ordination was so important that China’s ambassador to Kiribati, Zhou Limin, attended. So did Nauru President David Adeang, while Peters sulked over it all.

They should have been with Winston: Bishop Simon Mani, Nauru President David Adeang and Kiribati’s Taneti Maamau. Facebook

It's extraordinary that Peters and his Ministry of Foreign Affairs simply missed an event being attended by hundreds of Pacific Catholics, including the president. It defies belief that they felt their business was of greater importance than something that was  of much greater evident cultural and religious priority. Taking New Zealand’s money, before Peters, did not require selling the soul.  This meeting mixup reflects poorly on Peters and New Zealand. While Peter's own assessment of his importance is profound, he is not a head of state or head of government.

And while the conspiracy around Kiribati and China has deepened, what no one is noticing is the still viable Kiribati-United States treaty which prevents Kiribati atolls being used as bases without Washington approval.