President Ma Ying-jeou met on the afternoon of October 9 with Solomon Islands Deputy Prime Minister Manasseh Maelanga. The president, on behalf of the government and people of the ROC, extended a cordial welcome to Mr. Maelanga and called for continued strengthening of interaction and cooperation between the two nations.
In remarks, the president thanked Mr. Maelanga for traveling the long distance to Taiwan to participate in the 2012 Double Tenth National Day celebrations and related activities here. The president noted that Deputy Prime Minister Maelanga has been in his current post for over two years and has assisted Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo in carrying out his policies. The deputy prime minister has done outstanding work, said the president, who expressed confidence that these efforts will lead to further development of the Solomon Islands.
President Ma stated that diplomatic relations between the ROC and the Solomon Islands date back nearly 30 years to 1983. Bilateral cooperation projects in a variety of fields such as technology exchanges, medical cooperation, educational cooperation, and infrastructure projects, have yielded considerable results, he said. For instance, the ROC agricultural technology mission stationed in the Solomon Islands has achieved tremendous success with a paddy rice project there. Presently, the mission is continuing to expand cultivation of vegetables and is carrying out a small animal husbandry project. Meanwhile, the president said that two years ago when he visited the Solomon Islands he toured the Central Hospital, which was constructed with assistance from the ROC. That hospital is still the largest hospital in the Solomon Islands, he said, adding that the ROC has set up a Taiwan Health Center and has dispatched doctors to staff the facility. Consequently, bilateral cooperation in the field of medicine is also quite close, he stated.
The president furthermore remarked that the ROC has helped the Solomon Islands with a variety of solar power projects, including the installation of solar power generation systems at the prime minister's office building and the soon-to-be-completed parliamentary building. Over the past two years, he said, Taiwan has also extended its “Light From Taiwan” project to the Solomon Islands, donating portable solar-powered lamps to women and schoolchildren there to provide illumination in the evening hours. Altogether, the ROC has provided 19,000 lamps to the Solomon Islands, he noted.
As for people-to-people and cultural ties, the president stated that the Solomon Islands minister of agriculture and livestock graduated from Taiwan's National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, and the number of students from the Solomon Islands studying here is increasing annually. In 2011, he said, one doctoral candidate and two master's candidates from the Solomon Islands received the first Ph.D. and master's degrees ever to be awarded by universities here to anyone from the Solomon Islands. Presently, over 40 students from the Solomon Islands are studying here, and the president said he hopes to see continued strengthening of cultural ties in the future.
President Ma also expressed a special thank-you to Stanley Tapeva, a local village chief in the Solomon Islands. When southern and eastern Taiwan suffered heavy damage from Typhoon Morakot in 2009, Mr. Tapeva donated the equivalent of over NT$4,000 to the relief effort here. In addition, the government of the Solomon Islands has advocated meaningful participation for Taiwan in the international community in many international venues, he pointed out. The president expressed his hopes for continued strengthening of bilateral interaction and cooperation in the future, thereby further solidifying the alliance between the two nations.
In addition to Deputy Prime Minister Maelanga, the delegation included Minister for National Unity, Reconciliation & Peace Hypolite Taremae , Minister for Justice & Legal Affairs Commins Aston Mewa , Member of Parliament Stanley Sofu , and Solomon Islands Ambassador to the ROC Laurie Chan . The delegation visited the Presidential Office in the afternoon to meet with President Ma. Also attending the meeting were National Security Council Secretary-General Jason C. Yuan (袁健生) and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tung Kuoyu (董國猷).