Editorials
Thursday, May 20, 1999Leafleting in parks
shouldn’t be bannedVENDORS wanting to hawk merchandise in public parks failed to win a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court last year, but that did not give government authority to prohibit freedom of expression in parks. State parks officials are badly mistaken in trying to prohibit the distribution of leaflets, which is protected by the First Amendment.The issue: The state has proposed to ban leafleting in some state parks.
City and state officials have opposed sales of message-bearing merchandise in parks and on Waikiki sidewalks for years. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996 upheld a Honolulu law banning T-shirt peddling on Waikiki sidewalks in the interest of public safety and aesthetics. The Supreme Court later rejected a challenge to a ban on the sale of T-shirts at the Washington Monument and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the nation's capital.
That court history clearly allows the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to prohibit sales of T-shirts, refreshments and other nonliterary merchandise in state parks. However, the department also proposes a prohibition of leafleting at several parks -- Diamond Head, Iolani Palace, Royal Mausoleum, Duke Kahanamoku Beach, Nuuanu Pali Lookout, Haena Beach Park on Kauai and Iao Valley Park on Maui.
Vendors have been unable to persuade courts that sales of garments and other merchandise with incidental messages should qualify for constitutional protection. In Hawaii and elsewhere, such products have been ill-disguised attempts to circumvent bans on vending. Attempts by vendors to equate message-bearing products with publications have failed.
The state is wandering into dangerous territory by resurrecting the vendors' mixing of those categories in an attempt to expand the prohibition to include leafleting. Failure to distinguish between retail vending operations and protected First Amendment activities could backfire.
Elections in Fiji
TWELVE years Fijians elected an Indian-led government that was immediately overthrown by the army. The coup leader, Col. Sitiveni Rabuka, installed himself as prime minister, ushering in an era of domination by native Melanesians under a constitution that barred ethnic Indians from holding important political positions or holding a majority in Parliament.
Elections were held last week under a new constitution that restored Indian rights. Rabuka's party was defeated and he was forced to resign as prime minister. Installed in his place was Mahendra Chaudhry, an Indian and leader of the Labor Party, which won 37 seats, a majority in the 71-seat legislature. With its coalition partners, Labor controls 52 seats.
Chaudhry's leadership was immediately questioned. The Fijian Association Party, a member of the Labor Party coalition, warned that Chaudhry's appointment threatened the nation's stability and demanded that he step aside in favor of an ethnic Fijian. But Chaudhry's opponents backed off when President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara appealed to the party to stay in the coalition and support the prime minister in the interest of national unity.
Relations between the native Melanesians and the Indian community, imported under British rule to work Fiji's sugar plantations, have long been strained. The Melanesians, who comprise about half of Fiji's 800,000 people, resent Indian domination of the economy. The resentment boiled over in the 1987 coup, which resulted in thousands of Indians leaving the country. Chaudhry was finance minister in the ousted government and was briefly jailed.
Whether the country is now prepared to accept an Indian prime minister is not clear. Chaudhry is risking another backlash -- perhaps another coup -- by assuming the prime ministership rather than deferring to a Fijian.
Tourism secrecy
GOVERNOR Cayetano should veto a bill that would give the Hawaii Tourism Authority the power to withhold from the public consultants' reports and internal analyses. The Honolulu Community/Media Council, a private watchdog group, is protesting the Legislature's passage of the measure and is calling for a veto.
The council objected, and rightly so, to the way the measure was approved as well as its content. It was inserted in legislation in conference committee, without public hearing or notice -- itself an example of the need for more openness in government. Among those criticizing the measure was Moya Davenport Gray, director of the state Office of Information Practices.
The bill would empower the authority to withhold information if the board felt its release would damage Hawaii's competitiveness in tourism. The immediate effect would be to make it possible for the Tourism Authority to keep confidential a study on Hawaii's competitive standing and another evaluating Hawaii as a tourism product.
This seems unnecessary and unwise. Studies paid for with public money should be made available to the public. We are not dealing here with military security, or with proprietary information of private companies.
In any case, the proposal should have been discussed in public hearings, not inserted into a bill surreptitiously when the public had no opportunity to object.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
