A World Quest for Independence Now Surges Into the Pacific Basin : Manihiki Demands Freedom, Then Thinks Better of Belonging : Cook Islands: Sex and secession under control. On Puka Puka, the most severe punishments are publicly announced in church.

It’s almost midnight. I’ve just returned from a power dinner at Vincent Ingram’s. It was stag, still an acceptable form of gathering among Kiwis. Present were the Catholic bishop, the prime minister, the leading tradesman, the New Zealand representative, member of Parliament Vincent and me.

I’m writing not to tell you of the rapport but to relay the after-dinner tales of local Prime Minister Jeff Henry. If you thought news of the campaigns for autonomy in the Soviet Union had skipped us, guess again.

A little background. The political entity that is today called the Cook Islands embraces two patches of Pacific terrain, the northern and southern island groups.

Physically, the lower group consists of well-populated islands, mostly of the high volcanic type or old atolls that have been raised well above sea level. There is no rationale for having the northern group--all scattered atolls with a different life style--in the nation. They were simply included by fiat when New Zealand was handed a mandate to oversee the islands by England in 1901, apparently at a social club over a dinner very much like the one at Vincent’s.

Recently, some people in the northern group on Manihiki Atoll--who do listen to world news on shortwave radio--decided that they should secede.

They sent a delegation to the prime minister to advise him of their desire for independence .

He heard them out and then it was his turn. “Good,” he said. “How can I help?”

That was the one answer they had not anticipated. They really had not thought ahead to implementation.

Taking advantage of their silence, the prime minister volunteered that he should at once pick up the phone to advise the queen’s representative and the parliamentary secretary that Manihiki was out; then he would cancel shipping and fire any civil servants from Manihiki currently on government payroll. Was there anything more that they wanted him to do?

The three delegates from Manihiki looked at each other for a few seconds.

The one seated in the center stood up and said that, if it was all right with the prime minister, he’d like to make a statement. He then cleared his throat and announced that they had changed their minds; if it was still permissible, they’d rather not secede.

During the after-dinner discussion, while the prime minister was on the subject of the northern group of islands, he pointed out that not all the atolls were political pains in the neck. There was, by contrast, Puka Puka, an isolated atoll of about 1,000 people who never need anything. Hell, they don’t even want an airport.

Although they have the structure of government at Puka Puka, including an Island Council, parliamentary representative and English law, the citizens don’t make much use of it. They rely on a hybridization of ancient practice and their church.

On Puka Puka, the worst punishment elders can mete out is to banish the culprit from the island; the second worst sentence is to declare that a person is no longer an adult but a child--a child who will not be heard at meetings, who will receive a child’s wages and a child’s share of all food distribution.

The sentence remains in effect until the child expresses sincere regret for his or her actions. Then all adult rights are restored and the original incident is forgotten.

Other punishments include fines of one, two, three or even as much as five cents. The amounts may not seem onerous to you and me but understand that these fines are announced in church. The humiliation is apparently excruciating, so much so that such punitive actions are rarely necessary.

What sort of offences merit such cruel and unusual public shame? Conservation offences. If you take a bird out of season, or a crab or coconuts that are not ready to harvest, they throw the book at you. The kinds of domestic violence that fill our courts in the United States--rape, incest, battering, child abuse--don’t seem to be a Puka Puka problem.

And to prevent any potential problem of inbreeding, the atoll has developed its own effective cross-fertilizing custom.

On Puka Puka, there’s an annual week-long event shortly after our New Year. It involves all three settlements. These villagers, by the way, call themselves the Americans, the Dutch and the Japanese for reasons that are largely obscure. But the custom couldn’t be less obscure: During that week, all young men remain in their villages while all young women move as a group one village over, either to the left or the right; direction varies by the year.

Jeff Henry also told us that Puka Pukans are good-natured butts, throughout the Cook Islands, of what we call “Polish jokes” and what the Irish call “Kerry jokes.” And, if you are wearing a wild color, “you’re dressed like a Puka Pukan.”