Native Defiance of

NG High Officials Struggle Over Village Council Policy

From a Special Correspondent RABAUL, April 20.

IT is expected here that the Top Brass of our Administration will make a strong effort in the coming month to settle this vexed question of whether or not the Raluana and other groups shall be forced to conform with the rest of the Tolai communities, and accept the establishment of village coun cils.

So far, as is well known, certain of these Tolai (Gazelle Peninsula) villages have resisted the wish of the Administration that they shall set up Village Councils to take care of local government, and especially health and education activities. In the case of Raluana villages, there was more than passive resistance— the way in which the District Com missioner (Mr. McCarthy) and his officials were assaulted when they visited the area to discuss the Council scheme is a matter of his tory.

As a result of the great publicity given to the Raluana affair, there is a tendency to overlook the fact

ffmi t m ß whi a f .h a hL not , the rf °? ly Tola j i refused to accept the wish of the Administration that amnll 6 nteSw 8 r? set u ?" For ex “ Carthv . Mc l f ’ in 1953, went out to Naweran and told the rather S” °!?/K llage , C . oun cil, or else they would be put in as

part of the Reimber Council.

The District Commissioner told this to the chief of Naweran (a comparatively wealthy man named Mano, who lives in a European-type house). Mano was sitting in front of the DC, and the villagers sat in fJ rou P behind him. Whel he heard thls ultimatum from the DC, Mano gave a signal and the whole crowd

rose up and began to converge upon the official group. Mr. McCarthy simply sat and stared at them; and, after a couple of minutes, Mano gave another signal and the natives sat down again.

On the same day, at Taviliu vil lage, there was a somewhat similar incident.

These villages made it clear to the District Commissioner that they were not in favour of forming vil lage councils.

It was some two or three months after uiat that the highest officials of the Administration formally told these recalcitrant villages that if they did not themselves form Vil lage Councils, the Councils would be set up by official proclamation.

Then came the Raluana incident.

That was followed more recently by a series of proclamations—and cancellations.

IT has now become a sort of con test of wills between the Ad ministration and the non-coun cil villages. One naturally asks, why force these councils on these vil lages when the villagers do not want them? The reason is that a certain number of the Tolai vil lages have accepted councils; and those councils in turn have become responsible for some of the costs of local government, including educa tion and health services, while the non-council villages also get edu cation and health, but at tfre cost of the Administration.

Naturally, the Tolai villagers who are paying their own costs get very restive when they see what the non council villages are getting away with; and the Administration now, to save its face, must clean up the situation either force councils upon the non-council villages; or permit the council villages to abandon their village-council sys tem.

As part of their campaign of re sistance to the council scheme, the Raluana people have sought Euro pean advice, and have been actively assisted and guided by legal men in Rabaul. Also, since their success in resisting the Administration, during the latter part of last year, the Raluanas have become a little cheeky and arrogant and inclined to be a law unto themselves. There is no doubt that, assisted by the advice of noh-official European, legal practitioners, they will place every possible legal difficulty in the way of the Administration’s pro posed adjustment of the situation.

IT is commonly reported that one of the chief embarrassments of the Administration is the un willingness of certain senior Dis trict Commissioners to advance the Village Council scheme —which was one of the pet productions of the Ward-Murray regime.

Although the Administration ap parently changed when Mr, Ward and Colonel Murray moved out, and

Mr. Hasluck and Brigadier D. M.

Cleland came in, actually there has been very little alteration in dis cernible native policy—the Village Council and the Native Co-opera tive Society plans have gone on just as if there had been no change in personnel, and the Hasluck-Cleland combination seems to be just as sensitive to the criticism of the ir responsible Trusteeship Council as ever J. K. Murray was.

Naturally, some of the older and more experienced Administrative officials, who have a well-balanced and realist view concerning native administration, do not take kindly to the present attempts to force these primitive New Guinea natives into a rapid acceptance of even

local self-government. They insist —and most of the older hands think they are right—that Canberra, with one uncomfortable eye all the time on the Trusteeship Council, is try ing to do in one decade or genera tion the things that experience has shown cannot safely be accom plished without a much longer period of preparation.

One or two of the DC’s may have succeeded in holding back a too rapid application of the Village Council idea. One in particular in sists that the natives are not ready to give up their present system, which appears to be a shadowy sort of local council, where the elders do much talking but accept no re sponsibility.