history ?

Lessons from history ?

The candidates are at the barriers in the race for seats in Papua New Guinea’s enlarged House of As sembly—the House which everybody expects will bring the territory to self-government before its term is up four years from now.

It’s a pity that the majority of those standing, or their campaign managers, aren’t equipped to read and absorb the wealth of information to be found in The Politics of Dependence, because it could possibly do them some good. As it is, the book will probably be read only by a small number of specialists with sufficient interest and grasp of English, and then go into the archives alongside all the other fragments of political history of emerging ter ritories.

The Politics of Dependence is a competent academic survey of the 1968 elections to the PNG House of Assembly, the assembly which has just finished. It is the result of ex tensive field work done during that 1968 election campaign by a team of researchers from the Australian National University, and it gets to us in its present form because of the editorial collaboration of A. L.

Epstein, R. S. Parker and Marie Reay—with Parker also providing a masterly summing-up of the facts that emerged from the field studies.

Not every electorate was studied, but certainly those likely to provide most interest were. These included Rabaul, Port Moresby, the Highlands and Bougainville.

The university had made a similar study of the 1964 elections for the First House of Assembly, and thus in the 1968 survey it was able to make comparisons. Do these com parisons help us predict trends in the 1972 elections? That, of course, is the question, and the editors have made no attempt at prediction them selves. A close study of the material should nevertheless repay the earnest candidate.

About half of those candidates who stood for a second time in 1968

were defeated; and the studies reveal that less-conservative Europeans were elected in 1968 than in 1964; that those indigenous members tended to be elected who had some acquaintance with the white men’s ways; that indigenous members conducted their campaigns with greater mildness, stooping less to personalities and mud slinging than European candidates (and that a milder campaign was what the 1968 electors preferred); that political party affiliations were distrusted by most electors, and the parties in any case were not strong enough to make an impact; that there was no “national” politics, the interests of electors and can didates not extending beyond local horizons, and there was actual sus picion of other parts of the territory.

There was also, in some areas, both anti-European and anti-Administra tion sentiments reflected in the voting. Some of this was due to disillusionment about the record of the House of Assembly, or more parti cularly about the record of the local member. Constituents did not see it as an advantage to have their elected member appointed an assistant minister, or whatever, where he then would be more interested in being a “government puppet” instead of watching the interests of the elec torate.

Disillusionment and lack of under standing of parliamentary govern ment were some reasons why elec tors in some areas stayed away from the polling booths in droves. There was nothing to be gained by voting again—not after the last disastrous experience. And anyway, it was the Administration which really governed, not the elected members.

One of the themes that runs through this 1968 material is criticism of the lack of a political and electoral education programme throughout the territory at that time.

Since 1968 the Administration has certainly been aware of those deficiencies; there has been a much greater effort, which has been helped by an increase in the number of Administration radio stations and Administration news-sheets. Thus we might get renewed interest at the forthcoming ballot. And with the increased importance of political parties since 1968 we might also expect a different picture in that quarter. We will soon know, but one hopes we will not have to wait another four years before we can read the collected results of the 1972

election study.

SI.

(The Politics Of Dependence:

Papua New Guinea 1968, edited by A. L.

Epstein, R. S. Parker, Marie Reay. Aus tralian National University Press. $8.95).