Party politics

to the fore in PNG poll

From a Port Moresby correspondent

Papua New Guinea managed to get a final list of the candidates who will be offering themselves for the 100 seats in the general elections which begin in the territory on February 19, and was surprised to learn that a grand total of 611 are standing. Earlier figures put it at about 530, but other notifications dribbled in to Port Moresby from the outstations after nominations had closed on December 29.

Two candidates have been returned unopposed, and in 10 electorates there will be a straight fight between two candidates. At the other end of the scale, 16 electo rates have 10 or more candidates each, the top scorer being the High lands electorate of Gumine Open, with 14 candidates.

Remembering that in the Papua New Guinea voting system the re cording of preferences after the first is optional, the result of multi ple candidate polls of this kind becomes more or less a lucky-dip.

The Secretary for External Terri tories in the Australian Government has suggested that the large number of candidates is indicative of a growing political awareness among Papuans and New Guineans. This view is perhaps a trifle naive.

The salary of a member of the second House of Assembly was $3,000 per annum plus allowances, and members of the third House are likely to get a substantial increase.

Of the 100 seats in the new House only 18 require of candidates an educational qualification; for the 82 “open” seats not even a knowledge of, or basic literacy in, one or other of the three official languages (English, Pidgin, Motu) is necessary.

Many of these seats will probably be won by men who in other walks of life would not qualify for a job at more than $lO a week. Others have several wives apiece who will keep the crops, including the cash crops, growing while their lords and masters are attending to the nation’s affairs.

No doubt some of these men are genuinely concerned to serve their country but, to suppose that all of them are highly motivated or even politically motivated at all in contest ing the election is more than a little

starry-eyed. Success in the elections means for many an affluence far in excess of anything they could other wise achieve.

On the other hand, in both regional and open electorates, there are highly educated candidates who, if they are successful at the polls, will be no better off and in some cases perhaps worse off financially than they were before resigning from lucrative jobs to contest the election; and it is right and necessary that the pay of parliamentarians should be adequate to attract men, and women, of this calibre to a parliamentary career.

Although the voting begins on Feb ruary 19, it doesn’t end until March 11, and in the meantime, what are the candidates up to?

This is something which is very hard to find out, as election camp aining in Papua New Guinea is not a matter of addressing public meetings with reporters present, but rather of patient plodding from village to village, settlement to settlement, and even house to house, meeting with and talking to individual voters or small groups of voters.

This is what the voters look for, and the candidate who undertakes this arduous task—and in Papua New Guinea’s terrain it often is very arduous—is the one with the best chance of winning.

However, though it is not easy to find out what individual candidates are doing, we do know what the parties are doing, and saying.

The right-wing United Party is con fident of obtaining a clear majority, not less than 60 it claims, in a House of 100. Perhaps it is over-confident, in view of two unknown factors—how the votes of the “new” voters in the 18-24 age group will go, and the strength or otherwise of support in the Highlands for radical young Thomas Kavali’s New Guinea National Party. Added to this is the fact that only a few more sophisticated voters will actually vote for a party; the majority will vote for a person they know and trust.

The United Party is working hard to live down its “Highlands party” image, and predicts that its anticipa ted majority will be made up of reasonably well-balanced groups from the four regions—Highlands, New Guinea Coast, New Guinea Islands and Papua. If the Party is indeed going to find itself in a position to form a government, it is very much to be hoped that this balance will be achieved, otherwise there will be stormy times ahead, both for the party and the country.

A United Party spokesman has

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rather brashly stated that if the party does not get a clear majority it will not form a coalition with one of the other parties, but will try to form a government with the support of the more conservatively minded non aligned members.

This sounds rather a chancy policy, and its announcement at this stage has given Pangu Pati the opportunity of declaring virtuously that it is not so hoity-toity, but will be prepared to form a coalition with the People’s Progress Party if it gets the chance.

The P.P.P. has made a rather more cautious pronouncement on the same lines.

Perhaps a more fundamental quest ion is whether the United Party will be able to hold together or will fragment under stress. Some com petent observers predict that it will fragment.

The three major parties have been hard at work putting out their policy talks in English, Pidgin and Motu over A.B.C. and Administration net works. In one of these, the People’s Progress Party sought rather naughtily to make a bit of mileage out of the internal stresses of the other two parties. Pangu Pati has recently washed some dirty linen in public, while the United Party spokesman already quoted has predicted that, if his party does get a mandate to govern, a power struggle will develop among its leaders for occupancy of the $50,000 prestige home currently being built for the future Chief Minis ter. Significantly, two of the three likely contenders he mentions by name are Highlanders.

In this situation the People’s Pro

gress Party has tried to project an image of itself as a happy band of brothers selflessly devoted to a com mon cause.

When we come to look at the parties’ platforms, it becomes evident that the gaps between them are not as great as their mutual bickering might lead one to suppose. And this is not surprising, because our short term needs are fairly obvious —more balanced development of well de veloped and under-developed areas, an effective form of decentralisation, both in government and administra tion, and a hard search for a solution of the twin problems of urbanisation and educational programmes and ob jectives.

The main difference between the parties lies in their attitudes to self government, and in this area their dissensions take on more and more the appearance of shadow boxing.

A rather ugly feature of the camp aign has been a series of allegations that some Administration field offi cers are foresaking the neutrality to be expected of public servants to support the electioneering of partic ular candidates. Predictably these alle gations have been strenuously denied by the Administration, and the Chief Electoral Officer has described them as being without foundation.

However, Pangu’s Michael Somare has continued to press the charge in one particular case, and has further alleged that the contents of telegrams sent by him to Port Moresby have been illegally divulged to interested Administration officers at the point of despatch—an allegation which the Department of Posts and Telegraphs has undertaken to investigate.