Footnotes

T OOKING back over the history of local goveminent in Papua New Guinea’s 28 post war years, one gets the impression of a large measure of failure of the system to commend itself to the people it was intended to involve in the process of decision-making and in the development of the country.

Of course, there are some councils which have been successful and have done much good work in developing their areas. But the failure of a number of others to do so is evidenced both by large-scale resistance to the payment of tax by villagers, who consider that they are not getting good value for their money, and, more importantly, by the emergence of unofficial bodies seeking to compete with the official councils in the field of local government.

The best known of these is the Mataungan Association of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. But there are others, notably the Nemea

Landowners Association in east ern Papua, and the movement led by former university student John Kasaipwalova in the Trobriand Islands.

In passing, it is interesting to notice a certain inconsistency in governmental attitude towards these movements. While the present government has reversed the tough line taken by its pre decessor towards the Mataungan Association and has leant over

backwards in its efforts to placate it, it has sent riot squads into the Trobriands; and the Minister for the Interior, Dr John Guise, has issued a stem warning to Nemea’s leaders that the government “will not tolerate” their activities. Yet, as I under stand it, both these Papuan movements are trying to do exactly what the Mataungan Association has been allowed to get away with; that is, provide an unofficial alternative to official local govern ment. Is it the government’s view that Papuans can be browbeaten but not Tolais? Well, Dr Guise should know.

A characteristic common to all these break away movements is that they do not seek to em brace all the people living in a certain geographical

With Percy Chatterton

in Port Moresby

Lets Get

Down To

Village Level

area, but only those who subscribe to their views —and their funds; and this would seem to be a very odd and difficult basis for local government.

To some extent, perhaps, the post-war adminis tration and the government it dominated is responsible for this unorthodox view of local government, since, in the early years of official local government councils, these councils did not include under their jurisdiction everybody in the area they covered, but only those who lived on traditionally-owned land. For many years I lived

next-door to the headquarters of the Hiri Local Government Coun cil. But I was not required to pay tax to it, nor was I under its jurisdiction, because my house was built on “alienated land”, that is, on land which had been bought by the administration from its tradi tional owners and leased to the mission body I worked for.

These councils were loosely de scribed as “mono-racial”, but this label is not really correct. Non

indigenes who were living on traditionally-owned land under some, generally informal, form of permissive occupancy, were under their jurisdic tion equally with the indigenes living on the same land.

Later, the relevant legislation was amended to provide for the setting up of what were, again loosely, called “multi-racial” councils. These were councils with authority over their whole area and all the people in it, irrespective of whether they lived on traditionally-owned or “alienated” land.

But by that time the harm had been done, and Paguineans had become accustomed to the idea of local government as an institution which included! some and excluded others living within a par

ticular geographical area under its authority. The breakaway bodies currently making their appear ance have merely built on and extended an already existing concept, unwittingly generated in the 1950 s and 1960 s by the then-existing official system.

What is wrong with local government? Why has it become so unpopular? And where do we go from here? 1 suggest that our present troubles are, in part at any rate, due to the fact that in the ’sos and ’6os local government councils were established on purely economic foundations. Whether or not a council should be established, and if so what should be its size and what area it should cover, were questions decided on grounds of economic viability rather than of social acceptability. More over, “economic viability” was conceived of purely in terms of western economics. The possi bility that Paguineans might, in fact, prefer to turn out en masse and build roads with their own hands rather than pay tax so that somebody else could be employed to build them, was not taken into consideration.

This attitude was, of course, just a part of the overall governmental attitude of the period, which

envisaged development as a purely economic

process. I am happy to be able to remember that mine was one of the first voices to be raised against this point of view, but the pleas which I and others made for more consideration to be given to social and political factors in develop ment planning fell on deaf ears until quite late in the life of the second House of Assembly. Now, fortunately, the point of view which we advocated in vain has been incorporated in the National Coalition Government’s development policy.

But to get back to local government. In my view, most of the present local government councils are too big or too small. They should be scrapped, and to take their place there should be development at two levels. On the one hand the “area authorities” currently being established at district level should become district councils and should be given more power. On the other hand we should go back to the earlier, now abandoned, concept of village councils.

Village councils worked well in pre-war Papua and in Papua New Guinea’s early post-war years.

On the southern coast of Papua, and probably elsewhere, they were a formalisation of the system which had operated in pre-contact times, when the headmen of the various descent groups which

made up the village got together to regulate and control the life of the village. In fact they were at one and the same time both village councils and village courts.

Village courts are much in the news just now, and it looks as if at long last we are to have them; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the fact that we have always had them is at last to be officially recognised, and they are to be brought under some sort of control.

This is a step which I believe should have been taken long ago. However, the discussions which took place at the Seventh Waigani Seminar showed that there is a conflict of opinion on this issue among Paguineans themselves, some being in favour of, and some against, the plan for the regularisation of village courts.

To my mind, one of the great advantages of village courts is that they can operate in the ver nacular. There has been much argument about the suitability or otherwise in a Papua New Guinean setting of the introduced and only marginally modified western law which our courts administer.

But, as I see it, a major weakness of our present system is not in the kind of law which is adminis tered but in the fact that it has to be administered through the medium of interpretation, and some times of multiple interpretation.

In view of the almost universal dependence of our courts on interpretation, it is almost incredible that during nearly a century of colonial rule there has been no serious attempt to train court in terpreters for their extremely difficult job, or to give them a status and working conditions which would attract competent and reliable men to this profession—for it is a profession and a highly skilled one at that.

As a result, much interpretation in our courts has been inadequate, some of it has been just plain bad, and some has almost certainly been corrupt.

Many years ago, an elderly villager sought my advice on an incident which had occurred in his village which had upset him very much indeed.

After listening to his story I told him, “If what you have told me is true, I think that you have a very good case, and that if you go to court with it you will probably win”.

Looking me straight in the eye, he replied with great simplicity and without the least realisation of the enormity of what he was saying. “Oh, no,” he said, “I can’t do that. I couldn’t afford to pay the interpreter.”