nationhood

Autopsy on blueprints for PNG's nationhood

From Percy Chatterton In

Port Moresby After repeated delays the final report of Papua New Guinea’s Con stitutional Planning Committee, still incomplete, was tabled m the House of Assembly on June 27. Simultan eously, a minority report, necessarily also incomplete, was presented by Chief Minister Michael Somare, and the Deputy Chief Minister, Dr John Guise. Both Somare and Dr Guise had been ex-officio members of the CPC: indeed Mr Somare was its titular chairman, but they had not taken a regular part in its activities, and it had been its Deputy-Chair man Father John Momis, who had spearheaded the committee’s work.

The report is a massive affair, comprehensive in its coverage and sonorous in its style. The thorough ness with which the committee has tackled and carried through its job cannot but be admired; but there seem to be many, both inside and outside parliament, who feel that at this stage in Papua New Guinea’s emergence into independent nation .hood the national need would have been better served by something simpler sooner. This is one of the themes of the minority report.

After a week of acrimonious ex changes between Chief Minister Somare on the one hand and Father Momis and Mr John Kaputin on the other, it now looks as if the CPC, recognising that Mr Somare can count on support from the People’s Progress Party component of his National Coalition as well as from some members of the opposition United Party, is prepared to modify some of its recommendations, and that, when the House reconvenes in August, a “post-final” version of the report may appear. Whether it will go far enough to satisfy Messrs Somare and Guise remains to be seen.

The part of the report which has received the most publicity has been that which relates to citizenship. But its most important part is that which deals with the machinery of govern

ment. The House of Assembly is to be renamed the National Parliament, but its reality is not much changed, the committee having opted for a basically “Westminster” system. The 18 “regional” seats of the present House will be abolished, and the official seats (already a dead letter) will formally disappear. The number of “open” electorates will be correspondingly increased, leaving the House, as at present, with a membership of just over 100. This means one member for every 25,000 of the population; and the committee recommends that the allowable variation from this norm should be fixed at 20 per cent, giving a range of 20,000 to 30,000. This range has been very substantially exceeded in the past (18,000 to 44,000), and such a limitation would seem to be very desirable.

The most important innovations in this part of the report are the establishment of “watch-dog” committees on the American model and, rather startlingly, the rejection of the concept of a Head of State.

Under the committee’s plan formal functions such as assent to bills would be vested in the Speaker, while the head of state would in effect be the Cabinet, or, as it is to be renamed, the National Executive Council. The report argues that a collective rather than an

individual head of state will be more “Melanesian”.

On both these issues the minority report dissents. Messrs Somare and Guise want a President as head of state, and would prefer a strengthen ing of the present “subject commit tee system” to the plan proposed by the CPC.

CPC has proposed a literacy test for candidates for election to the National Parliament, but this is op posed by the minority report and by many members of the present House, and it is likely to be one G f the points on which the CPC will give way.

Perhaps the most far reaching of the report’s recommendations is that dealing with decentralisation. The CPC accepts the concept of provin cial government, but rejects the present four “regions” (Papua, High lands. New Guinea lowlands and New Guinea islands) as a basis for such government, which it prefers should be established at district level This will mean 19 or 20 provincial assemblies with a total membership of about 300. Has anyone done any arithmetic on the cost to the tax payers, I wonder! But costly or not, this proposal appears to have general support, and a Bill to implement it has already been passed without dissent.

I think that provincial government

Burden on tarnavprc es# ucr#f Uil laAfJayCls

district by district may work very well in the New Guinea islands region, where most of the boundaries are natural ones. Will it work equally well on the mainland, where district boundaries are artificial? The dis trict boundaries were drawn into the map by the now-execrated colonial government to suit the requirements of a kiap system of control; and relabelling them provinces does not make them less artificial or less colonial.

In its chapter on provincial gov ernment the CPC seems to me to be using the same set of arguments on the one hand to reject regional level government and on the other to support district level government.

But it is undoubtedly right in claim ing that this is what the people have asked for. Whether they will like it when they get it, and have to pay for it, remains to be seen.

The report sets out in some detail

the functions and powers of provin cial governments and the channels open to them for revenue raising.

The fact remains that the cost of this potentially very expensive scheme, whether it be financed from national or provincial revenue, will fall on the taxpayers, and in Papua New Guinea this means on the wage and salary earners, since Finance Minister Julius Chan does not seem to have been any more successful than his colonial predecessors in ex tracting income tax from primary producers who can plead illiteracy as an excuse for not keeping records.

The report and the minority report differ only marginally on the issue of provincial government. The latter wants more flexibility in determining areas to be designated provinces.

Reading between the lines, one may guess that Dr Guise would still prefer larger units as “provinces” a term which, incidentally, he first suggested the use of.

The citizenship issue has, perhaps, loomed larger in public debate than

its importance warrants. The CPC proposals are certainly tough. Under them an expatriate would have to have lived in Papua New Guinea for 160 years to qualify for immediate naturalisation. Others would have to wait for periods of from three to eight years before becoming eligible.

I think that the CPC is right in not wanting too many naturalised citizens around in the early formative years of independence, and, after all, we whiteskins do tend to be bossy.

But the recommendations seem un duly harsh towards people of mixed race, many of whom have no white “taint” in their ancestry, and some of whom are of pure Melanesian descent. The CPC has conceded that the definition of “indigenous” should include people from neighbouring Irian Jaya, the Torres Strait Islands and the Solomon Islands. But what about those from other parts of Melanesia such as the Loyalty Islands and Fiji? It seems odd that a committee so bitterly anti-colonial as this one should be prepared to regard as aliens people who trace their descent from a Melanesian born under a different colonial yoke!

The authors of the minority report and their supporters are in favour of more liberal citizenship rules, and it seems likely that a compromise will be reached on this issue before the House reassembles.

One chapter of the report sets out a Bill of Rights designed to replace the present Human Rights Ordinance and largely covering the same ground, though in some areas a distinction is made between the rights of citizens and those of non citizens. Another lays down a leader ship code to regulate the activities of politicians and senior public servants, and recommends the ap pointment of an “Ombudsman Commission” to see that it is adhered to. This commission will also carry out the functions more generally associated with ombudsmanship, namely that of being available to attend to the complaints of ordinary people who feel aggrieved about their treatment by the bureaucracy.

The report comes down firmly on the side of an independent judiciary and a non-political public service, and recommends the establishment of two commissions a Judicial and Legal Service Commission and a Public Service Commission, to ensure that these ends are secured.

In a chapter on “The Disciplined Forces” the committee sets out its views on the functions and respon sibilities of the Police Force on the one hand and the Defence Force on the other. It recommends that both

these forces should be under the control of the National Executive Council, acting through civilian ministers. It is emphatic that the Defence Force should be used to assist in maintaining internal security only when a state of emergency has been declared by processes laid down in the Constitution.

In an important final chapter the committee lays down the principle of “one person one office” and lists a number of offices whose holders should be, it considers, free from outside direction and control. These, it suggests, should be designated “Constitutional Holders”. They are listed as: The Chief Justice and other judges of the National Court of Justice; the Chief Ombudsman and other ombudsmen: the Public Pros ecutor; the Public Solicitor; the Electoral Commissioner; the Clerk of the National Parliament; the members of the Public Service Commission; the Auditor General; and the Chief Magistrate.

A basic principle underpinning the whole CPC report is that set out at the beginning of the chapter on the National Executive Council (that is, the Cabinet) namely that “Power belongs to the people”. The report adds: “In the great majority of the societies that make up our nation it was from the people, rather than kings or chiefs, that power was taken by the colonial rulers. It is therefore appropriate that it be the people to whom that power should now be returned.”

“Power belongs to the people”. A noble ideal indeed, and one which very few nations have successfully put into practice. Will Papua New Guinea take its place among that select few? • Behind with its legislative draft ing programme because of a lack of staff Papua New Guinea will be helped out by Australia, Chief Minister Mr Michael Somare assured questioners in the middle of July.

Mr Somare said he had spoken with the Australian Attorney-General, Senator Lionel Murphy, during Senator Murphy’s visit to PNG.

The Chief Minister said Senator Murphy had given him an assurance that he would “do all possible” to assist Papua New Guinea in its legis lative drafting programme. Apart from the work that would soon be necessary in preparing a draft Con stitution Bill, there was also a con siderable backlog of legislative draft ing work to be done.