Wanted: a national sport for PNG

From Gus Smales in Port Moresby

With all its new-found nationalism, Papua New Guinea has yet to pro duce what could be called a truly national sport.

Australian Rules supporters tried to establish their brand of football in PNG (with fair success in some areas), and the Prime Minister, Mr Somare, even tried his hand at a national golf promotion.

Cynics describe the local version of cards— laki, pronounced “lucky” —as the national sport, and super cynics give the honours to beer drinking.

But, now. the Defence Minister, Sir Maori Kiki, has come up with his own definition, referring to the “national sport” of traditional fighting between tribes.

Sir Maori was asked in the Natio nal Parliament if he considered the ceiling of 3,500 men in the Papua New Guinea Defence Force was ade quate to cope with possible trouble.

"What would happen in the even of civil war?” asked Opposition leader, Mr Tei Abal.

Sir Maori dismissed the possibility of civil war with what amounted to

a mental shrug of the shoulders. He said he supposed the present incidence of inter-tribal fighting already amounted to a kind of civil war.

“But I would call it the national sport of tribal fighting”, he added, and stressed that control measures were part of the duties of the civil police.

The continual eruption of tribal fights and the violence and hardship which they bring, worries the newly independent PNG just as much as it worried the former Australian administration.

The fighting ties up police strength, overtaxes the court system, and sets back rural development and national unity programmes.

Against this background, there’s tendency to accuse Sir Maori of flippancy when he dismisses tribal fighting as nothing more than a national sport.

But the point is that inter-tribal fighting is very much a reflection of the standard of development of the tribes which practise it. Sir Maori and other national leaders accept the

fact that in the more primitive parts of their country tribal feuding is a way of life, and that there is no easy cure.

There’s nothing ideological about these clashes which spring from such earthy matters as arguments between neighbouring farmers, fights over women and livestock (usually pigs), road accidents, and insults and in dignities (real or imagined).

There are indications that some aspects of today’s community deve lopment—roads, motor vehicles and cash markets in particular—have worsened rather than improved the tribal fighting pattern.

This could be true because today’s villager has more opportunity than ever before to meet a greater num ber of potential enemies as well as a greater number of potential friends.

But the PNG Government sees this as only a transient condition, and believes that tribal fighting will become a thing of the past when real social development starts to catch up with veneer development in the more remote parts of the country.