'In my heart I know
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
I am not a Papuan’
For seven years, between 1966 and 1973, Percy Chatterton contributed a monthly column of comment to PIM, called successively “To the Point” and “Footnotes”. Its discontinuance was due to the problems which arose when his wife contracted an illness which terminated in her death in 1975. He has now accepted PlM’s invitation to start again, and here is the first of his new series. He comments: “Whether I have been wise to agree to writing it is something which PIM readers will have to make up their minds about as the months go by.”
The four years which have passed since I wrote my last “Footnotes” article have been eventful ones in Papua New Guinea, being the two years immediately preceding and the two immediately following PNG’s attainment of independence. For myself I had always been in favour of early independence, and the experiences of the last four years have not led me to think that I was wrong. True, there are some things going on around me which trouble me deeply. But taking a broad view, Papua New Guinea has made its debut among the free nations of the world in a way of which it may well be proud, and which other emerging nations may well envy. If in this column I may sometimes voice my concern about PNG’s progress, it will be against this backdrop that I would wish my words to be read.
My wife passed away just a month before Independence Day, and almost immediately I was faced with the problem of whether or not to apply for PNG citizenship. I had always thought of myself as likely to be one of the first to do so. But I had been deeply disturbed by the attitude of the Constitutional Planning Committee on the question of naturalisation; and indeed, if their original recommendations had been adopted, I should have had to add another two and a half years to the 51 I had already spent in the country before becoming eligible for citizenship. In the event, the more liberal views of Prime Minister Somare prevailed, but the sour taste of the CPC proposals remained. 1 did not want to be a citizen on sufferance.
For this and other reasons which I need not go into here I decided, after much heart-searching, not to apply for citizenship. I have had no cause to regret my decision, and indeed the suspicion with which many birthright citizens seem to regard their naturalised fellow citizens makes me glad I made it. I am happy to find that I can give my British passport an occasional affectionate pat without any lessening of my love for this land and its people; and if any of them have been shunning me as a “foreigner” I haven’t noticed it.
Indeed, I find myself wondering whether there isn’t something a bit phony about the whole exercise. Is it possible for someone from a completely different cultural background really to identify himself or herself with the outlook and aspirations of the people of this country,
however much he may admire them from outside? I have often been told by local friends, “Oh, but we think of you as a Papuan”; so often, in fact, that I have sometimes almost been persuaded that it was true. But in my heart I know that I am not a Papuan, and never can be, however much I might wish to be.
I have always been against the concept of dual citizenship and still am. But I wonder whether Papua New Guinea would not have been wiser if it had made its conditions for naturalisation quite tough, while being more liberal in allowing non-nationals to take part in the public and commercial, and even in the political, life of the country. To those who say that this would be to allow non-nationals to get more than their share of the cake 1 would point out that the present system has produced a situation in which the ratio of “naturalised” to “automatic” citizens in the country’s chief decision making body, the National Executive Council, is out of all proportion to the corresponding ratio in the country at large.
Be that as it may, my decision not to apply for citizenship has saved me from what would otherwise have been a very real temptation, namely, to try to make a come-back to the PNG political scene at the 1977 elections. Under the electoral law, I would have been eligible to stand for any one of five different electorates. I think that I would have had a fair chance of success, and I would probably have been able to make a useful contribution to parliamentary debate. But I would have been blocking the way for some eager and able young Papuan anxious to embark on a parliamentary career, and this would have made no sense at all.
In this initial article I am introducing myself to some PIM readers and re-introducing myself to others, and so it has taken on a personal tone which I shall try to keep in the background in future contributions. My aim will be to comment on general trends in Papua New Guinea rather than on particular events. If these comments are sometimes critical, they will be so against the background of a continuing loyalty to this country and a continuing confidence in the sanity and wisdom of its people, particularly of the common people of the villages and shanty towns, towards whom my trust and affection will never fail.