look” political system

Papua New Guinea

Guise in call for “new look” political system

Papua New Guinea’s former governor-general, Sir John Guise, in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald in June, has questioned his country’s pre sent form of government, and made suggestions for another system “relevant to the cultural heritage of Papua New Guinea.”

Sir John wrote: The main purpose of my writing to you is to place on record my admira tion and respect for the opinions of Mr Ken Myer, chair man of the Australian Broad casting Corporation (ABC).

In a recent ABC radio inter view, he gave very timely and healthy advice to the compla cent minds of the so-called democratic society of Austra lians when they imagine and delude themselves by compar

ing their democratic institutions with other foreign countries, including my homeland, Papua New Guinea.

I support the chairman for his courageous insight in his pragmatic and realistic view, by stating publicly that Australians should realise that the demo cratic systems of governments as practised in Australia should not be equally applied to the democratic system of govern ment in Papua New Guinea, or any other Pacific or Asian gov ernments.

I listened very carefully with other leading citizens to the whole interview, and indeed his whole statement revealed his support for our national gov ernment, and did not in any way, directly or indirectly, con demn the democratic principles of the PNG Government.

Thus it was a great surprise to us that a member of the Papua New Guinea Parliament attack ed Mr Myer by taking a small portion of the chairman’s state ment, completely out of con text, in an effort to have the nation believe that Mr Myer had attacked the democratic proces ses within our national parlia ment. The member also called for the chairman’s apology, in deed a very sanctimonious approach.

I am no longer a serving politician, having retired after 21-22 years continuous service to my homeland. However, I offer a bold challenge to any politician, political analysts, political science experts, con stitutional lawyers, etc. to prove me wrong in my forecast; that eventually my homeland will have to radically readjust her democratic system to one of a “guided democratic system” under an executive presidential or semi-presidential system with a prime minister appointed by the president, who commands the largest number of followers in parliament, with the prime minister appointing the ministry among his majority group with the concurrence of the presi dent.

The present free-for-all or “dog eat dog” in the Western type of democracy which we inherited from our previous metropolitical mentor is, in my opinion, detrimental to the overall development for a deve loping society in the social, economic, educational and political systems, and is in my opinion long overdue for a system that is relevant to the cultural heritage of Papua New Guinea.

Indeed, the whole village sys tem in Papua New Guinea is obviously authoritarian in character, governed by consen sus opinion yet socialist in prac tice with a very strong in-built system of the extended family ties within a clan system.

This alone shows the com plete difference between the PNG democratic system and the Australian free-for-all democratic system.

Sir John Guise ... “relevant to the cultural heritage”