New man, old game

From his earliest student days at the University of Papua New Guinea, Paias Wingti wanted to be prime minister.

He learned politics early, and the hard way. As the son of a traditional Highland clan lead er, he learned from his father the skills of personal diplomacy and consensus.

By the time he became Michael Somare’s deputy prime minister, the former student radical had become a mellowed operator who moved only when he was convinced he had the backing.

That critical move came in March, 1985,when he resigned from the Somare ministry and promptly swapped jobs with Opposition leader, Fr John Momis. Wingti’s move to the opposition benches was fol lowed by the first of several no-confidence moves against the man rightly regarded as the father of the nation’s independ ence from Australia.

Michael Thomas Somare,like Wingti, had been a young fireb rand, taking over as Chief Minister of the pre-independ ence parliament at the age of 33. For all but two of the 10 years since independence in September, 1975, Somare has ruled the South Pacific’s richest Melanesian state, dominating coalition governments of one form or another.

In the end it will be this skill the ability to govern with fluid coalitions which will especially fascinate historians when they come to examine this period of Papua New Guinea’s political evolution.

Ultimately, it was the failure at the last moment of this skill which led to Somare’s demise.

It was Wingti who, in 1982, helped Somare stitch together a dominating coalition centred on their Pangu Party, after the coalition of Sir Julius Chan and lambakey Okuk had run out of steam at the polls.

Though publicly loyal, Wingti developed doubts about the wisdom of the time-honored practice of buying backbench loyalty with pork-barrelling on the grand scale.

Wingti quickly teamed up with Chan in arguing that the economy was in a disastrous state.

“The (economic) warnings must be acknowledged. If we fail to heed them and we proceed to operate as we have been doing for the last two and a half years, then we face ruin and destruction,” ventured Chan in an interview on the eve of the 10th anniversary of inde pendence.

Chan and Wingti reiterated publicly that they had a public duty to act to overcome the paralysis of will at the centre of the Somare government. The paralysis deepened as further details emerged about the alleged intervention by Somare and his Industrial Development minister, Karl Stack, in an air port drug search of a plane owned by a group of business men associated with the sale of Israeli military aircraft to the PNG Defence Forces.

Despite last-minute man oeuvring and vote-buying, So mare lost on the floor of parlia ment to his student.

Somare was a gracious loser, applauding Wingti and shaking his hand when the Speaker announced the 58-51 vote.

Wingti has indicated that he will not be seeking to renegoti ate the aid agreement with Australia, but Chan, as Finance Minister, having announced the scrapping of the last Somare budget, will then be working within much tighter parameters when the parliament votes a new financial plan in March.

Michael Somare has so far indicated no intention of retire ment. At 49 he is still young in political terms and because his name is known in every village throughtout the country must be rated as having an even money chance at the next gen eral election, due on July 15, 1987.

But, Somare will have to solve one other problem before then. Wingti’s old rival, Tony Siagaru,may feel that by then it is his turn to take up the Pangu

mantle

Denis Reinhardt.