Voters on the Rampage

School burns after candidate loses his seat. Sean Dorney.

IN THE immediate post election period there were several cases of destruction of property by supporters of defeated candidates.

The attack on the Pangia High School in the Southern Highlands vividly illus trates the thinking that leads to this sense less destruction. The high school is in the electorate of lalibu/Pangia held until this election by the Pangu Pati’s Pundia Kange who was a Minister under Michael So mare for several years.

Pundia Kange from the Wiru clan on the Pangia side of the electorate was de feated by Mr Roy Yaki a Paias Wingti supporter who is from the Kewa clan on the lalibu side.

On the morning of Monday, July 6 two days after the counting of votes began 50 men armed with axes stormed the Pangia High School grounds. They were from three Wiru villages nearby: Pondi, Lawri and Maia.

Surging through the school wielding their axes, they severed electrical lines, chopped through doors, tore open water tanks and smashed plastic sewerage pipes.

Breaking into the school office, they wrecked typewriters and a photocopier.

They also stoned dormitories, teachers’ houses and classrooms shattering hundreds of glass louvres.

From the store room they stole food, from the home economics class, sewing machines, and from a volunteer’s house, curtains. They set fire to the school’s pig gery and slaughtered four large pigs, hack ing the animals up and then making off with the pig meat.

The Pangia High School was opened in 1981. Dr Sheldon Weeks, one of the most distinguished educationalists in PNG, gives this explanation as to why it was wrecked: “The people involved were incited to riot because “their man”, Pundia Kange, had lost the election to Roy Yaki a Kewa from lalibu, not a Wiru from Pangia. The argument was that Pundia Kange had built the high school when he was Minister for Forests and Health in the Pangu Govern ment (1977-1980), therefore they could rip it down, and Roy Yaki could build it up again if he wanted to.

“There was also a feeling against the high school because the headteacher.

Deputy and other senior teachers were all from lalibu and it was felt they had sup ported Roy Yaki instead of Pundia Kange,” Dr Weeks says.

There were 10 candidates for the la

libu/Pangia seat. Papua New Guinea has a first-past-the-post polling system and Yaki won with 4,607 votes or 23 per cent of the total vote. Kange scored 4,238 votes or 21 per cent, while the other eight can didates shared the remaining 56 per cent of the votes.

Dr Sheldon Weeks says the high school

was also held responsible for Mr Kange’s vote failing to reach the mark necessary to overhaul Yaki because other candidates from the Pangia area who were associated with the school had stood splitting the Wiru people’s vote.

The argument went that this allowed Yaki from the lalibu side of the electorate to sneak in and win.

“One of the candidates who split the Wiru vote was Thomas Lawa who had been Chairperson of the Board of Gover nors. Another, Walibe Wingi, was a Pan gia High School teacher.”

Lawa scored 1,372 and Wingi 2,279.

Yaki’s winning margin was only 369 votes.

Dr Weeks goes on to say that, ironi cally, the men allegedly responsible for the destruction of the high school come from the villages close to the school which have benefited most from it.

“By closing down the school they are actually denying other Wiru (Pangia) chil dren the right of catching up with their vil lage children’s ‘headstart’ in formal education.

“For example, by 1984 the village of Maia (one of the three from which the at tack allegedly came) had 44 high school ‘graduates’, most of whom were out of the district and employed compared with none from 20 Pangia villages from the loop road to the south and only one from 13 Pangia villages from the Tealands road to the north.”

The Pangia High School has not yet reopened.

The Southern Highlands Provincial Government has told the people it doesn’t have any money and if the school is to be reopened, the people of Pangia will have to pay the Kina 50,000 (S A 75,000) or more required to fix the electrical wiring, water supply, sewerage system and classroom damage.

Although early attempts to hold a meeting of the Board of Governors failed because nobody would come forward, dis cussions have started on how money might be raised from the district.

Some of the lalibu (Kewa clan) teach ers are to be transferred to other schools in an attempt to reduce any tension.

A large contingent of riot squad police moved into Pondi, Lawri and Maia vil lages at two o’clock in the morning of July 16 arresting as many men as they could find, returning again four hours later to catch those who had managed to run away.

Court cases against the accused men are pending. □