No Faith More Struggles

Papua New Guinea

Why PNG’s political system must be stabilised.

By Helen Fraser.

PAPUA New Guinea experts ex pressed concern at the ADAB de velopment conference about political instability in Papua New Guinea.

Mr Brian Brogan, of the National De velopment Studies Centre at the Aus tralian National University, said that PNG suffered from an excess of democracy. In broad terms, there was very deep respect for constitutional and legal form one of the legacies of the Australian colonial ad ministration. However, the society itself was very fragmented, allegiances were very local and there was no hierarchical tradi tion as in many Pacific countries, espe cially those of Polynesia. “Politics is bedevilled by an excessive desire to be in volved and to achieve something for one’s own group, which is often very small,” Mr Brogan said.

“Add to that the admirably idealistic constitution that was bequeathed by an army of young Australian legal scholars, and you have a recipe for disaster.”

Mr Brogan was previously Director of the Institute of National Affairs in PNG, and Professor of Economics at the Uni versity of PNG from 1977 to 1983. He told the ADAB conference that the PNG con stitution “almost enshrines instability”. It guaranteed a five-year life for each parlia ment, even if it were “hung” and unwork able. The constitution made it impossible for the prime minister to bring such a par liament to an early end. All that could happen was that allegiances, alliances and coalition shifted around; one transient government followed another; and most members, knowing that one term was all they would ever get, sought to extract all that they could for their own group in that time.

Mr Peter Hastings, Sydney Morning Herald columnist and long-time writer on Papua New Guinea, sent a paper to the ADAB debate from the PNG Highlands, where he was covering the recent national elections. In it, he said that the most sig nificant thing to emerge from the elections apart from the struggle for power be tween the Wingti and Somare coalitions was the extent to which electors had lost faith in the system.

“This is increasingly evident,” he said, “in the well-founded allegations of physi cal attacks on some scrutineers and re turning officers, and the demolition of polling stations in some Highlands areas, and the burning of ballot boxes.

“The loss of faith is reinforced by the mounting evidence of electoral fraud by

means of sectional voting, intimidation of candidates in some instances and large scale bribery in others, by the wholesale disappearance of thousands of ballot pa pers, and by the large number of failed candidates seeking either a recount of votes or evidence to support their allegations of fraud.”

Mr Hastings said that large-scale vote buying had been elevated to an art form.

He had obtained cabinet documents signed by Prime Minister Paias Wingti last December setting out 30 road and bridge building projects, ranging in value from Kina 30,000 to 50,000 Eighteen of the projects were in the electorate of Chimbu Regional, held by the Minister for Works, who held it easily. Mr Hastings said there was no accountability for the sums paid, no receipts and no records of who ulti mately received the money.

Mr Hastings said that before inde pendence, the electoral system had sur vived because of preferential voting, which had been abolished because of its alleged complexities. Now, under a first-past-the post system, there were bizarre anomalies.

In one electorate in the recent election, there had been 45 candidates, which meant 44 disappointed, failed candidates some of them very angry and a winner rep resenting less than two per cent of the electorate.

“In PNG today, there is the outward form of the Westminster system but few of its mechanisms. The most glaring defi ciency ... is the network of fragile coali tions which virtually ensure that a prime minister cannot afford to implement un popular policies because the opposition can at any time play havoc with discon tented ministers and back-bench members.”

Mr Hastings said that prime ministers were subject to regional and factional pressures and if they resisted could expect a vote of no confidence leading to a fre netic round of horse trading. “The need to return to preferential voting is urgent,” he said, “not least because the exchange of preferences would make PNG’s fragile party system work as it should.”

Mr Hastings said that provincial government had become a further desta bilising factor. “It is inefficient, costly and gets in the way of effective policy making in the centre.

A PNG resource law specialist and company director, Ms Meg Taylor, said that Mr Hastings’ analysis was depress ing, but described the reality of the situa

tion for many people. People in rural areas were frustrated, she said, and she believed the main reason was slow pace of eco nomic growth, caused by lack of investment.

Ms Taylor, said that an important fac tor in the shortage of investment funds was the law-and-order problem, especially as portrayed through the mass media of countries such as Australia and the US.

“The court system at least operates, but the difficulty of getting good police work makes it very frustrating for foreigners and even more so for Papua New Guineans.

There is a problem of continual political interference in business and of over government from the 18 provincial and lo cal governments and a national parlia ment with 109 elected members.”

Ms Taylor said that most public funds were being spent on bureaucratic infras tructure, not development projects, and the lead role in development was taken by the private sector, especially in minerals and large-scale plantation production. She said the administrative system created major constraints on investment.

“PNG seems to have an enormous number of rules and regulations govern ing what you must do to invest in the country,” she said. “Some are there for good reason, but it is a cumbersome proc ess one has to go through. There are train ing and localisation programs, delays in getting work permits for foreign workers, problems in getting visas and problems with passports being lost when they are submitted for visas. Other problems in clude the lack of skilled labour; probably one per cent of the population or less are skilled. And in the plantation economy one of the most vital problems for PNG is the problem of land tenure. Clans own land, village groups own land and the Land Ten ure Conversion Act does not allow nation als to sell land to foreigners.” □