Coup attempt highlights Pacific’s ’indigenous’ dilemma

By Kevin Pamba

Lecturer in journalism.

Divine Word University, Madang

OUR Fijian wantok, George Speight, has a succinct object lesson from us in PNG about how incompetent a virtually 100 per cent “indigenous” political and bureaucratic leadership can be. If Mr Speight case studied PNG, he would notice that since independence in 1975 his Melanesian ‘big brothers’ here have proven incapable of grabbing the opportunity with both hands and govern their country well. He will also discover the same situation in the Melanesian countries of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Mr Speight also knows that Fiji was in the hands of the “indigenous” folk from independence in 1970 until Sitiveni Rabuka’s two coups in 1987.

Mr Rabuka’s problem? For the first time, the democratically elected government of Fiji was dominated by born and bred Fijians of Indian decent. The Indo-Fijians rose to political dominance after remaining in the shadows since the British imperialists brought their ancestors from the subcontinent and dumped them in Fiji to work the British sugar plantations about 100 years earlier.

In PNG, the political leadership is almost exclusively indigenous Melanesian. The formal workforce, apart from top and middle management positions in certain cases, is Melanesian. This is despite the medium to large businesses being predominantly foreign owned.

The informal sector is 100 per cent Melanesian. In feet, the 4.5 million residents of PNG are dominantly Melanesians. Yet this dominance has not seen PNG Melanesians determining their destiny with a sense of vision. Instead, Melanesian Papua New Guineans have been living for the day and rarely thinking with a collective vision beyond that wall. In living so, the socio-economic status of ordinary Melanesians here has been felling and appears appalling.

Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta has been frank about this sorry state of affairs in recent times. The elite few here have been able to do themselves favours on what they can lay hands on. The Melanesians of PNG have in essence, been on the back pedal. What happens to be the order in PNG is that;The leadership has been characterised by claims of acute corruption and self-serving ‘bigmanism’; The leadership has been lacking collective vision;The leadership continues to succumb to a myriad of pressures from outside even if for instance, it is advised that PNG imported staple rice cannot grow here, it takes it on face value; Political will is absent from promoting Papua New Guineans in business and this sector is allowed to be dominated by foreigners;The cumbersome civil service has been marred by ineptitude, nepotism and lack of political direction; The business sector has been very much alone, operating under usually ill-prepared government collaboration/scrutiny and in certain instances, at the mercy of back door deals with politicians in power; and the civil society has been confused with their lives affected by crime, alcohol and drug abuse and poor socio-economic indicators to show for. Ironically, certain reports suggest Fiji is much ahead in the socio-economic status of its people than PNG. The 1999 Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Program

(UNDP), for example, ranks Fiji at 61 while PNG feres lower at a dismal 129th out of 174 countries. The high ranking of Fiji perhaps reflects the socio-economic status of the enterprising Indo-Fijians who account for half of the population.

The indigenous political leaders of PNG have the constitution and all other laws on their side but have not used them to their country’s collective benefit. Instead many of them have benefited individually.

You just have to travel to Cairns or thereabouts and watch their family members and themselves enjoy their gains.

Mr Speight and other outsiders would realise that in their incompetency, the “indigenous” leaders of PNG instead have been looking north, south and elsewhere for saviours in recent years. In that pursuit they have opened the floodgates for foreigners to enter and compete with small-time Papua New Guinean entrepreneurs. It has also lead to standards dropping in some of the goods and services provided by these invited investors. These poor standards go virtually unchecked because of an under-funded “indigenous” bureaucracy.

In the most recent manifestation, the incompetency of PNG leadership coupled with recent external shocks on the economy has brought the country to a point where it is at the mercy of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other bilateral and multilateral sources of help. When Mr Speight and his armed supporters seized the Fijian Parliament at gunpoint two weeks ago, several PNG politicians jumped the gun in Parliament here reminding their colleagues that PNG must be on guard against such an incident happening here. These comments came few weeks after several others expressed fear in the media that race-based riots in Zimbabwe over land where people of European descent run successful farms, could also occur here.

Then came the juxtaposed diplomacy from our Foreign Minister, Sir John Kaputin, on the events in Fiji. Sir John diplomatically denounced Mr Speight’s action and sympathised with the plight of the indigenous Fijians and called for the “need to look for underlying causes, and make sure that they are addressed.”

In the same breath, Sir John announced a plan to review PNG’s foreign policy. As part of the review, the Minister wants to see that economic activities like tucker shop operations that foreigners his colleagues have invited by looking elsewhere for saviours.be curtailed.

When addressing the foreign policy review meeting at Parliament House last week, Sir John said: “Next time you buy a snack from a tucker-shop operated by a foreigner without the substantial capital or skill - ask yourself what happened. How? Why? And to whom do the benefits (of these businesses) trickle down to? The obvious answer will tell you why I regard the (Foreign Affairs) Department’s migration and citizenship activities as integral to its operations and vital to achievement of PNG’s foreign policy and development objectives.”

In what is before Fijians and Papua New Guineans of all persuasions, the bottom-line is an irony. That when we are opening up to globalisation and free trade that governments tend to have little control, we also feel being an “indigenous” people we can stand in the shadows and dream for special treatment, particularly towards economic pursuits of our countries. ■