The Papua New Guinea Elections

PACIFICPACIFIC ECONOMIC ECONOMIC BULLETIN BULLETIN Note The Papua New Guinea elections Rowan Callick Rowan Callick is the East Asian correspondent of The Australian Financial Review and has reported on four national elections in Papua New Guinea In 1996 he won the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year for his writing on Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific We do not want to be involved with diminished area, heavily circumscribed by their dirty politics. We have to limited executive capacity, a full diet of consider the wishes of the people. rhetoric that is sporadically impressive, a They were totally against the well-intentioned but inept struggle to activities and decisions of Pangu and the People’s Progress Party provide basic services, energetically and (Bill Skate, July 13). ingeniously conducted personal rivalries, and patriotically-garbed rent-seeking from Politics is a funny game. I have put foreigners. my foot down to prove that I can be a leader. We have been accusing Yet this time the electoral process had leaders and destroying them. That been launched with especially high expect- time is over (Bill Skate, July 22, on ations of forcing, finally, systemic change forming a coalition with Pangu and a return, after almost two decades, to and PPP). sober concentration on delivering schooling, In most democracies, elections are a matter health care and roads, to retrieve living of periodic pulse-taking. In Papua New standards that in many areas have actually Guinea they have superseded tribal declined during the 1990s. conflicts, sporting contests, and even the The scene for such a sea change was display of wealth, as the supreme arena for set impressively: first by the constitutional acquiring and testing status. reforms of Sir Julius Chan in 1995, which The process, as in much of traditional returned responsibility for parish pump Papua New Guinea life, is itself the focus, spending from provincial governments to taking primacy in parliamentary politics national parliamentarians, and second, over policy. When it came down to forming earlier in 1997, by the popular support for a government, in the small hours of July 22, the army in rejecting the use of mercenaries current issues, election pledges and past on Bougainville, and for the ensuing outcry associations were all, predictably enough, against corruption that led to Prime junked. And after initial unfocused Minister Sir Julius Chan standing aside. activism, the Skate Government settled Widespread, unprecedented cynicism back into a similar rut to its predecessors: about public life was put on hold as the unchallenged authority within a country plunged hopefully into its 110 PACIFIC ECONOMIC BULLETIN Note customary, feverish five yearly election—its Minister, Roy Yaki, then discovered the hopes built on the emergence, at the budget was too far behind schedule for the national level, of a selfless, skilled calendar financial year—so the leadership, and at the constituency level, Government will instead merely extend as ever, of a relative or friend. supply for the first quarter of 1998. A record 2,368 candidates (almost 50 Every post-independence parliament per cent up on the 1,645 at the previous has changed prime ministers once, mid election in 1992) stood for the 109 seats— term. This is usually the signal for jostling an average of 22 per constituency; each and fund raising for the next election to paid K1,000 deposit, only refunded to start in earnest. The 1997 campaign was no winners. With Papua New Guinea’s first- exception, effectively being launched by Sir past-the-post system, this translated into Julius’ unseating of Wingti in August 1994. more than half the winners gaining less Then the war chests of the coalition than 20 per cent of the votes in their seats. partners, PPP and Pangu, and of the other Sixteen parties stood candidates. Local major parties—Wingti’s People’s issues, as previously, dominated the Democratic Movement and Skate’s People’s campaigns—except in Port Moresby, where National Congress—began to fill. Despite a the election of four new MPs (Skate, the constitutional ban on contributions from first Papuan Prime Minister, being the sole non-citizens, powerful anecdotal evidence MP to be returned in the capital following a suggests that candidates solicit and obtain stint as governor, during which the city millions of kina from foreign businesses spruced itself up) appears to have been kept dependent on political patronage and partly attributable to overriding concerns approvals for licences, quotas and contracts. about corruption, which the citizens of the Some parties deploy resources to capital are most closely acquainted with. sponsor candidates. Sir Julius’ PPP has They observe the limousines with darkened traditionally opted instead to back winners windows, the extended banquetting, the —repaying the election expenses of comings and goings at Jacksons Airport. successful candidates, to lure their votes in At each of the post-independence the all-important vote for Prime Minister. elections, increasing numbers of sitting When Sir Julius defended this practice near members had lost their seats, culminating the end of the campaign, The National in 1992 when 62 fell. In 1997, this slipped newspaper responded: ‘Vote buying in back to 52, though the losers included for Parliament is at the centre of Papua New Guinea’s political instability and the first time two Prime Ministers—Sir corruption.’ A long-standing dispute over Julius and Paias Wingti. Fifteen Ministers control of Pangu’s own investment lost in all, just as in 1992. company, Damai—whose chief original But Sir Julius’ last Government, for all aim was to fund election campaigns—was its eventual unpopularity, did see a return the final trigger in the split of founder Sir to a semblance of sound macroeconomic Michael Somare from the party. Leader management. His experience, attention to Chris Haiveta, who had been Finance detail and love of control ensured a degree Minister, and who was to stay on as of administrative competence that his Deputy Prime Minister under Skate but successor lacked: Skate, who vowed ‘God now as Planning Minister, effectively is the Prime Minister, I am only His pushed out Sir Michael—who formed his executive officer’, sacked his first Finance own National Alliance Party. 111 PACIFIC ECONOMIC BULLETIN Note The campaign saw issues about made by EM TV, owned by Australia’s political fundraising and patronage Channel 9—its audience considerably presented through Papua New Guinea’s widened since the 1992 poll—were thriving branch of Transparency Inter- modest. The mass media played only a national, the anti-corruption agency supportive role in the main electoral founded by former World Bank staffers game. No significant market research angry at seeing their work undone by venal was conducted, either for the parties or for leaders—whose Papua New Guinea the media. president is Sir Anthony Siaguru, a lawyer A 16-member Commonwealth observer who has been head of Foreign Affairs, a group invited by the outgoing electoral Minister, then deputy secretary of the commissioner to follow the campaign Commonwealth. Its slogan: Pasim Pasin reported ‘serious problems’ including Nogut. The Catholic Commission for Justice, children being allowed to vote and Peace and Development warned: ‘Do not anomalies in the common roll, but said sell your country to the dogs’ (unnamed). these were not sufficient to cause the Another prominent campaign message, overall result to be invalidated. The large displayed near Parliament House, was a number of candidates; the diminished text from Proverbs: ‘When the righteous are alternatives for prestigious careers or for in authority the people rejoice, but when making money; the palpable success of the the wicked rule the people suffer.’ political élite in acquiring assets and Between such apocalyptic concerns educating their children expensively— and the more traditional electoral factors of albeit in both cases substantially in pork-barrel promises, antipathies and, Australia (Skate’s own family have lived most importantly, of course, relationships, for years in Cairns, refugees from PNG little room was left for debate about the crime); the surge of millenarian, pentecostal stagnant economy. The commitment of the sects, influencing also the mainline Chan Government to introduce a value- churches with their melodramatic rhetoric; added tax on 1 January 1998 was, extra- the confusion over responsibilities for ordinarily, scarcely raised. Correspond- prioritising and delivering local services, ingly, its abandonment by the Skate following the provincial government Government was equally met with a shrug. shake-up; all these ratcheted up the stakes Skate issued the customary assurance to the during the election. It was not surprising World Bank, however, that he would that dozens of deaths were reported, chiefly adhere to the deal on policies (including in the Highlands, despite the deployment tax reform) and implementation struck of thousands of police, and also soldiers— with the international donors group the the latter brutalised by the decade of ill- bank coordinates, in return for a structural equipped, swinging assignments on adjustment program. Bougainville, especially poorly equipped For two months from the start of voting, for such civic duties. Major Walter Enuma which took place from June 14–28, there was to be charged with deploying his own was a 10pm to 4am curfew, and for one troops for the cause, in Enga, of lawyer month a liquor ban. Campaigning was Rimbink Pato—who lost. A further 14 nevertheless as rambunctious as ever—a people died in post-election fighting as national letting-off of steam and a chance Highlands clans whose candidates had to display fervent local loyalties. The lost sought satisfaction in a more inroads in this very visceral process traditional manner. 112 PACIFIC ECONOMIC BULLETIN Note The results indicated a geographically radical but erratic Melsol group, who had dispersed desire to punish high profile caught the public eye in the campaign figures associated too long with the corrupt against corruption: Father Lak in Western ancien regime.

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