Political and Social Change Monograph 23 The 1992 Papua New Guinea Election: Change and Continuity in Electoral Politics Edited by Yaw Saffu Department of Political and Social Change Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra 1996 ii © Yaw Saffu and the several authors each in respect of the papers contributed by them; for the full list of the names of such copyright owners and the papers in respect of which they are the copyright owners see the Table of Contents of this volume. This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purpose of study, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries may be made to the publisher. First published 1996, Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Printed and manufactured in Australia by Highland Press. Distributed by Department of Political and Social Change Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia (FAX: 61-6-249-5523) (e-mail:[email protected]) National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication entry The 1992 Papua New Guinea elections: change and continuity in electoral politics. Bibliography Includes index ISBN 0 7315 2318 0 1. Elections - Papua New Guinea. 2. Papua New Guinea - Politics and government - 1975-. I. Saffu, Yaw, 1943-. II. Australian National University. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. (Series: Political and Social ChangeMonograph; no. 23) 324.609953 iii Contents About the contributors v Preface and acknowledgements vii Map: The Electorates x Index to Open Electorates xi 1 Continuity and Change in PNG Electoral Politic� Yaw Saff u 1 2 The Effects of the Electoral System in Papua New Guinea Ben Reilly 43 3 Violence, Security and the 1992 Election Sinclair Dinnen 77 4 Women in the Election: Casualties of PNG Political Culture Orovu Sepoe 105 5 Manus: Reign of Subtlety over Deception of Hospitality Stephen P Pokawin and Nahau Rooney 122 6 State Ritual: Ethnographic Notes on Voting in the Namatanai Electorate Robert f. Foster 144 7 'Steak and Grease': A Short History of Political Competition in Nuku Colin Filer 168 8 Election in the East Sepik: Mit na Bun R.J. May 219 iv 9 Electoral Politics in Mount Hagen: The Dei Open Election Joseph Kctan 240 10 The Election in the lmbbongu Open Electorate Joseph Yasi 266 11 Elections inSimbu: Towards Gunpoint Democracy? Bill Standish 277 Appendices 322 References 383 Index 401 v About the contributors Ben Reilly is a PhD student in the Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. He has previously served as a research officer with the Australian Electoral Commission and as an electoral observer with the United Nations Visiting Mission in Cambodia. Sinclair Dinnen has taught Law at the University of Papua New Guinea and at the University of Canberra and has been head of the Crime Studies Division at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute. Orovu Sepoe is a Lecturer in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies, University of Papua New Guinea. She is currently on study leave at the University of Manchester, writing a PhD thesis on Women and Development in the South Pacific Island States. Stephen Pokawin was a Lecturer in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies, University of Papua New Guinea, before he went into provincial politics in Manus where he was premier for many years, and then Deputy Governor, when the new provincial and local level government structure came into existence in 1995. Nahau Rooney represented Manus Open in the national parliament, from 1977 to 1987. She served as Minister and was a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Movement in 1985. Robert Foster teaches Anthropology at the University of Rochester. Colin Filer is head of the Social Studies Division at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute. He was previously a Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology /Sociology Department, at the University of Papua New Guinea. Ron May is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, and a doyen of PNG political studies. Joe Ketan is a Research Fellow at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Wollongong. vi Joseph Yasi graduated from the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 and is now a High School teacher in Mendi, Southern Highlands. Bill Standish is Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University. vii Preface and acknowledgements This book continues a tradition that goes back to the first national election in Papua New Guinea in 1964. It is essentially a record of aspects of the 1992 Papua New Guinea national election. But there are backward glances to earlier elections in order to show trends in Papua New Guinea's electoral politics. A very brief summary of the political background to the 1992 election will be in order. At the end of the 1987 national elections, the outgoing Prime Minister, Paias Wingti, re-emerged as Prime Minister, having obtained the support of 54 MPs, against 51 for Michael Somare, the leader of Pangu Pati. Wingti led a coalition of his People's Democratic Movement, Sir Julius Chan'sPeople's Progress Party, Ted Diro's People's Action Party, two smaller parties and Independents, five of whom were given ministries, in a cabinet of 27. Ted Diro, who coveted the Deputy Prime Ministership, was the king-maker on this occasion. His party had managed to attract to its fold virtually all the Independent MPs from the Papuan region. But two days after Diro had helped to put Wingti in power, news of a major corruption scandal involving him hit the headlines. As Forests Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister in the outgoing government, Diro allegedly misused his position for private accumulation. He was forced to resign from cabinet in November on account of damaging revelations and five counts of perjury at a Commission enquiring into the allegations. From then on, Diro's thwarted ambition became a source of great instability. Wingti's coalition fell in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in July 1988 when Diro switched his support to a Pangu-led coalition, and Rabbie Namaliu, Pangu Pati leader only since May, became Prime Minister by a vote of 58 to Wingti's 50. Although he was still to clear his name, Diro became a minister, and then Deputy Prime Minister, in Namaliu's government until April 1991, when a Leadership Tribunal found him guilty on 81 counts of misconduct as a Leader. The other major parties in the Namaliu government, besides Namaliu's Pangu and Diro's People's Action Party, were the Melanesian Alliance, led by John Momis, the Regional Member for Bougainville, and the League for National Advancement, a group which broke away from Pangu in 1986 and was led in Parliament by Karl Stack. Namaliu's prime ministership viii coincided with a very difficult period for PNG, economically, politically and socially. Within six months of Namaliu's accession to the Prime Ministership, a violent agitation by a landowner group began on Bougainville. It developed into an armed secessionist rebellion which resulted not only in the closure of the Panguna copper mine, on which Papua New Guinea depended for 40 per cent of its annual foreign exchange earningsand 17 per cent of its internal revenue, and the loss of cocoa and copra exports from the province, but also in the prosecution of a costly counter-insurgency warfare. From 1990, under the guidance of the IMF and the World Bank, the government began to impose austerity measures in order to balance its books. On top of the extraordinary jolts to the economy and the authority of the state represented by the Bougainville rebellion, a veritable compensation mania broke out all over the country. Demands for very large sums, with threats and use of violence, were made by landowners on resource developers and the government, clearly a demonstration effect of the Panguna landowner rebellion. In 1992, the Bougainville crisis showed no sign of being resolved soon. An endemic law and order problem also got much worse. Politically motivated criminal activities, such as breaking into the Ombudsman's Offices and razing the offices of the National Fraud Squad and the Police Anti Corruption Unit to the ground, featured strongly alongside the usual armed robbery, rape, break and enter and tribal fighting. In the Highlands, premiers publicly lamented the take-over of their provinces by criminals, and sought a declaration of a state of emergency. Despite mounting evidence that the country faced serious difficulties on practically every front, members of parliament showed no inclination to curb their constant resort to the vote of no confidence which destabilised government but enabled MPs to advance themselves through the cabinet reshuffles which such motions and votes of no confidence usually induced. Rabbie Namaliu's government survived until the 1992 election, but at the cost of open payments to disgruntled MPs, truncated parliamentary sessions and long periods of non-convening of parliament. Although the economy had managed to recover by the time of the 1992 elections, through fiscal discipline, the opening of new gold mines and the support oi donor countrie�, the so-called 'Pacific paradox' (whereby a contraction of real economic activity ix apparently coexists with healthy macroeconomic indicators) was evidently at work. There was no improvement in the unemployment problem, Papua New Guinea's number one social problem, along with its related law and order problem.