PNG unrest: Travails of unrepresentative democracy

PNG unrest: Travails of unrepresentative democracy

By Alan Robson

An Australian-style constituency-based electoral system
grafted onto a clan-based system is the cause of many of Papua
New Guinea's problems.

SINGAPORE: The recent civil and military unrest in Papua New
Guinea has been a further indication, if one was needed after the
Fiji coups of 1987, that the smaller Pacific states are not just
political rafts wallowing along in the tow of the two regional
metropolitan powers, Australia and New Zealand.

The crisis began when PNG Defense Force chief Brigadier-
General Jerry Singirok said on talk-back radio that his army was
not going to link up with a force of mercenaries brought into the
country by the government of Sir Julius Chan. These mercenaries
were recruited from the London-based Sandline Company to force an
end to a long-standing secessionist rebellion on the northern
island of Bougainville, which has closed an economically critical
copper mine for nearly a decade.

Initially, it was not clear if this was going to be a coup. A
majority of the PNG Defense Force rank and file and many officers
stood by the general after he was sacked following his broadcast,
blocking the assumption of command by his replacement. General
Singirok accepted his dismissal but called for the resignation of
the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Defense
Minister.

Over the next few days, some small-scale rioting broke out
near the army barracks, where crowds supporting the military had
gathered. Defense force soldiers frustrated the efforts of police
to stop demonstrations around parliament but collaborated with
them in keeping the protests under control.

When a vote in the House calling for the Prime Minister to
resign was defeated, troops and demonstrators prevented members
from leaving parliament. The next day, the Prime Minister, Deputy
Prime Minister and Defense Minister stepped aside for the
duration of an inquiry into the mercenary deal.

Favorable public opinion egged the military on and forced
Chan's hand over the resignation demand. General Singirok struck
a popular chord when he accused the government of corruption in
spite of the fact that he himself had been a party to the
mercenary agreement.

Allegations of corruption surround government contracts,
purchases and commercial agreements. Among the examples cited by
Singirok are the recent purchase of a commercial building in
Cairns by the PNG government at twice its estimated value, the
suspiciously high costs of a major urban freeway system and
expensive upgrades to the Port Moresby municipal water system.

The Sandline contract itself turned out to have cost US$36
million just to set up, with a total cost over one year of US$120
million. This massive commitment was taken outside IMF and World
Bank structural adjustment guidelines currently in place in PNG.

Papua New Guinea is a vital and enthusiastic democracy. Yet
many problems stem from the grafting of an Australian-style
constituency-based electoral system onto a clan-based social
system. Electors are primarily motivated by support for wantok
(or clan) representatives.

In the 1992 election, 1,655 candidates contested 109 seats.
Half the winning candidates received less than 20 percent of the
vote in their electorate. Only five candidates scored 50 percent
or more. The result is that governments are elected by a small
fraction of the total voting population in spite of high voter
turn-outs. Electorate control on the activities of governments
is, therefore, minimal.

Political parties are parliament-based alliances of
convenience. Switching between opposition and government in
search of cabinet posts and other rewards is common. Prime
Ministers achieve office through their ability to play what Papua
New Guineans call the "numbers game". As more than half the MPs
lose their seats every election, short-term rewards are eagerly
sought while they are available.

Ironically, the rapid turnover in MPs infuses the system with
a degree of stability by handing control of the numbers game to a
few long-term members. Since 1975, there have only been four
Prime Ministers, who musical-chair in and out of office.
Unsurprisingly, governments change more often on no-confidence
votes than they do by election; at the same time coherent
parliamentary monitoring of government actions is weak.

Numbers-game politics means that political support has to be
pork-barreled. The size of slush funds allocated to each MP has
blown out to half a million Kina (about US$355,000) a year. The
money is supposed to be used for electorate development but
adherence to auditing procedures is minimal. It achieves, at
best, a few haphazard development projects at great expense.

Administrative controls at the center offer some redress.
Papua New Guinea's Ombudsman Commission has a healthy record of
going after delinquent political leaders. But control agencies
which arouse the ire of MPs are poorly funded. In the general
government departments, lack of expertise and fear of persecution
impede too close a scrutiny of ministerial conduct. Press
reporting of corruption and other government abuses is open but
definite information is hard to come by and usually there is not
much follow-up.

The problem of corruption is exacerbated by the nature of the
economy. Papua New Guinea generates most of its income from
frontier mining, oil and forestry projects. These generate a
large cash flow which is hard to supervise.

Post-independence governments have found few boundaries to
their activities. The dispersed population structure deprives
civil institutions of a center of gravity to back up
administrative control. Elections generate enthusiastic popular
participation but this does not translate into accountability
once governments are in power.

In some respects, Papua New Guinea is a classical "weak
state". Yet, it is by no means clear that there is a
countervailing "strong" society capable of imposing order if the
state fails to do so. There is a pervasive fear that if things go
badly wrong, other parts of the country could end up like
Bougainville where uneducated and rebellious youths now roam the
wreckage of the giant mining project.

General Singirok's action garnered a measure of popular
support because it caused a hiatus in the drift. In the longer
term, the hard measures needed to deepen the economy and
concentrate the population will have to be taken.

Dr. Alan Robson is with the Department of Political and
Administrative Studies, The University of Papua New Guinea.