The Nature of Politics in Papua New Guinea

While entering mainstream politics may not be the only means to achieve our end, it is one of the most influential way to address the development problems in our country that we've been discussing.However most of the current problems of governance and development today are started at the polling booths.

Below are few words from one of my papers on "Causes and Consequences of Corruption in PNG". It is related to election and I hope will stimulate some thinking and discussions among us: Papua New Guinean societies are divided by thousands of ethnic group. With only 6million populations the country speaks about 860 languages.

The different ethnic groups are divided into tribes and clans. The clans were made up of close family ties who mainly trace their origin to a single ancestor. These clans live in villages separated by geographical boundaries and traditional land marks. Normally a big clan would have a total population of about 300 –500 people. Having a clan or tribal member representing the people of a particular District or Province in the National Parliament is perceived to be a kinship pride.

The whole tribe and or clan would consider themselves higher than other neighboring tribes and or clans. It means the clan has access to power to govern and rule for the next five year term of parliament. This may not be in the interest of the whole electorate but a particular ethnic group. Therefore elections are not about voting the right candidate or any political party with the right policies as it would be in developed democracies.

In PNG elections are about tribal loyalty and pride. Loyalty to ethnic relations usually dominates elections in Papua New Guinea , especially in the Highlands [1] of PNG. Voters do not rationally assess a candidate’s competency before voting.Voters cast their ballots for their kinship pride. Candidates and their kin’s men in order to get more votes, turn to form alliance through bribery, threat and use of force.

Papua New Guinea's National Parliament - Better known as the 'Haus Tambran'

A documentary video using spy cameras by ABC country correspondent Steve Marshal shows that the 2007 National Election was grossly corrupted by ethnic groups. There is no real democratic voting. Polling booths were controlled by ethnic groups. For example Peter Eki a contesting candidate for the Sinasina Yongomugl Electorate, have his clans men seize all the ballot papers from the electoral officers and have only one person to mark all the ballot papers for the whole tribe.

Jeffery Nape the current Speaker of the National Parliament, who won the Sinasina Yongomugl Electorate in Simbu Province, bribed police officers who were assigned to monitor the election to allow his clansmen to control the polling booth. Bribery in the form of cash handouts were issued to families and clan members of different tribes just before the voting day. Some were issued at the polling area. Candidates won the election through corrupt expensive exercise and commitment particularly by their clansmen.

Therefore once in power, turn to have special preferences for their clansmen than the whole electorate they represent. They even use their prerogatives to appoint incompetent clansmen into public offices which they can control and use to further advance their personal and clan’s agendas. Parliamentarians,who won the election through corrupt election process, have difficulty running their office in integrity and transparency.

Many are caught breaching the leadership code trying to return political favors to their clansmen. Such reciprocal behavior to uphold kinship loyalty is one of the main causes of corruption in PNG. This is not to say that PNG has a corrupt culture, it simply shows how deeply entrenched is family relationship are valued in PNG societies. This has its positive values where sharing and caring among family and clan members is a norm. Members of the clan or family would help one another to meet their basic daily needs.

Political leaders also consider it as part of their social obligation to provide for their clans.. “However problem arises when favors and social obligation clashes with the rules and procedures underlying bureaucracy and democracy.” The main consequence to this cultural cause of corruption is the bias in development projects.

As according the Transparency International’s National Integrity System (NIS) country reports(2003), skewing and manipulating proper tendering process to award contracts to family companies or facilitating appointment with disregard to merits by Political leaders arises from leaders attempt to return social favors.

This leads to incomplete or poor output of development projects. Development projects are also concentrated within the leader’s tribal area to maintain his social status and trust among his ethnic group. Therefore areas of other rival tribes usually miss out on the development projects. Government services in trivial tribe’s areas may also receive minimal attention from the government of the day.

For example “…Mr. Andrew Posai who was the Minister for forest in 1992altered the scope of a K40 000 which was allocated to buy a workboat for his electorate by purchasing 11 dingies and outboard motors which he gave to his selected individuals.” Kinship loyalty is deeply entrenched into PNG societies.

When such social obligation clashes with established institutional practices and rules, it gave birth to corruption. In addition, corruption hindered the development opportunities,thus PNG is still regarded as a LDC, despite of having a favorable economic growth of above 2% in the last decade.

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