Politics
With Elections Over, What Now?
PNG appears doomed for another recession
The weight of expectations on Papua New Guinea's political system has become so great that it was bound to collapse as it has done spectacularly in the current, agonisingly prolonged, election.
In other countries - and in Papua New Guinea's past, when it was another country - polls answer questions. The election in Papua New Guinea is asking them instead. Not new questions, but the same ones that the country has been facing over the past two decades, only now more insistently.
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A record rate of sitting members, about two thirds, have been losing their seats. The People's Democratic Movement founded by former Prime Minister Paias Wingti, who is heading back to Parliament after a crushing win in the Western Highlands, had 40 supporters in the last Parliament of 109 members. This time, it will be fortunate to end up with a dozen.
This is hardly the mandate for accelerated reform for which Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta has worked tirelessly, though it is not surprising given that the country appears doomed to enter its fourth straight year of recession.
Yet, what is the alternative to Morauta's clearly explained programme of privatisation and smaller but more productive government? None was clearly articulated during the campaign.
Any new government that emerges will be the sort of uneven coalition of parties and interests to which Papua New Guinea has grown accustomed, and within which the voice of reform is likely to face the traditional frustrating opposition from vested interests.
The core problem is that politics has become the economy of Papua New Guinea, as it has in the other Melanesian states across to Fiji. The wealthy elite is comprised almost entirely of present or former politicians and top bureaucrats. Business and the professions have remained negligible sidings in comparison.
This is the reason for the extent of the violence and the ballot stuffing throughout this seemingly endless election. Individuals desperate for power and wealth stop at nothing since precedent shows that the capacity of the rule of law to stop them may well come to nothing.
Despite the well-founded cynicism of most of the population about corruption and the political elite, no major figure has ever been charged and jailed. The murderous behaviour in the Highlands of supporters of candidates reveals the desperation of the groups to have their "wantok", or relative, in parliament. As living standards continue to decline, political discretion can provide respite tipping roads, bridges, schools and clinics towards particular clans.
The worst example of this trend can be found in the Southern Highlands, the oil and gas-rich Texas of Papua New Guinea, where warlords are carving out and defending zones where the government's writ no longer rules. At the same time, the frustration and distaste of other sections of the electorate with the misdirection of resources caused by the wantok system is demonstrated by five MPs of European origin being voted in: Carol Kidu, Peter Barter, Tim Neville, John Hickey and Mal Smith, and one, Philip Inou, of Filipino origin.
The intimidatory nature of Papua New Guinea politics is one reason why Kidu is set to become the sole woman in the new Parliament, despite the country's core of impressive women in the major professions, and increasingly also in business.
A Moody's analyst had said that the election outcome would not immediately threaten the B1 rating of Papua New Guinea's external debt. But the more important and worrying effect is that it will be even more difficult to provide the level of confidence needed for domestic and international investors to fund projects crucial for the jobs the country needs to cut its crime cycle.
The Electoral Commission's own managers in the Highlands provinces, especially Southern Highlands and Enga, have complained that voting there was carried out at gunpoint, with large numbers of ballot papers destroyed or stolen.
The outcome of a re-run election would be unlikely to be much different, however, even if the process is policed a little more closely. The weight of expectation and the entrenched political culture will still ultimately crush and corrupt most of those who succeed in scrambling to get inside the House.
It is hardly surprising in such circumstances that the Melanesians in New Caledonia, hugely funded by their French colonizers, are not pressing so urgently for their independence. Or that East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, should urge the Melanesians across the Indonesian border from Papua New Guinea to "accept Jakarta's autonomy offer".
