Politics
PNG, and Somare, Claim Yet Another Last Chance
But first the new PM wants political stability
The most chaotic election in Papua New Guinea's history has produced its most fragmented Parliament, to be led for the third time by "founding father" Sir Michael Somare.
Given the poor state of the economy — Papua New Guinea is well into its third year of recession — and the continuing outcries against corruption, a change of government was always likely.
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And Somare's party, the National Alliance, was the best placed, through its nationwide reach and its competent slate of candidates to lead the way. But the party still only won 17 percent of the seats. About 70 percent of sitting MPs lost — the biggest number ever.
This was the first election conducted under new rules approved by the previous five-year Parliament that bind MPs who have stood in the name of a party, to stick by that party through the full five years.
Somare thus has a reasonable chance of surviving, for the first time in Papua New Guinea's history, a full term. At the next election in 2007, when Somare will be 71, a further change will be introduced — proportional representation. This should prove considerably more far-reaching, since this year so many candidates competed in the first-past-the-post poll that some winners succeeded with as few as seven percent of the votes cast. Next time, preferences will be counted unless the winner scores more than half the votes directly. So MPs cannot afford to rest content with merely directing resources to their major supporters or clans. They will have to impress the whole constituency.
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The Government at first comprised a coalition of Somare's National Alliance with six other parties: People's Progress Party, People's Action Party, Melanesian Alliance, People's National Congress, United Resources Party and the National Party. Pangu, Somare's old party, joined them soon after having split for the vote for Prime Minister.
Somare said on being elected: "The Government's main agenda will be to create political stability to allow economic reform to take place." Near the top of his immediate priorities is to draft a mini-budget to rein in spending that, the central bank has warned, is propelling the country into a financial crisis.
He will axe the Government's subsidy of school fees introduced at the start of 2002, and he will probably amalgamate some government departments.
He has already put privatisations on hold, including the controversial sale of PNG Telikom to Fiji's Amalgated Telecom Holdings agreed in the final days of the Sir Mekere Morauta Government.
And he will try to get the Highlands Highway fully open again. Up to 300 trucks are queuing at any one time to negotiate the Highway, the country's main economic artery. A tow truck is pulling them one by one over the Daulo Pass between Lae and Goroka, and a 5-kilometre stretch of the road is in imminent danger of being washed away.
From 30 to 50 percent of Papua New Guinea's coffee harvest — its most important rural income earner, on which more than one million people depend for their main cash income — has failed to get to market this season, because of crime and poor roads.
The option of an international bail-out is not available, since Papua New Guinea has not long received the final draw-downs from a $US250 million structural adjustment programme that began to be negotiated when Morauta became Prime Minister three years ago.
Somare's track record demonstrates that he will prove most effective if he reverts to the role he played in his first term, from 1972-80, of statesman and chairman of the board, relying on the intelligence and integrity of his key ministers. The alternative is to become a hands-on chief executive — as he tried to be during his second, frustrating term as Prime Minister, from 1982-85 — tempted to micro-manage an enterprise confronted with too many crises for even "the Chief" to tackle at a time.
Somare indicated in his first speech back as Prime Minister that he would take the former course: "I do not profess to be an economist, lawyer or accountant. My role is to facilitate, encourage, and use the best expertise on the floor of this Parliament to bring PNG forward."
His team goes some way to fulfilling that pledge. He has appointed to his core team probably the brightest people in the House — except Morauta, who is leading the Opposition for now. They also have a rare reputation for integrity.
They include Lae businessman, Bart Philemon as Treasurer, former Prime Minister Sir Rabbie Namaliu as Foreign Minister, two Australian-born ministers — Lady Carol Kidu for welfare and social development, and the country's most prominent tourism operator, Sir Peter Barter, for relations between Papua New Guinea's often fractious tiers of government. Sir Moi Avei, who was arguably the most successful of Morauta's team, takes the key portfolio of petroleum and energy.
Morauta had ideal qualifications to run the country in hard times. But his Achilles heel in the bear pit of Papua New Guinea's public life was his distaste for the numbers game, for the backroom deal making. He also ultimately failed, despite having a rational message, to communicate it in a manner that brought the voters along with him.
He is probably the best economist Papua New Guinea has produced. He was managing director of the state's commercial bank, governor of the central bank, and a successful businessman.
Much of the success of Somare's first period as Chief Minister and Prime Minister came from the conservative administration of the economy by a team that was led by Morauta as Finance Secretary.
Somare's return to cabinet under Morauta ended bitterly last year, when he was accused of disloyalty.
He is confronted by utterly different challenges from those facing the optimistic, fast growing nation he first led 30 years ago. The skills now needed are in cost-cutting, law and order and attracting desperately needed investment.
The central bank governor, Wilson Kamit said on the eve of the parliamentary vote — when 88 of 103 MPs backed Somare — that Papua New Guinea faced "financial disaster."
Corruption was a huge issue at the election. Of the country's mines and oilfields, only Lihir gold mine will still be open in 10 years.
Even if the big hope for future earnings, a $US3.5 billion gas pipeline to Brisbane does at last land enough clients to go ahead, it will not earn the country any revenue for five years.
Somare early on demonstrated his old astuteness in sidelining close ally Bill Skate, who was a disastrous prime minister five years ago, by having him chosen as Speaker to Parliament.
Both the central bank and business are screaming for spending cuts — without which interest rates, already above 15 percent, will rise further, and the kina, worth just 45 Australian cents, will fall further.
There are insufficient funds to keep propping it up, for which the bank has already spent $US90 million this year; nevertheless, the kina has still fallen 14 percent against the Australian dollar. Inflation, already past 11 percent, is rising. Lending to the private sector fell 4.9 percent in the first half of 2002, with government borrowing tending to crowd business out. Private sector employment is falling.
The six months import cover provided by foreign reserves came, the bank said, from structural adjustment loans, "not from economic activities generated within the country". It might be hard for the Government to repay these loans when they fall due from next year, the bank said. Such repayments might limit the central bank's capacity to defend the kina. The Government recorded a $US50 million deficit in the first half of 2002, compared with a $US3.5 million surplus for the same period in 2001.
Michael Mayberry, president of the country's Chamber of Commerce and Industry, warned national leaders: "Do something, or the country steps off the edge into the economic abyss."
The People's Progress Party is the largest of Somare's coalition partners, and its leader Allan Marat, a doctor of law from Oxford University, who inflicted a heavy defeat on his relative, the veteran Sir John Kaputin, becomes Deputy Prime Minister with responsibility for trade. The party's founder, Sir Julius Chan failed to win back his seat, although his son Byron was elected, as was, again, Somare's son Arthur.
Somare has in recent years been close to Taiwan, which funded the construction of Somare House, an office tower, ownership of which he quit the Pangu party he founded — and he might have been prone to temptation in the current grim economic circumstances, to seek Taiwan's support again. But since being elected he has committed himself to maintaining the One China policy. He visited Beijing with National Alliance officials late last year, when he was preparing for the election campaign.
The constantly extended six weeks of polling comprised tribal fighting in thin democratic guise in parts of the Highlands, where 760,000 more votes were cast than the entire adult population of just under 1 million.
The evidence of electoral fraud is so overwhelming that law firms are anticipating a windfall lasting two years or more as appeals wind their way through the courts. Port Moresby's major law firms have been filing away potential evidence for months.
The besieged Electoral Commissioner, Reuben Kaiulo, finally declared winners in the six seats in the Enga province in the Highlands, and three of the nine in the Southern Highlands, enabling them to participate in the crucial parliamentary vote in Port Moresby.
This left six electorates unrepresented, following violence, massive ballot thefts and fraud in 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. Fresh polling will take place there later this year.
In Enga province, the number of votes cast was 2.6 times greater than the adult population. Footage of the polls in Enga taken by filmmakers James Frankham and Tom Cookes showed a group of 30 well-armed men seize Wabag police station and destroy ballot papers in two containers in the yard. They showed two people, on different occasions, filling in large numbers of ballots one a clan leader, the other the son of a sitting MP.
Beyond the Highlands, the election appears to have been conducted more routinely, if still subject to considerable inaccuracies in the electoral roll.
Legislation to establish an independent commission against corruption was introduced in the final days of the previous Parliament, and may be expected to be an early priority of the new House.
The frustration of sections of the electorate with the misdirection of resources caused by the wantok system is demonstrated by five MPs of European origin being voted back: Lady Carol Kidu, Sir Peter Barter, Tim Neville, John Hickey and Mal Smith. The intimidatory nature of Papua New Guinea politics is one reason why Ms Kidu, a schoolteacher originally from Australia, who is the widow of the much respected Chief Justice Sir Buri Kidu, has 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.
Papua New Guinea has for the most part come to terms quietly with the change of government. It may prove harder, however, for Canberra to accommodate itself to the power shift to a coalition led by Somare.
For Canberra subscribed strongly over the past three years to a view of Morauta as Papua New Guinea's last, best hope. Morauta made possible, by providing an assessment centre on Manus Island, the Pacific Solution to Australia's asylum seeker challenge — a solution that will not be renewed, says Somare.
Many other institutions and commentators agreed that Morauta, a man of unquestioned integrity, did appear the country's best hope.
But Canberra, in also subscribing gloomily to the "last hope" thesis, appeared to have placed all its eggs in the Morauta basket, with the result that it has been scrambling to rebuild relations with the reshuffled power elite in Port Moresby.
