DPA Working Papers

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Open Access
Law and Order Risks in Papua New Guinea: Perceptions and Strategies
(Canberra, ACT: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, 2000) O'Collins, Maev
The breakdown of law and order reflects complex social and economic issues. Papua New Guinea is undergoing rapid transition, resulting in a breakdown of traditional social controls. Rural areas lack the services and opportunities available in urban areas, resulting in rural to urban migration. The cost of living in towns is very high and causes some people to turn to criminal activities in order to survive (GOPNG Office of National Planning and United Nations Development Programme, 1999:141). Even were reliable, accurate and timely statistics available … there are serious concerns as to the value of statistical information in determining the extent of crime in a community. Statistics must, therefore, be interpreted keeping in mind their limitations and the dangers of generalising from statistical data. Other means of measuring crime such as victimisation surveys and self-report studies may have particular relevance in PNG where it is often difficult or impossible to even report the occurrence of a crime (Banks 1997:43-44). Civil society organisations can increase the participation of the poor in the development and implementation of poverty reduction policies and programmes. In the current social unrest, we have witnessed the vital role that these organisations have played in providing some aspects of the social safety net to protect those who have been displaced. Solomon Islands in its Peace Agreement or Peace Plan must provide an enabling environment that allows institutions of civil society to be established and perform their functions freely (Liloqula, 2000:8).
Open Access
The Interplay between Politics and Business in Papua New Guinea
(Canberra, ACT: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, 2001) Kavanamur, David
In the long term it is the people of Niugini who make one confident. They possess a courtesy, imagination and pragmatic strength to provide their own solutions (Nelson 1974:230).
Open Access
Small arms in post-conflict situation - Solomon Islands
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2001) Hegarty, David
The International Peace Monitoring Team is an unarmed and neutral organisation that was established at the request of the signatories to the Townsville Peace Agreement (TPA) to monitor and assist the peace process in the Solomon Islands with particular reference to the provinces of Guadalcanal and Malaita. This paper discusses the role the IPMT played in this region.
Open Access
Beyond ethnicity: the political economy of the Guadalcanal crisis in Solomon Islands
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2001) Kabutaulaka, Tarcisius Tara
Solomon Islands has suffered tremendously from the two-year-old crisis in Guadalcanal, the largest island in the archipelago. The war which started as a result of an attempt by some indigenous Guadalcanal to displace a rapidly growing immigrant population (mostly Malaitans) on their island has now become a national crisis. It threatens national unity and further weakens the capacity of the state to address development issues. So far, most of the discussions on the crisis have highlighted ethnicity as a major factor causing the crisis. This paper argues that the crisis was, in fact triggered by successive governments’ poor policies, a flawed political system, poor leadership and other socio-economic development issues that have not been addressed.
Open Access
Building bridges - law and justice reform in Papua New Guinea
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, Research School of Asia and Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 2001) Dinnen, Sinclair; Jowitt, Anita; Newton Cain, Tess
Introduction: Problems of lawlessness loom large in current accounts of Papua New Guinea. Concerns about these have induced high levels of personal insecurity, as well as providing a major disincentive to foreign investment. While such problems cannot be resolved by law and justice solutions alone, the continuing deterioration of PNG's ‘law and order’ situation raises questions about the adequacy of the formal regulatory system. Successive governments have been loud with ‘tough’ rhetoric, like many of their counterparts elsewhere. Practical responses have been essentially reactive and short-term. Australia, PNG’s largest aid donor, has claimed to concentrate on institutional-strengthening projects with individual law and justice agencies. While there have been achievements, it is clear that improving the performance of law and justice processes is a complex and long-term task and one that needs to be integrated with other areas of governance reform. Building a more effective law and justice sector requires strategies that go beyond the strengthening of particular institutions. Given the operational inter-dependence of law and justice agencies, a broader sectoral focus is needed. In addition, while the state is the central player, there is a need to recognise the contributions of other stakeholders to the management of conflict and maintenance of peace at local levels. PNG’s non-government sector, comprising ‘traditional’ structures of governance, community groups, churches, NGOs and the private sector, already plays a significant, if often unacknowledged, role. A sustainable law and justice framework needs to delineate responsibilities between different organisations and develop appropriate and mutually reinforcing linkages between government and non-government sectors. This paper examines the challenges facing PNG’s law and justice sector and identifies key directions for reform. Section one describes the broader context of PNG’s problems of order, including the acute fragility of the nation-state and the high levels of social and legal pluralism. Attention is drawn to the restorative character of many ‘traditional’ justice practices and the manner of their interactions with colonial institutions of social control. Section two examines the workings of the modern criminal justice system. Its shortcomings are attributed as much to a lack of legitimacy and strong social foundations as to its patent lack of institutional capacity. The final section looks at the recently endorsed National Law and Justice Policy (The National Law and Justice Policy and Plan of Action) and the prospects for building a more socially attuned and effective law and justice system.
Open Access
Monitoring peace in Solomon Islands
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2001) Hegarty, David
The ethnic conflict which erupted in the small South Pacific nation of Solomon Islands in late 1998 resulted in the loss of over 100 lives, the displacement of 30,000 people, the overthrow of an elected government, and severe damage to the country’s economy and polity. Actual fighting took place only in and around the capital, Honiara, and in other parts of Guadalcanal between militant groups from Guadalcanal and from the neighbouring island of Malaita. Fighting was initiated by Guadalcanalese youth who believed that immigrant Malaitans had taken their land without proper compensation, were denying them job opportunities, and had been disrespectful of their culture. But the conflict impacted on Solomon Islands as a whole such that the country is now on the verge of bankruptcy, its government is unable to deliver services and relies on cash handouts as a proxy for governing, the police force is compromised and divided, the lack of reintegration of militarised and disaffected gangs of youth continues to threaten community relations already traumatised by the conflict, and most Provinces which make up the Solomons are demanding either separate statehood or independence.
Open Access
The Foi Incorporated Land Group: law and custom in group definition and collective action in the Kutubu oil project area, PNG
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2001) Weiner, James
Introduction:......In this paper I examine the genesis and progress of the incorporated land group (ILG) in Papua New Guinea. The ILG is a legal entity empowered by legislation passed in 1974 to give legal and formal recognition, protection and powers to customary landowning groups in PNG. Foi and Fasu clans and Gulf Province clans in the Kutubu oil project area, at the instigation of the Chevron Niugini Company (CNGL) the managing partner of the Kutubu Joint Venture, have become incorporated under the Papua New Guinea Land Group Incorporation Act (1974) and have been receiving royalty payments from the sale of petroleum. The Incorporated Land Group has been viewed by the Company as the best mechanism with which to: · establish stability and remove ambiguity over ownership of territory · establish acceptable mechanisms for the selection of landowner representatives · effectively channel royalty and other petroleum-derived revenues to landowners · build upon what is perceived as a customary social unit of long standing in Papua New Guinea and thus capitalize upon the stability of customary cultural units (Power n.d., emphasis added). But since the original round of ILG registrations, there have been numerous applications for new ILG status from sub-groups within these original ILGs incorporated in the early 90's. In 1998, thirteen new Fasu ILG applications were lodged, all of them by sub-groups within already incorporated clans. The most common complaint being made is that the income is not being satisfactorily shared by those members of the executive committee designated by the ILG to distribute its income. These new ILG's wish to have their own passbooks and receive their income payments directly. The Company interprets this trend in two ways: as a sign that local clan leaders are dishonest and that local people themselves have not yet sufficiently understood the nature of contemporary managerial procedure. They stop short of admitting the possibility that the clans themselves are not “customarily” either corporate or collective units that exist for the common interest of its members. I will argue here that it is the ILG mechanism that is essentially faulty, not the behavior or the moral quality of land owners. One of the main points I wish to make is that, in line with Goody’s earlier observation quoted above, there is too much assumption that the internal affairs and composition of landowning social units are both practically and ontologically prior to their external relations. The companies and government departments who have attempted to implement the Land Group Incorporation Act have made an ethnographically indefeasible apportionment of the “political” to external relations among land-holding units and consequently see the resulting conflict and competition within them as adventitious and subversive of the “customary” land-holding units themselves. The LGIA is based on a quite erroneous assumption of the communal nature of land-holding and transmission within the Melanesian “clan”, and of its essentially “collective” interest. As Evans-Pritchard reminded us, however, and which became a founding approach of the Manchester school of African social anthropology in the 50’s and 60’s, the whole concept of the segmentary lineage system around which the attributes of corporateness were first empirically examined was founded on the notion of enduring and regular structural relations of conflict and consequent group fission as the mode of societal reproduction. Acts of legislation such as the PNG LGIA have disregarded this aspect of societal formation in PNG with the resulting problems that companies such as Chevron have encountered in applying the LGIA to customary “land holding” units.
Open Access
Policy-Making and Legislating for Reform in Melanesia: why is it so difficult? Cases from Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2002) Fingleton, Jim
All Pacific Island countries have embraced policy and management reform - both in rhetoric and practice – as the central strategy for enhancing economic development and effective governance. Donor support and encouragement for this strategy over the past decade has been substantial. Yet reforms have proven difficult to implement in most countries and only partial success can be claimed. Why is reform so elusive? In the course of two recent consultancies undertaken for the FAO in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, Dr Jim Fingleton observed a wide range of obstacles and difficulties, structural and behavioural, that have inhibited the progress of reform. Impediments encountered o absence of a political mandate for change and reform o political and bureaucratic inertia, obstruction and “interference” o lack of coordination and continuity in bureaucratic processes o disconnections between the public and private sectors o unrealistic expectations of consultants and donor interventions, and o inappropriate donor programs and timeframes. While many of these obstacles are common throughout the Pacific region (indeed throughout the developing world), others are specific to individual countries. Dr Fingleton’s identification of these constraints within their national contexts assists our understanding of the inherent difficulties of the reform process. In addition, his close analysis of experience on these projects demonstrates some pointed lessons for domestic reformers, donors and consultants alike. One such lesson, he argues, is that aid projects and consultants cannot be used as a substitute for government policymaking - if reforms are to endure and responsible government is to have any meaning. A second is that, in the absence of functioning political parties and other mechanisms linking the populace to policy, the legitimacy of reform policy can be enhanced best by a wide consultative process. But even that is no guarantee of successful policy implementation: powerful vested interests may still override popularly-endorsed programs.
Open Access
State community development and Melanesia: the North New Georgia Sustainable Social Forestry and Rural Development Project
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2002) Makim, Abigail
This paper is about globalisation, the state, and community development and social change in Melanesia. The paper draws on the concept of “the Melanesian way” and also explores the role and influence of the Christian churches, kastom, and nongovernment organisations (NGOs) in Melanesian society. It takes the experiences of the Solomon Islands as its focus and a case study is made of the North New Georgia Sustainable Social Forestry and Rural Development Project – a re-afforestation program established on the island of New Georgia in the late 1990s. Through this case study the emergence of a locally-derived and locally-based approach to resource development is examined.
Open Access
In Between: Personal experiences in the 9-year long conflict on Bougainville and Habuna Momoruqu (The Blood of my Island) Violence and the Guadalcanal Uprising in Solomon Islands
(Canberra, ACT: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, 2002) Tanis, James; Gray, George
Open Access
Literacy, book publishing and civil society
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2002) Crowl, Linda
[Introduction]:Despite batteries of tests given at intervals during schooling years, literacy rates among Pacific Islands populations are low, particularly in Melanesia. Low literacy rates are markers not only of inability to read but also of a lack of communication flows. Remedies are scattered and piecemeal at best, dramatically affecting book publishing, an under-rated area of importance for civil society. I use the term civil society here in three senses: • contractually, as in the rights of citizens within states; • representatively, as in peoples' participation in non-governmental activities (both formal associations and non-formal communities) to supplement or to balance states' actions; and • morally, as in the ability of people to discuss their differences (including digitally, electronically, in print and writing), rather than resorting to violence, to settle them. Some coordination exists among different sectors of the book chain -- writers, publishers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, readers -- but the scope for improvement is great. Although some publishers cooperate, by and large, they operate independently if not competitively -- be they governmental agencies, churches and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), individuals, or groups. Local, national, regional, and international attempts to address information needs through book publishing are often shortsighted and contradictory. The politics and economics of publishing are such that Oceanic peoples are often deprived of resources needed for informed, stable societies.
Open Access
Papua New Guinea: When the extravagant exception is no longer the exception
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2002) Nelson, Hank
Open Access
RAMSI's first 100 Days!
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2003) Roughan, John
RAMSI's (Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands) first 100 days in Solomons has been nothing less than outstanding! Within a few short months, the 2,000+ strong intervention force of Australian/New Zealand military personnel and police members from Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Island nations--Tonga, Fiji, PNG, Samoa and Vanuatu--have substantially reversed the country's slide to rooted lawlessness.
Open Access
Australian Aid in the South West Pacific Insider/Outsider Perspectives
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2003) Saovana-Spriggs, Ruth; O'Collins, Maev
Introduction In his introduction to papers presented at a conference on Development that Works! Crosbie Walsh cautioned that: … development is different things to different people; it is people, society and time specific; it is something which requires vision, deferred gratification, and hard work; it cannot be achieved without cooperation; it is dependent on the favourable interaction of political, social and economic forces at local, national and global levels, it is not inevitable, and it can so easily come unstuck.If for 'development' the words 'effective aid' are substituted, this cautionary statement is equally cogent when examining the future path for Australian aid in 2003. Questions arise: Whose vision of development or effective aid? How do we gauge whether those involved are providing the hard work and accepting the need for deferred gratification, which may be required to achieve success? Just who is being developed - those who provide donor aid or those who receive it? What do we mean by 'cooperation'? Does it imply acceptance of the donor agency's development ideas and strategies or is there some sort of shared vision and shared planning in order to reach mutually agreed upon outcomes? There are geographical and historical imperatives which call for a greater focus on the effectiveness of Australian aid in the South-West Pacific. In his lecture on ‘The South Pacific-Policy Taboos, Popular Amnesia and Political Failures’, Graeme Dobell argued that Australia needs to ‘accept its unique role in the Pacific as a great gift, not a burden’. The implications of 90 years in a colonial role in Papua New Guinea and Australia’s geographical location cannot be ignored. Security, economic, political and social issues are all closely interrelated so: ‘Australia needs to start talking in terms of community and people rather than aid and exits'. While it may be an understandable temptation to exit when aid seems to be failing to achieve positive outcomes, it is clear that for Australia this is not a desirable or even achievable response.
Open Access
Intervention, Regionalism, Engagement: New Forms of Security Management in the South Pacific?
(Canberra, ACT: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, 2004) Hegarty, David
Recent assessments of the economic and political situation in the South Pacific depict a region of small island countries facing considerable challenge and stress. An Asian Development Bank discussion paper, for example, suggests that from a once reasonably promising economic position, the Pacific is now falling behind other developing regions (ADB 2004). Economic growth (it says) has not kept pace with high population growth rates, job creation for youth has been minimal, and poverty is now a significant issue. A review of the premier regional organisation, the Pacific Islands Forum, undertaken by an ‘eminent persons group’ from within the region itself, found that variable standards of governance had impacted adversely on Islanders’ living standards and in some had contributed to instability, conflict, corruption and a weakening of democratic processes (EPG Review 2004). An Australian Senate committee report on Australia’s relations with the region concluded that Pacific countries would likely continue to suffer political, ethnic and social tensions brought about by continuing economic decline and poor governance (Australian Senate 2003).
Open Access
Civil society, social capital and the churches: HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2004) Luker, Vicki
The churches are crucial actors in the response to Papua New Guineas growing problem with HIV/AIDS, but often they excite ambivalence. While several have led the way in supporting people affected by HIV, Christianity tends to be identified with teachings about sexuality and an opposition to condoms that many people involved with prevention deplore. In this paper I try to move beyond the glib assessment that the churches are bad at prevention, good at care. I frame HIV/AIDS in terms of development, and broadly conceptualise the activities that can affect the course and impacts of the epidemic. Without venturing far into theoretical debates surrounding civil society and social capital, I use these concepts or ideas associated with them - to think about the churches. Although they are major institutions in PNG and other Pacific Island countries, very little secular analysis of their contemporary social capacities and roles is available. Finally, I reflect upon the future roles of the churches in response to HIV/AIDS. These parting thoughts have some bearing on general issues concerning the role of churches in development.
Open Access
Politics, Religion, and the Churches:The 2002 Election in Papua New Guinea
(Canberra, ACT: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, 2004) Gibbs, Philip
In Papua New Guinea in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 national election, many of more than two million potential voters looked for ways to express their feelings of anger, disappointment, and frustration. With 43 political parties and 2785 candidates vying for 109 seats in parliament, some hitches were predictable. However, no one expected the extent of the chaos and intimidation that was experienced in many parts of Papua New Guinea during June and July 2002. After having spent 29 years in Papua New Guinea, I am well aware of how foolhardy it is to try to generalize about the situation in that country but on this occasion there was a pervasive sense that something had gone terribly wrong. On the first day of polling, the Prime Minister, Sir Mekere Morauta, having had to wait for nearly five hours to cast his vote, was reported as saying, “This is more than a bungle. Someone should be hung for this” (Post-Courier, 18 June:1). That was on 17 June and the situation subsequently deteriorated. The Prime Minister was fortunate. Bishop Arnold Orowae, Catholic bishop in Enga Province, lined up in Wabag to cast his vote only to find that his name did not appear on the electoral roll. He left without voting and with a feeling of having been disenfranchised. In Port Moresby, 90 students at the Don Bosco Technical College were registered so that their names would be on the Common Roll but on voting day only five of their names appeared. The other 85 students were left disappointed and angry. This was a common experience. In the Highlands, what Bill Standish has called “gunpoint” democracy was rife with presiding officers being forced to sign ballot papers while facing down the barrel of a gun (Standish 1996).1 The police were outnumbered and outgunned and the army had to be called in to try to bring about a semblance of order in some provinces such as Southern Highlands and Enga Provinces. This paper discusses the present-day political significance of Christianity and the churches in Papua New Guinea against the background of political unrest and confusion in which the 2002 election was conducted.
Open Access
Peace interventions in the South Pacific: lessons from Bougainville and Solomon Islands
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2004) Hegarty, David
Introduction: Internal conflict has become the predominant threat to the security and stability of many of the small island nations of the Southwest Pacific and particularly in the countries of Melanesia. Since the late 1980s, conflicts of varying causes and degrees of intensity have occurred in Papua New Guinea (Bougainville secession attempt), Fiji (coups and attempted coups), Vanuatu (police rebellion) and Solomon Islands (ethnic conflict and coup). These events have seriously debilitated the already fragile national economies and polities of all countries, so much so in the Solomon Islands that that country is now being described by many analysts as a failing, if not failed, state. While most of these countries have so far been able (not without difficulty) to maintain a measure of state integrity, the situation in Solomon Islands has become so precarious that Australia and New Zealand (with the support of most Pacific Island governments and anticipating a request from the Solomons parliament) are preparing to intervene in an attempt to restore the rule of law and rebuild administrative institutions. The form of that intervention is not yet clear - it is thought likely to include up to 2,000 armed military and police with a large team of civilian technical personnel nor has a mandate been determined. In this context a host of questions arises as to how best to resolve, contain, manage and/or transform these internal conflicts in the interest of the security, stability and well-being of the peoples of the countries concerned and of the region as a whole. What are the ways out - or ways through - such conflicts? What are the appropriate domestic strategies, policies and mechanisms for resolving conflict and producing stability? Are they sufficient to the task? What roles can (and should) regional states play in helping states manage, settle or ameliorate internal conflict? Is external intervention the answer? What is the likely impact of such intervention? Is there a regional security architecture that might be useful in these circumstances? Is there a role for NGOs? Is conflict prevention possible? And if so, how? Do the answers not lie in a holistic approach to improving the processes of economic development and governance? And if so what agencies and policies are most likely to bring this about? How has the region responded to date? These questions deserve serious consideration and doubtless many will have been explored in presentations and discussions at this conference. The purpose of this paper is to consider one form of conflict management undertaken recently in the region; that is, the peace monitoring interventions by Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific Island Countries (PICs) in Bougainville and Solomon Islands. How useful have these exercises been in assisting peace processes and in conflict management/peace construction, and what lessons can be drawn from them for any future such operations - including perhaps for the more vigorous co-operative intervention currently in prospect? From 1997 to 2003, the Truce Monitoring Group (TMG) and later the Peace Monitoring Group (PMG), consisting of unarmed Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Islands military and civilian personnel, provided support to and helped facilitate the peace process in Bougainville. These external groups, numbering from 250 to 300 personnel at various points in time, were agreed to by the parties to the Burnham and Lincoln peace conferences held in 1997 and 1998. In Solomon Islands, following the conclusion of the Townsville Peace Agreement (TPA) in October 2000 to mid-2002, an International Peace Monitoring Team (IPMT) comprising 50 unarmed police and civilian personnel from Australia, New Zealand and other PICs, was established to work in support of the indigenous Peace Monitoring Council (PMC) that had also been set up by the parties to the TPA to advance the cause of peace. While the specific mandates and responsibilities of the PMG and IPMT differed and the resources available to the two operations also differed substantially the expectation of the signatories to the peace agreements was that by providing a neutral, physical presence, by undertaking community confidence-building activities, and by facilitating contact between stakeholders in the respective peace processes, these interventions would help consolidate peace and reduce the prospect of renewed fighting. Note that these were not coercive interventions or humanitarian interventions in which armed forces under, for example, United Nations or regional agency command are inserted into a civil conflict to stop fighting and bloodshed and to make or keep the peace. They were unarmed and neutral monitoring operations consisting of military, police and civilian personnel inserted after peace agreements had been reached between combatants and authorities. These were a type of intervention designed to assist in conflict management and amelioration as part of the larger peace process rather than as the prime mover of the process.(At times, however, the PMG saw it as its responsibility to help maintain, or re-start, the momentum of the process when it flagged). Note also that in attempting to learn and apply lessons from one countrys conflict to anothers, methodological difficulties arise. Conflicts and resolutions are often context specific and the factors in play in one conflict/post-conflict situation do not always translate well to others. But while there are obvious limits to comparisons, it is nonetheless possible to generate at least some rules of thumb, particularly since there has been (a) such a large number of monitoring interventions of various kinds and (b) that the learning of lessons especially from UN operations has become something of an industry.
Open Access
Political discourse and religious narratives of Church and State in Papua New Guinea
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2005) Gibbs, Philip
In Papua New Guinea, attempts to keep religion and politics separate often meet with incomprehension and resistance on the part of the general populace, for in traditional Melanesian terms, religion has a political function: seen in the power to avert misfortune and ways to ensure prosperity and well being. This paper looks at how religious narrative plays a part in contemporary political discourse in Papua New Guinea. It will look first at the links between socio-political and religious institutions, and then will consider some of the ways religious values and symbols are used and exploited to legitimise political aspirations. In contemporary Papua New Guinea some leaders attempt to use Christian rhetoric and symbols to appeal to people’s religious sentiments and to promote nationalism, however, sometimes symbols apparently achieve the agent’s goal and at other times the symbol backfires on the user. How can we account for the selection, uses and effects of religious symbols in political discourse? The churches and Christian groups seeking not so much to gain political power as to control it, appear to be divided as to whether it is better to respond with a progressive social agenda or to control political power by means of spiritual power. Specific cases from contemporary national and local politics will be examined in detail, including events such as “operation brukim skru (operation bend the knee),” Archbishop Brian Barnes criticism of the government, and the debate over the cross on the top of the Parliament House. The goal of the paper is to provide an anthropological perspective on religion as a category ofconcern in the evolving political scene in contemporary Papua New Guinea.
Open Access
The failures of the organic law on the integrity of political parties and candidates
(Canberra, ACT: State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, The Australian National University, 2005) Gelu, Alphonse
Papua New Guinea (PNG) had its democratic institutions and processes established during the 1960’s. This process began with the establishment of the Legislative Council in 1959 and later the House of Assembly in 1964. The discussion of the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates (OLIPPAC) relates to political parties and candidates, therefore a brief mention will be made on the historical evolution of political parties in Papua New Guinea. Political parties first emerged in Papua New Guinea in 1967. Two of the earliest parties were the Pangu Party and the United Party. Political parties in the history of PNG first contested the 1968 national election (Moore and Kooyman, 1998). The emergence of the different groups that later became political parties became sporadic which brought about the multiparty nature of the party system in the country. During the 1972 election, new political groups such as the People’s Progress Party, National Party, Melanesian Alliance and other smaller groups emerged and contested the election. Other groups based on nationalistic sentiments also contested but most of them did not last after the 1982 national election (May, 1982). This paper will look at the failures of the OLIPPAC. The first part will be a general discussion of the OLIPPAC. The second part will look at the events after the 2002 elections, which have affected the effectiveness of the OLIPPAC. The third part will discuss how and why the OLIPPAC has failed to provide the much-needed political stability. And finally the paper will look at some remedies to the failures.

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