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by Dr CLEMENT
WAINE
Looking ahead to the year 2020
WE ushered in the New Year just over a fortnight ago and I want to
raise a point for national discussion.
What will PNG be like in the year 2020?
I am compelled to ask this question because this is the year to
change the guards across the land.
In order to prospect the future, history will always be the
guiding post that enables us to extrapolate beyond the present.
The year 2020 is only 13 years away. Children born now will be
reaching puberty and high on hormones, driving their parents
crazy. What will their world be like?
What sort of country will we, as a collective nation, create for
them?
During the past 30 years, we have evolved from a nation of
countless tribes into a form of democracy that we call PNG.
We have achieved much in the process. Our democracy has not
faltered along the lines of ethnic fissures as experienced
elsewhere around the world and in our region.
We have threaded, so many times, around the rim of the abyss. Yet,
we have pulled back every time.
Our democracy is unique.
Based on our own understanding of the world outside of our shores
and our own understanding of the intricate uniqueness that
characterises our nation, we remain resolute to make this country
truly unique in every sense of the word.
Our democracy is best described as the ‘unity in diversity’.
The forefathers who stood on Independence Hill on Sept 16, 1975,
have fallen silent, one by one, as their Maker beckons them on.
A new generation has risen up to take their places. The baton has
been passed on.
My contemporaries and I, slightly older than the nation itself,
have lived through the trials and triumphs.
Our own progresses in life are testaments to what the nation is
capable of achieving and the product of our own choices –
decisions we made when we came to the fork in the road.
We count ourselves as the generation that caught the glimpse of
the past and stood the test of time to tell a story.
We lived through the brief decadence of the 1980s and enlisted in
colleges during the traumatic periods of the 1990s.
Our parties did not last into the twilight hours. A new generation
arrived on the scene – the Generation X. They were reared under
the deteriorating social undercurrents.
The progress of PNG can be summarised briefly in the following
words:
*In 1970s, the buzzwords were independence and nationalisation.
I remember the days of live bands rocking the nights in the
villages of Simbu and my older compatriots succumbing to their
emotions and losing their innocence.
It was a brief moment of exuberance.
*In the 1980s, the buzzwords were mining projects. Terms such as
joint venture, equity participation and royalties were bandied
around.
Other terms that become ubiquitous in our national lexicon were
corruption, bribery and commission of inquiry.
The Bougainville Crisis started towards the end of that decade and
new terms were phrased: insurgency, revolution and civil war.
Unlike many nations around the world, PNG became independent
without bloodshed but was spilling blood to maintain its sovereign
integrity.
*The terminologies in the 1990s were varied, highlighting the
traumatic episodes onrushing upon PNG: structural adjustments,
user-pay, currency devaluation, secession, Sandline mercenaries,
military revolt, El Nino, kina parity against US dollar, dollar
diplomacy, Orogen IPO, Cayman Island, Cairns Conservatory,
leadership tribunal, NPF saga, pyramid money schemes, just to name
a few.
Two groups of people emerged during the 1990s – those who were
traumatised by the upheavals and those that were shielded from
them by the web of social support.
In colleges, we found words to describe the former group. If you
fell on the extreme fringes you were labelled “psycho” and those
who ascended above the fringes were called “conmen”.
These words have now become ubiquitous and entered the national
dialect.
*The first few years of the 21st Century were phenomenal.
Reforms to the political system and financial institutions were
enacted.
The iconoclastic changes instituted by the Mekere government saw
the consignment of PNGBC and Orogen to the annals of history.
The Chief came back to power and became the Grand Chief.
For the first time, PNG has a Government serving out its full
parliamentary term.
The economy has rebounded on the back of the bullish commodity
prices from its doldrums in the 1990s.
There is an element of confidence that is rising in the national
psyche. The buzzwords now are privatisation, good governance, MTDS,
macroeconomic stability, green revolution (whatever that means),
fiscal responsibility, political stability, integrity laws on
political parties, and the LPV.
Maintaining the status quo
In the year 2020, when we make it
there, what will PNG be like?
If we conduct our affairs on the “business-as-usual” attitude in
the intervening years, the following scenario will be presented to
us:
*The population would have reached over seven million people out
of whom one million would be infected with HIV and thousands more
would have died.
The economic loss from these deaths will be significant. The
rampaging scourge of HIV infections has gone unabated for far too
long in spite of efforts to stem it. A brand new message is
needed, immediately.
*All the major mining and petroleum projects would have already
wound up their operations and would be more involved in mine site
rehabilitations
The mineral boom days of the 1980s would have gone bust by 2015.
By 2020, it would be almost non-existent, severely eroding the
Government’s revenue base.
The shock would be far worse than that of the 1990s when
Bougainville Copper ceased operations due to insurgency.
*The unsustainable social changes rummaging across the land like a
hungry pig would have resulted in catastrophic internal strife.
This will be exacerbated by the brutality of the gun culture that
is taking towns and villages across PNG.
Half of PNG would be ruled by gun-totting warlords before 2020.
This is already being practised in some parts of the Highlands and
a bad omen for the country.
*Before the year 2007 is over, Southern Highlands will be another
Iraq and whatever remained of Mendi would make Baghdad look like a
schoolyard playground.
People affected by the gun-riddled ethnic conflicts, often
stemming from failed political processes, are already crowding
into towns and cities and putting more pressure on the
infrastructure that was built during the colonial days to cater
for a small population and have become dilapidated over 30 years
of neglect.
*If you think squatter settlements in Port Moresby are already
getting out of control, be assured that you have not seen the
worst of it yet. The nation will witness an explosion of
internally-displaced people in the months to come.
With the Government already running out of ideas to expand its
revenue base (the ridiculous notion that concessions create
impetus for growth is a fallacy), and the impending explosion in
the population growth that is already outpacing real GDP growth,
and the irreversibly adverse social changes, the nation sits on a
time-bomb. Before 2020, the bomb would have exploded.
Unable to meet its obligations, and pressured by the growing
population and the dwindling resources, the Government would be
forced to crawl on its hands and knees to the international
donors.
The country would go into a tailspin of borrow-and-spend modus
operandi, plunging further and deeper into debt and shackled down
forever.
The current crop of leaders does not appreciate the immensity of
the debt burden.
In the last budget speech, debt was consigned as affordable and
constituting about 48% of GDP.
In reality, debt in real kina terms has not declined
significantly. The decline was a reflection of the corresponding
decline in dollar terms.
The current Government shifted the debt burden towards the
domestic side. It currently holds the record for exploding the
domestic debt from a low of K200 million to over K2 billion in
just three years. The Government is borrowing and spending
people’s current savings.
In the next few years, the commodity prices will head south. Even
if the prices decline slowly, all the extractable resources would
have already been depleted.
The Government has exhausted its goodwill with the donor agencies
and has already saturated the domestic debt market. It will be
faced with two dire choices – declare PNG bankrupt or default on
debt repayments. Either choice will have severe ramifications.
The Government defaulting on the domestic debt would be the powder
keg exploding.
People would lose their savings and take to the streets. The NPF
saga was the near-perfect simulated forerunner. Chaos would be the
norm of the day.
International communities would shun PNG and conducting business
overseas would be reduced to personal contacts.
The unemployment rate would have risen to historically high
levels.
Students now in primary and high schools would be coming out of
colleges with the ink wet on their degrees and diplomas to join
the queue for employment. Some would turn to crimes as a way of
life.
Any semblance of human decency would be a luxury not many would be
able to afford. Parents sending their children to school with the
hope that these “investments” would repay in kind later would only
be frustrated.
*By the year 2015, the plebiscite on Bougainville’s independence
from PNG would have been successful by the tiniest margin of
50.001%.
Bougainville would be independent from PNG and a new nation would
have already joined the club of nations at the UN by the year
2020.
The result would embolden the simmering hopes of independence by
other provinces and regions.
*Balkanization (fragmentation) would have been already underway in
PNG by 2020.
*No government in the last 30 years has made any concerted effort
to realign the formal and non-formal sectors in order to tap into
the productive capacities of the 85% of the people who are
currently engaged in the informal economy.
This segment of the population is not planned for when the Central
Bank projects its annual targets for inflation and unemployment
rates. It is a blemish against all governments.
*Since independence, no government has made any systematic effort
to improve the physical linkages of the country.
Most provincial centers were connected only by air 30 years ago
and still are today.
There are no major roads and highways linking the different
regions and the existing ones are overtaken by bushes – a tragic
demonstration of a country that has already lost its sense of
direction.
*Telecommunication links have not improved since the 1980s in
spite of expensive transfer and deployment of newer technologies.
We are now a country that is isolated within.
If we cannot improve the linkages in the last 30 years during the
good times – the boom days – what do we expect to see in the
post-bust days of the 2020?
*This is the first of a two-part article
*Tomorrow: The change
*The writer lives and works in the USA. He
holds three international patents for his inventions and
discoveries in the areas of Biotechnology.
 
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