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Germany, UK failed their part
AFTER 32 years of governing itself,
the PNG re-port card is just not impressive. Much has been
achieved but the general consensus is that much more could have
been achieved with the kind of resources and opportunities
available to this country.
Far too much has been sacrificed and squandered and there is
that tiresome feeling that it will get worse before it gets
better. The blame for this state of affairs lies mostly with
Papua New Guineans themselves but it must be also said that a
fair measure of the blame must also be shared by those who chose
to occupy this land without invitation or conscience a century
earlier, then left in the same hurried and offensive manner they
came in without so much as a “by your leave”.
This is not mere buck passing. If the child is errant, some of
the blame must be passed on to the negligent parent or foster
parent. At about the time, political consciousness was awakening
in PNG in the 1950s and 1960s a certain wind of conscience was
blowing at gale force speed around the globe.
The world had witnessed the calamity wrought by the awesome
power of the atomic bomb over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. The potential finally existed in the hands of man
and was being multiplied daily to wreck similar devastation
where and when the occasion demanded. The countdown to doomsday
had begun.
As so often happens with those who have lived long and messy
lives when their time is near, the desire for forgiveness,
absolution and atonement of sins also began in earnest among the
older, dominant and colonising nations of the world.
Throughout the world, the word went out to decolonise; to have
the members of the old dominant world pull out their unwelcome
presence in the new worlds; to grant those new worlds the rights
to self-determination, self-government and independence. Old
empires scurried out of the nations they had occupied without
compunction, conscience or request a century earlier.
Even for those who might have wanted to linger, the realities
posed by the new world order intruded. The need for territorial
possessions and for branding conquered subjects with the
identity and psyche of the coloniser became obscured as national
political boundaries were redrawn in a cold war where the world
was divided into two opposing spheres of influence – East and
West. Empires crumbled as old world nations scrambled to carve
new roles for themselves in the new shrinking world of
information and knowledge.
First India, then Indonesia and soon a whole cascade of others
throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Caribbean and the
Pacific attained independence. Sadly, the departure was
performed in much the same way as the arrival, albeit more
peacefully in most instances but with the same devastating
consequences nonetheless on the indigenes of the new worlds.
Overnight colonial war lords, land lords, bosses, mastas, padres
and all their cadre packed their bags but never their baggage
and turned their backs on people and places they had taken
decades to bring to heel and whose ways of life for generations
they had wiped out with a single mindedness bordering on
insanity.
When the Second World War ended, the Allied forces decided in
the grand Marshall Plan to remain and oversee the rebuilding
efforts in Germany and Japan but there was no such plan in place
when the colonial forces made mass withdrawals from all
colonised territories around the world. The devastation and
changes wrought in these lands at the hands of colonisers were
equal to if not worse than that experienced by defeated Germany
and Japan.
And the big difference was that they invited the disaster in the
first place by their war mongering. No colonised nation asked a
coloniser within its boundaries. The era of decolonisation had
begun but the withdrawal symptoms were delayed and played
themselves out over the following decades in all the newly
independent nations of the world.
The PNG experience was no different. It was in the middle of
this era that PNG found itself in 1960 when the Australian
minister for territories Sir Paul Hasluck announced the
following notable achievements in the Trust Territories of Papua
and New Guinea. There were 4,100 schools catering to 196,000
pupils. The education system had 400 expatriate teachers and
5,400 Papua and New Guineans.
A system of local government council, established since 1949,
had 36 government councils catering for the needs of nearly
1,000 villages. A national public service was established in
1957 and by 1960, was employing 3,623 Australian public servants
and only 334 locals. There were 7,500 administrative native
employees. In terms of infrastructure, five main centres had
wharves built, 5,000 miles of road and 10 airfields had been
constructed.
In the area of health, four large base hospitals were built as
well as 101 subsidiary hospitals, 1,200 aid posts and medical
centres. The administration extended assistance to church
missions to build an additional 92 hospitals, 420 aid posts and
578 infant and maternal clinics. At this point, housing,
sanitation, water supply and electricity were provided
exclusively to urban dwellers and mostly the expatriate
community.
There was no national university, no pool of skilled local
managers, businessmen or women, or an economic base for the
young nation. Australia, wanting to remain stoutly white wanted
to get rid of the black problem to its north that England and
later the League of Nations had thrown on its laps.
So when a United Nations team recommended moves towards a
rudimentary form of self-government in the territories of Papua
and New Guinea, with self-government and independence a distinct
possibility, Australia happily grasped the opportunity. In 1961,
a new legislative assembly was established in a former “whites
only” hospital in Port Moresby and Papua New Guineans were given
increased membership.
A year later, a visiting UN committee reported dissatisfaction
with the rate of progress in PNG. It suggested a more
“imaginative advance for a truly representative administration”.
This set in motion a process that was to reset dramatically the
political landscape of PNG forever.
That 1962 UN committee recommended a rudimentary form of
self-government and set a tentative timetable for elections to
be held in 1964. The report stressed for quick economic progress
and expressed dissatisfaction at the education system, calling
for institutions of higher learning to be established as a
matter of priority.
A common roll was drawn up and
persons in the territories numbered 1,028,339. In 1964, the
first general election in PNG was called and voter turnout was
impressive with 72% of those listed in the common roll voting. A
64-member legislative assembly was formed with 54 elected
members and 10 officials. Of the elected officials, 38 were
Papuans and New Guineans. The First House of Assembly, as it was
called, was opened on June 8, 1964.
From this point on, so many things happened at once. A cabinet
was formed with the administrator, seven elected representatives
and three officials. A select Committee on Constitutional
Development was appointed under the leadership of the late
(later Sir) John Guise.
Political groupings began to emerge though parties would not
make their formal appearance until the next elections. An
elected members group was formed with Guise as leader and
Mathias Toliman as his deputy.
The Papua and New Guinea Unity Pati was formed out of the Bully
Beef Club in 1966. Young teacher cum radio broadcaster, one
Michael Thomas Somare became leader of this party.
Heeding the call of the UN committee, the University of PNG was
established in 1966 and a year later, the University of
Technology was set up in Lae. The first degrees from these
institutions were conferred in 1970.
Exploration for copper began around 1964 and five years later,
the Bougainville Copper project went into operation with an
agreement signed in 1974. Studies began as early as 1963 to
harness the Ramu River for a major hydropower generation project
to supply electricity to all the provincial headquarters of the
five provinces of the Highlands and to Lae and Madang on the
coast. The work was finally commissioned in 1971.
By the time of the second general election in 1968, there were a
number of parties including the People’s Progress Party under
the leadership of Sir Julius Chan. In this election, membership
increased to 94. The new administrator then was Les Johnson. The
1968 elections saw a common roll of 1.18 million people and Mr
Guise was elected Speaker of the House.
In 1969, the House appointed another Select Committee for
Constitutional Development under the leadership of the late
Paulus Arek and its members travelled extensively both in
country and abroad to canvass opinions and gather information
and ideas on the development of a Constitution for PNG.
Its final report was tabled in 1971 calling for self-governing
status within the life of the next house and for Independence in
the 1976-80 house. Designs were called for a national flag and
crest.
The National Identity Bill of July 1, 1971, settled on the name
of the country as Papua New Guinea and the flag and crest were
accepted. The electoral boundaries were realigned to allow for
83 electorate and 18 regional electorate and the voting age was
lowered from 21 to 18, increasing the common roll to 1.5
million.
The 1972 elections saw the emergence of Pangu, People’s Progress
Party, United Party and New Guinea National Party. In the same
year, Chief Minister Somare announced the Government’s decision
to establish a Constitutional Planning Committee to prepare a
Constitution “suited to the needs and circumstances of Papua New
Guinea”.
In May 1973, Mr Somare announced that self-government would be
achieved in two stages. First, all domestic affairs would be
transferred from Canberra to the House of Assembly by Dec 1,
1973, and following a draft tabling of the Constitution in April
1974, full independence was to be attained in September 1974.
Self-government took place as planned but Independence was
deferred by a full year.
After much debate and amendments, the Constitution of PNG was
adopted on Aug 7, 1975. The House of Assembly met for the last
time that month. At one minute past midnight on Tuesday, Sept
16, 1975, Sir John Guise announced on national radio: “Papua New
Guinea is now Independent. The Constitution of the State of
Papua New Guinea, under which all power rests with the people,
in now in effect.”
To its credit, Australia has resolutely walked the Independence
path with PNG in good times and in bad through its massive aid
programme and various other bilateral arrangements but the same
cannot be said for Germany or Britain – who were the first
colonisers of the two halves of PNG and whose legacies and scar
tissues remain to this very day.
They have some responsibilities here too.
 
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