System of govt must be suitable

Letters

I AM always a staunch supporter for federalism or anything that is away from “majoritarian” system of government where only few control power, money and influence political outflow of policies and laws from Waigani.
The best fit instead should be the “consensus” system. Prominent political scientist Dr. Lijhart of America’s Yale University who says the centralised form of democracy, the form we have in PNG, is appropriate for societies that are homogeneous, for societies where there are few differences such as England but for societies that are more diverse like PNG, the consensus model is most appropriate.
Federalism worksbetter when you have a population that has many significant social and cultural differences.
We are the most diverse country on earth. We have nearly a thousand
different cultures, a thousand different languages.
Therefore, we might havemade a mistake in developing a centralised form of government.
We might have been wrong in giving all power to the nationalgovernment because whatever group gains control at national level controls the entire country and yet that group
only represents one tenthof tribes in the country.

 

Cyril Gare, Via email