Looking back, looking forward

ANNIVERSARY

By THOMAS HUKAHU
PAPUA New Guinean students attending universities in South Australia gathered at Flinders University on Sept 19 to celebrate the 45th Independence anniversary.
After a prayer, Flinders University student and master of ceremony Sammy Bogen welcomed the students, a few PNG citizens residing in Adelaide and a few friends to the occasion and informed them that the theme for the gathering was “Our prosperity rests on the shoulders of leaders”.
He said they, as students studying at Flinders, the University of Adelaide and University of South Australia, are also leaders in their own right and should think about how they could help PNG move forward in these times.
The gathering included prayers, performance of PNG songs, a quiz and a meal.
One of the main events of the night was a recollection that was presented by me. The remainder of this article is a shorter and edited version of that talk.
We are 45 years old: Looking back and looking forward
Tonight is a special occasion for all of us. We are commemorating the day our nation attained independence in 1975.
It is a good time to reflect on the past, of what actually happened then.
I was a child and had not started school yet in 1975, but we observed the changes around us.
There was a new flag on the flagpole at our local community school. And there was a new anthem that schoolchildren were singing during assembly.
The sounds on the radio too changed. At the end of transmission each day, the national radio had a new anthem to close its day’s operation.
We felt sad, as if something that belonged to us was taken from us. Such was the feeling then.
 What are we celebrating?
On Sept 16, 2020, Papua New Guinea celebrated its 45th Independence anniversary.
Like the millions back at home this week, today we are also commemorating that day.
But what are we celebrating?
Are we celebrating success?
Years ago, I started asking some questions.
Questions like: Is Papua New Guinea truly independent?
A dependent is a person who relies on someone or something for financial or other support.
In that sense, PNG is not independent. It hasn’t and cannot stand on its own feet. It depends on donors. Recently, it has been borrowing huge amounts of money too which will place a burden on its future generations.
On the other hand, PNG is independent because it is a sovereign nation. It can stand on its own feet in international conferences and speak on behalf of its people. It is a sovereign state and need not submit itself to any powers, big or small, in an international meeting. It has a voice, and that is its own.
The nation has survived
The nation was born from the aspirations of 13 angry men who formed the famous Bully Beef Club in Port Moresby in 1966. They had one goal in mind, they wanted independence from Australia.
Why that desire? Because they did not want their people to be treated as second-class citizens on their own land. (Read any book by the Founding Fathers and you will understand. Malum Nalu wrote about these men in his blog in July 2008.)
Most of those men were students then, and they included Ebia Olewale, Joseph Nombri, Gavera Rea, Oala Oala-Rarua, Vin Tobaining, Thomas Tobunbun and Michael Somare.
In 1967, the Bully Beef Club transformed into Pangu Pati, Pangu standing for Papua and New Guinea United. Others joined the party too to enter the Second House of Assembly as members in 1968.
The club’s members were colourful in their own ways. Cecil Abel (later Sir Cecil Abel) was a lecturer then at the Administrative College where he taught some of those men, including Somare.
Abel was educated on Kwato island in Milne Bay, in Sydney as well as in Cambridge in the United Kingdom. With him and others like Ted Wolfers, the young local men had mentors who were well-versed with western ideologies and theories of governments and advised them aptly to achieve their goal.
When the independence concept was proposed to the House of Assembly, there were objections. People in the highlands thought that was too early for the territories to opt for self-government. (Ignatius Kilage talks about this in his novel My Mother Calls Me Yaltep.)
Others formed factions and wanted their own independence too, like those on Bougainville. Somare and his team had to visit leaders of those factions and convince them that it was better being united than fighting individually.
There were rumours of colonial sympathisers discouraging the proposal for independence. (Sir Julius Chan talks about this in his autobiography.)
Some thought civil war would break out, if independence was granted. However, the men who formed Pangu Pati persevered nonetheless and on September 16, 1975, the nation of Papua New Guinea was born.
The nation has gone through a lot of trying times since then. It had faced disasters, many natural, and some by reckless decisions by prime ministers, ministers or firms that were allowed to operate without adhering to regulations.
In 1989, the Bougainville Crisis broke out because landowners felt they were cheated by the miner which was operating the copper mine in Panguna. The war lasted a decade and more than 20,000 lives were lost.
In 1994, Sir Julius Chan decided to float the kina. I thought it was a bad decision because the kina’s value dropped and I could not order my books directly from the UK or USA. In his autobiography, Sir Julius has tried to explain why he made that decision.
The eruptions of volcanoes Vulcan and Tavurvur in 1994 in Rabaul were unexpected. The town was covered by volcanic ashes and thousands had to relocate, even to other provinces.
In 1998, a tsunami struck the Aitape coastline in West Sepik. A total of 2200 lives were lost and more than 10,000 people had to be relocated.
In 2012, February 2, mv Rabaul Queen, a sea-ferrying vessel, capsized off the coast of Morobe and 200 lives were lost with 246 surviving.
With the support from a group of MPs in April 2011, Peter O’Neill unceremoniously took over the post of the prime minister because the prime minister then, Sir Michael Somare, was on a sick bed in Singapore. O’Neill was supported by MPs like Belden Namah, Don Polye and Sam Basil, among others.
For the past few years, PNG has been having a foreign exchange problem. Many blamed O’Neill for his borrowing of billions of kina without following proper procedure.
During the national elections in 2017, it was perceived that the polling process was rigged. The common rolls were not updated, ghost names were listed, names of voters were missing, rumours of electoral commission managers colluding with candidates were running about, at least one candidate was declared while counting was still going on and the voters in an electorate of a sitting member voted on Sunday, a practice that has been said to be illegal.
In May 2019, James Marape became prime minister upon O’Neill’s resignation.
Marape has been promoting the theme “Take Back PNG!” Whether he has started taking back PNG from bad elements or practices is a hot topic on social media.
He also said that PNG could become the richest black nation in the world. Currently, due to the Covid-19 crisis and with the nation’s total number of cases at 500, that goal may have to wait until the virus is contained.
Appreciating your nation
Every year we celebrate our independence anniversary. However, it is seems the majority of our people do not realise how important that occasion means.
Often, you will appreciate your nation more if you compare it to other nations which gained their identity after going through a lot of conflicts and bloodshed.
At other times, you appreciate your nation’s independence when you listen to someone else talking to you about nations and people.
About a decade ago, I met an Argentine-Japanese postgraduate student. I interviewed her for an article and she said she as a photographer was amazed by the rich plant and animal life we have as well as the majestic views of nature.
She also said she was amazed that our Parliament was filled with indigenous people who were deciding for our people. I thought that was odd.
But then it struck me. You will understand this, if you compare our parliament to those of others in the world.
There are nations where the indigenous people are spectators in their national forums because the representatives are settlers or children of settlers. Argentina and Brazil are such examples.
And then, there is the case of you appreciating your country more from the outside, looking back in to it.
For you, as international students in another country celebrating this important day, it is likely that you will see another side of this day as you have never seen before. If you haven’t realised that yet, then I urge you to look again, while you are still here.
For me, this is going to be the second time to celebrate this day in another country. Let me dwell on this for a moment.
Learning from other islanders
The first time when I was in such a situation, something dawned on me.
I was then living on an island in a neighbouring island state for two years. In my interaction with our Pacific Island neighbours, I realised that to many of them “PNG is the Big Brother”.
PNG gained Independence after Samoa (1963), Nauru (1968) and Fiji (1970). After 1975, the other nations like Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Tuvalu, among others, also attained independence.
But I have also realised that the Big Brother has not really been the best example for its younger brothers and sisters. We have allowed selfishness and greed to supress us from setting the pace for other nations in the region in terms of initiatives and policies.
PNG is a Big Brother if you consider two aspects.
Firstly, it has about 10 million people. In the Pacific, only Australia is more populous than PNG, with a population of 25 million. New Zealand has only 5 million people.
The population of all other Pacific have not exceeded 1 million yet. Fiji has 926,000 and Solomon Islands has 652,000.
Secondly, we are naturally rich. I mean, we have biodiversity and fertile valleys like no other Pacific Island nation. We, PNG, could become the food basket of the region.
And then you have PNG athletes who have made PNG proud and have set the pace for other Papua New Guineans and islanders in the Pacific. In the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, in 2014, PNG won two gold medals by the efforts of weightlifters Dika Toua and Steven Kari.
What the team did then was historic, not just for PNG but for the Pacific Islands as well.
In the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, PNG gained two silvers and a gold.
In rugby league, PNG has been a force to reckon with in the World Cup. Past players like Marcus Bai and current stars like Justin Olam who have shown that PNG can be the best in the region and world, if it gets everything right.
Today, PNG professionals work as geologists, engineers, teachers, lecturers and medical doctors in different parts of the world, including Australia.
All these show that we, PNG, have the potential to make a positive change in our country, region and world.
My thoughts about the future
In the morning of Sept16, I was looking at the Five National Goals and Directive Principles drawn up by the Constitutional Planning Committee in 1973.
The goals are:

1. Integral Human Development – Liberation and Fulfilment
2. Equality and Participation
3. National Sovereignty and Self-Reliance
4. Natural Resources and Environment
5. Papua New Guinean Ways

I must say, when I read about those principles, I was impressed by the wisdom and foresight that those founding fathers had.
It was as if they were advised by the best brains in science, technology, business and politics in the 21st Century to have done that.
Despite being composed of a thousand different tribes, we have successfully stayed together as a nation for 45 years. The founding fathers placed PNG as an example on a pedestal that other nations in the region looked up to and gained confidence and crafted their own plans. However, over the years PNG has been taken off that pedestal.
We have the challenge to do something about that, as we look forward.
And what about you?
I have described my views to you.
So, what will you do as a citizen of PNG? What can you do to help our nation be a better place to live in?
I am an educator and so I think in terms of education as well as a few other things. What can you do, in your profession or out of it, to advance our people?
You may need to be a part of a team too to implement what is in your mind. Just like the men in the Bully Beef Club were a team, you may need a team to realise what you have in your mind.
In these past few years, my prayer is not “God bless PNG!” It is “God help PNG do it better!”
Those are my thoughts and prayer.
What would yours be?

• Thomas Hukahu is an Australia Awards student living in Adelaide.