Decentralisation and autonomy – 1972 to 2022

NATION

This final part of Dr John Momis’ comprehensive commentary on Decentralisation in a speech to the recent National Research Institute conference on the subject at hand. We thank Dr Momis and the National Research Institute for the permission to publish this most succinct summary of an important system of government in our country.

Part 3: Disadvantages of the reformed provincial government system

By JOHN L MOMIS
PRIOR to the 1995 ‘reforms’, provincial governments had legislative and financial powers, and local level governments came under their jurisdiction.
In the so-called reformed system, provincial authorities have much reduced power – in essence they are merely an extension of the national government in Waigani, controlled and stifled of any creative local initiatives that may enhance multilateralism by the octopus-like tentacles of the all-powerful central government.
Provincial governments are now, in essence, made up of ex-officio members, headed by regional MPs who are now called governors. Other MPs and heads of local governments are members, as are representatives of traditional chiefs and women. The role of governor places significant financial and personnel resources in the hands of the regional MPs (governors), and so gives them great sources of patronage.
The OLPGLLG changed the boundaries of what had previously been administrative districts within provinces – the boundaries were now defined as the same as Open electorate boundaries, and Open electorate MPs were made heads of committees administering distribution of funds in the districts. But jealous of the powers of regional MPs as provincial governors, Open MPs demanded more and more control over finances and affairs in their districts (or open electorates).
District development authorities
But from 2014, the authority of Open electorate members was consolidated through establishing of District Development Authorities (DDAs), which are chaired by the Open MPs, and allocate a K10 million District Service Improvement Programme in each district, and increasingly control administration in districts.
As a result, between them, regional and Open MPs control provincial governments, and administration and funding of districts. This control of funds and administration at both provincial and district level clearly distracts many MPs from being actively involved in their primary roles, which should be to represent their people in the National Government.
Further, without being answerable to elected bodies at the provincial and district level, MPs are largely unaccountable in their roles as provincial governors and as heads of DDAs.
Inability to participate in decisions about needs and aspirations encourages a culture of dependence, which undermines self-reliance and encourages attitudes in which poverty and exploitation flourish.
Patronising approach
Mere injection of capital and distribution of benefits without distribution of the source of the benefits, which is power, induces the adoption of a cargo cult mentality.
In PNG, those who are against the provincial governments basically do not believe in power-sharing even though they may support distribution of goods and services and capital injection. They are quite happy to distribute benefits as long as they are in the control of power at the centre where important decisions about people’s needs and aspirations are made. In their view, what matters is that goods and services are delivered, whether the recipients participate in the appropriate decisions or not – a patronising approach worthy of all colonial administrations.
Declining public sector capacity
Before I finish, I must comment critically on the main justification advanced at the time for the 1995 reforms, which was that the elected provincial governments had not been effective in delivering services to the people.
The argument was essentially that in some way never clearly spelt out, that it was the existence or operation of elected provincial government had cause the decline in services. But in fact, the reform away from elected provincial governments made no difference, and the decline in service-delivery has continued after 1995.
Then, more recently, the push by Open electorate MPs for control of district administration, including the establishing in 2014 of the DDAs, has been based largely on the argument that service delivery by unelected provincial governments headed by regional MPs as governors was falling. The claim has been that service delivery would be improved by bringing district administrations under DDAs headed by the MPs. But once again, the evidence appears to be that declining delivery of services continues.
Missing the point
In my view, these claims and counterclaims miss the real point about why standards of delivery of services by provincial and district administrations are falling. The key problems are not caused by elected governments. Neither are they caused by ‘provincialisation’ of the public service – something which in fact aided early trends towards improved service delivery in a few provinces, such as Bougainville and East New Britain, as it facilitated the return to those provinces of young and educated people to work for their home provincial governments, in a sort of nationalistic spirit.
No, the real problem with declining services concerns largely unrelated factors about policymaking and administrative capacity in the public service declining since before Independence, and the extreme difficulty experienced in so many low and middle-income countries in increasing capacity of that kind.
The problems in the public service relate back to the failure of the colonial government to provide education for the so-called ‘natives’ until the 1950s and 1960s, and the closely associated lack of Papua New Guineans in the colonial public service until the 1960s, when there were just a handful.
With the first university graduates emerging in the late 1960s, it is no surprise that when localisation of the expatriate-dominated public service began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that grossly inexperienced young people in their 20s found themselves as departmental heads.
The incredibly rapid localisation of the public service in the 1970s ensured that a large proportion of the new senior and middle managers never had the opportunity to learn their tasks through gradual promotion and constant mentoring.
From a severely weakened administrative base in the 1970s, the situation has steadily declined. Once there has been such a severe decline, it has been sown all over the world that re-building public sector capacity is an incredibly difficult task.
In PNG the situation has been made far worse by the dramatic increase in political control of the public service at provincial and district levels by largely unaccountable regional and open MPs.
Ongoing demands for increased autonomy
Demands for more autonomy for the better resourced and managed provincial governments were being made even in the 1970s, and are reflected in the CPC proposals for staged introduction of the system, and in the provisions of the Bougainville Agreement of August 1976 which indicated that mineral-rich and relatively well-educated Bougainville could be treated as a special case in the provincial government system.
Such demands were still evident in the 1980s, when some provincial governments objected to the uniform system of decentralisation introduced from 1976-77, arguing that the few provincial governments with relatively high capacity to deliver services and more financial resources than others should be able to get higher autonomy.
The possibility of enhanced autonomy for the provincial governments with highest administrative capacity was then considered in 1989 to 1990, and was the subject of a report to the National Government recommending that as a response to the then unfolding
Bougainville conflict.
In the early 1990s, as pressure for abolition of elected provincial governments grew, the islands region provinces demanded autonomy, and threatened secession if they did not get it. As we have seen, the 1994 Rabaul volcanic eruption ended that push from the islands provinces.
However, ever since the 1995 reforms, there has been a stream of calls, generally from the provinces with highest levels of financial resources, for much greater autonomy for those provinces. Even architects or major promoters of the 1995 reforms, including former prime minister, Sir Julius Chan, are now supporters of much greater autonomy for their provincial governments.
Since the 1995 reforms, of course, the Bougainville people have won the right to both autonomy, and a referendum on independence. This has provided the way to end a nine-year conflict that in many ways originated in rejection by Bougainvilleans over centralised control of mining, land and internal migration, and was only intensified by central government violence in response to expressions of Bougainville grievances in 1988 and 1989.
Then in 2015, the CLRC review of the Organic Law on Provincial Governments and Local-level Governments has given clear expression to much wider demands for rejection of centralised control of provincial governments and DDAs through MPS, and the re-establishing of elected provincial governments.
Clearly there is a demand for provincial government arrangements more in line with what the CPC recommended in its final report in 1974.
Concluding remarks
The CPC was at the cutting edge of democratisation and good governance. Despite this, the leaders who were supposed to translate the people’s dream of being empowered into a reality, either did not share the dream or found themselves in the company of those who didn’t.
Deterred by teething problems associated with the new system of decentralised elected governments, the leaders opted to take the easy way out ¬and recentralise governmental power to Waigani.
Thus, we have come full circle in making the people powerless and dependent on hand-outs from a highly centralised and bureaucratised government.
The concept of power-sharing, especially when it involved structural distribution of government power and responsibility, was so novel and radical at the time of independence that those supporting its introduction should have thought of embarking on a nation-wide programme of education for the people.
Perhaps we should have sought means of legally enforcing the Constitution’s National Goals and Directive Principles, rather than leaving them to be enforced by moral persuasion.
Even today it is not too late to empower the people through programmes of awareness-raising and social analysis of issues. These programmes ought to be conducted by our tertiary institutions, trade unions, churches and NGOs – agencies with the common objective of combating disempowerment, injustice, ignorance, deprivation of human rights and freedom, marginalisation, exploitation and corruption.
I am convinced that it is only the decentralisation of political power that will empower our diverse peoples and, paradoxically, create a community in which the people share a national consciousness.
We need to embark on an education programme that will inculcate a new vision of egalitarianism, multilateralism and interdependence and forge a collaborative strategy to address the problems and prospects that challenge us in the future.