Guided democracy will help PNG

WHEN Papua New Guinea walked into Independence, it only had the system practised by its colonisers for guidance.
And it chose it without a second thought.
Had it deliberated on it at some length that the government that existed and worked for England and for Australia might not work for PNG, because the populations in these countries were completely dissimilar from culture to language and education.
PNG might have done well to look to its neighbours to its immediate west and further up towards Asia.
In these countries, also former European colonies, the forms of government adopted at Independence were a hybrid.
There, they had come under the same British colonial rule but these governments were more cautious.
They realised, perhaps more than did our founding fathers that the British form of government or indeed, any form of government from Europe, was foreign in origin and in concept to the populations they were meant to control.
Indeed, they had only seemed to work because the coloniser applied stern, autocratic control over the colonised populations.
They chose a managed or guided form of democracy.
In a guided democracy, the government controls elections such that the people can exercise democratic rights without truly changing public policy. While they follow basic democratic principles, there can be major deviations towards authoritarianism.
Under managed democracy, the state continuously uses propaganda with liberal doses of police power techniques to prevent the electorate from having a significant impact on policy.
The leaders in these types of governments realised early that an uneducated population, left to its own devices, would soon disintegrate.
So the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore celebrated Independence from colonial rule but continued the centralised policies and modes of control they were used to and which had worked for the coloniser.
PNG broke from this trend. It abhorred the weight and inhumane treatment it had received under the colonial boot. Independence meant absolute freedom from that demeaning aspect of government.
The feeling, understandably, can be appreciated.
The effect, as it turned out, was atrocious.
In the same breath as it declared national Independence, PNG gave provinces powers to determine pretty much everything for their people except the currency, foreign affairs and defence.
A population in a state of development, such as PNG was in at the time, was nowhere near ready for self-determination. It was like giving a baby a life grenade to play with.
At some point, the pin was going to come off and the device exploded with nasty consequences. And this has been the problem PNG has grappled with since Independence.
How can one give total freedom to a population as uneducated as PNG was and continues to today and expect it to somehow grow into an industrialised, modern nation brimming with confidence and flushed with success? It was too much to expect.
If democracy is governance by the will of the majority, and if PNG’s majority is uneducated, then there is absolute certainty that the government will be uneducated and misguided. It is chosen by the majority uneducated whose choice of leaders and policies will be parochial, driven by selfish interests and prone to corruption.
In the guided democracies of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, the governments centralised policies and, through massive propaganda, drove public policy and other government agenda.
A strong leader heading one strong political party was central to the guided or managed democracy principle. Smaller parties representing vested groups, but loyal to the ruling party, formed ironclad coalition governments that ruled for decades.
That is how Sukarno and the Indonesian National Party (INP), Mahathir and United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in Malaysia and Lee Kuan Yew and his People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore set the foundations for the growth and prosperity that blooms in these nations today.
As the people in these countries became more educated and were able to discern more for and by themselves, the governments relaxed central command and control giving the increased freedom to decide their own welfare.
By this slow but meticulous process, the countries discussed here were able to succeed and internal strife stifled.
PNG did quite the opposite.
It gave total, unbridled freedom to a population it realised was 85 per cent illiterate at Independence.
It has suffered much as a result.