Honouring our nation-builders

 IT is often the practice that we recall what a person has done or contributed in life through a eulogy after his or her passing.

It would be more appropriate and appreciative, however, if people are given the tributes and salutations they deserve when they are still alive.

On Dec 28, 2011, I met Sir Sinake Giregire at the Shady Rest Motel.

I had an assignment on political parties when I was a researcher with the National Research Institute and I wanted to talk to him about the PNG Country party, which he had founded in the early 1970s.

Sir Sinake passed away exactly a week after we met.

As I think back, I spent much of those precious two hours with him talking about things I could have abstracted from published materials. I wish I had expressed more words of thanks and appreciation to him for his contribution generally to the country.

Is giving our state or nation-builders knighthood good enough?  Or should the country honour them in other ways too?  We should avoid the situation where our leaders are consigned to oblivion by circumstances. Consider these contrasting accounts. 

I was privileged to work with Sir John Kaputin, a six-term MP (1972-2002), in Europe when he was the secretary-general of the ACP Group of States, and I can attest that he was known the world over.

On the other side, I attended a gathering near Kokopo early this year and the master of ceremony acknowledged the presence of a frail old man near me as a member of parliament in the 1970s – Kaputin’s former colleague. 

I must admit, it saddened me not only that I did not recognise him, but I actually thought that he had passed away.   

Defining era

Papua New Guinea had a very compressed process of state formation. In 1951, six Papua New Guineans were appointed to a colonial-controlled Legislative Council.

What happened a few years later was a remarkable feat when the nation-builders moved the country forward through time and space between 1964, when the first national election was held, to independence in 1975. 

During this time, our leaders took and implemented important decisions as they lived through profound changes.  

In 1972, the first “nationalised” government took control of government. Self-government was granted in the following year.  

During this time, PNG experienced the introduction of democracy and other western institutions into traditional societies.  The inculcation of democracy that took hundreds of years to shape elsewhere was actually attempted in 11 years.  

This was an exercise that literally remoulded the country from its 800 languages and a 1000 tribes setting to a modern day democracy.

Australia was supportive during much of this time, but the onus to build the young country fell squarely on the shoulders of our national leaders.     

Sir Albert Maori Kiki, one of PNG’s best known and most eloquent politicians, wrote a book published in 1968 titled Ten Thousand Years in a Life-time. It captured his own reflection the rapid changes that were taking place around him, which – in a lot of ways – mirrored the dual and perpetual processes of nation building at that time. 

The country posed other significant challenges to development; from an extremely rugged topography to a deeply fragmented population.

Even Australia initially appeared unsure as to how fast the process of decolonisation should go in its territories of Papua and New Guinea without risking the types of violence that had marked the shift to political emancipation in other parts of the developing world.   

A significant challenge was how to craft a new constitution that would help define the identity of a population possessing a limited sense of nationalism and whose claim to a unified national history was derived from developments in two separate colonial territories. 

A national vision was framed for the constitution but it had to be substantiated through a preliminary national consultative process with an audience, many of whom were relatively ignorant of the significance of statehood. 

The vision was steered in part by the inspirations drawn from former colonies, particularly from Africa.

In essence, what transpired was the development of a “home grown” constitution for a people whose thoughts and aspirations were guided toward a future ideal society.

The process required the adoption of foreign political and administrative institutions while the vacuum to be created by the departing Australian colonial administration had to be filled almost overnight.

Many foreigners told the founding leaders that it was unlikely that their country would remain united and functional after independence.  

Unperturbed by the tide of pessimism that surrounded them, the leaders rallied on and moved the country forward to independence.  

Nation-builders today 

After coming to terms with PNG’s history, leading American political scientist Francis Fukuyama remarked: “It takes only a couple of hours to fly from Port Moresby … to Cairns or Brisbane in Australia, but in that flight one is in some sense traversing several thousand years of political development.”

In spite of the truncated political history, the country’s rapid political transformation somehow fell into place – and it worked out.

I asked former prime minister Sir Julius Chan recently whether they knew that it was going to work out. 

He replied saying that “… we had to do what had to be done”, and thankfully, they pulled it off.  

Today, the country’s democratic history – punctuated by periodical elections – is considered a remarkable milestone among developing democracies.  

During last year’s Governors’ Conference in Kavieng, those in attendance were fortunate to see three of the key nation-builders in the same room: Grand Chiefs Sir Michael Somare and John Momis as well as Sir Julius.  

The main agenda item for the governors was the review of the Organic Law on Provincial Governments and Local-level Governments (OLPG&LLGs)

These three senior statesmen, with their colleagues, had heated debates over this issue in the 1970s. 

Momis was in favour of a unitary system of government but with decentralised structure. Sir Michael favoured a unitary #