Provincial government failing

THE reformed provincial government system has gone down the tube in the same way as the system of government it replaced in 1995.
It has become too unwieldy, goods and services are stopped at the provincial headquarters and there is too much of politics and too little of services delivery.
As The National had always stated, the problem was not that the first provincial government system suffered from defective legislation. It suffered from defective management, the very same malignancy that afflicts the reformed system.
A walk down history lane should be instructive.
The effectiveness of the provincial government system was already questioned after the first decade of its operation.
Despite early successes in some provinces such as East New Britain, Manus, Morobe, North Solomons, and Western Highlands, the system very quickly became heavily politicised as predicted by the Constitutional Planning Committee a decade earlier. Lack of administrative capacity, weak systems and processes, lack of trained manpower and lack of good and stable management gave way to massive instances of mismanagement and corruption.
The lack of a clear delineation of responsibilities between national and provincial politicians led to frictions and jealousies. These, coupled with the auditor-general’s reports of mismanagement led to many governments being suspended.
In the first decade after Independence, although the need for decentralised government remained, the provincial government experiment began to falter and to collapse and feed upon itself, developing a second tier political bureaucracy that, contrary to expectations, began to use and usurp rather than distribute limited resources and implement policies and projects.
By the mid 1980s several provincial governments, including some which had shown early promise such as the Western Highlands, had been suspended for gross mismanagement and misappropriation.
Provincial and national politicians began to compete against each other for recognition and influence. This quickly degenerated towards open animosity as many provincial politicians used the provincial assembly as the training ground to learn the ropes and to cultivate the political clout with which to successfully challenge their national counterparts in national general elections.
Good policy and programmes were sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Goods and services delivery suffered as the provincial and national public service became politicised.
By 1987, the populace was fed up and several seminars were held to discuss the issue. The clamour went up for the provincial government system to be changed or thrown out. Throwing out the decentralisation process was out of the question. Despite the problems inherent in the processes, a government that was close to the people was still popular.
The question then was: What was the provincial government as it then existed to be exchanged with or changed into?
A return to central government was unattractive, a political no-go zone.
A number of parliamentary bi-partisan committees were established to deliberate this issue and to review and reform the provincial government system.
Also new policies and ideas were advanced to correct the glaring imbalance in the distribution of scarce goods and services which were unequally tilted in favour of the minority urban people leaving the rural majority completely shut out.
In 1995, on the eve of the 19th anniversary of the introduction of the provincial government system parliament amended the Organic Law on Provincial Governments in its entirety. In its place was introduced the Organic Law on Provincial and Local Level Governments.
In short, the thrust of the reformed law was to continue the decentralisation of political and administrative process right down to the smallest units at the local community level so that the delivery of goods and services could be effectively provided right down to the villages.
The separation of powers between the national and provincial leadership, which had been the source of so much aggravation, was removed and all national MPs automatically became members of the provincial assembly. The regional MP for each province was to automatically become the governor of the province and the chairman of the provincial assembly.
To correct the resource allocation imbalance, specific calculations, based on per head of population and upon land and sea area, were written into the law for disbursement of funds to each province and local government council area.
Planning and development initiatives were to be hatched through a bottom-up approach through the joint district planning and budget priority committees.
Responsibility for various national functions were decentralised to the provinces but financial authority, which had been a constant source of agitation in the past, were withdrawn to central government.
Such was the intent. The practice, as with the old provincial government system, was neither as clear cut nor, with the benefit of hindsight, has it been the success it was intended to become.