The great blackmail

NATION

By FRANK SENGE KOLMA
[email protected]

THE report by the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission on the Provincial Government system now before Parliament proposes a gradative decentralisation process.
If it is passed, this would be the third wave of reformation proposed for the second tier government system.
Two further waves have run their course with nil positive results and serious debilitating cost.
A gradative process simply means that a province gets further and further powers devolved to it through a gradual process on the way to becoming financially and administratively autonomous.
Well, let me tell you that gradative decentralisation was exactly the matter on the agenda before the Constituent Assembly at its last meeting on August 15, 1975.
On that auspicious occasion now 46 long years ago, the Constituent Assembly passed the National Constitution, set Sept 16, a month away as the date for Independence and promptly dissolved itself.
The House of Assembly, birthed at a former “whites only” hospital in 1964 in downtown Port Moresby, was no more.
When it next met, it was as the National Parliament of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea.
Parliament, the building, was still a hobby design at the home of the principal architect at the Department of Works, a fine Queenslander by the name of Ces Hogan, whose brain child would nine years later be the shining beacon of democracy on Independence Hill at Waigani.
That last act by the Constituent Assembly, meeting in emergency session, performed an emergency surgery of its own on the National Constitution before carrying it by unanimous consent.
It dropped the entire Section 10 from the young National Constitution.
Section 10 contained the provision for Decentralisation or the Provincial Government system in the country.

Centralised government opposed
The Constitutional Planning Committee (CPC) had come up with a system of provincial governments after visiting every district and holding discussions with 60,000 people over a 21-month period between May 1972 and August 1974.
In an opening argument, the CPC wrote in its final report: “There is widespread discontent with the present distribution of power in the country, and a deep yearning among our people for a greater say in the conduct of their affairs.
“The existing system of government should be restructured and power should be decentralised so that the energies and aspirations of our people can play their full part in promoting our country’s development.”
So saying, the CPC recommended in its final report to the Constituent Assembly, at Chapter 10, for the enactment of an Organic Law to provide for a system of provincial governments in the provinces.
The executive government, headed by Chief Minister Michael Thomas Somare, felt at the time that the country was not ready to receive a second tier government at the same time as the National Government at Independence.
In its response to the CPC report the Somare Government wrote: “The Government is concerned that the CPC proposals could result in undue concentration of power at the provincial center and feels that the law should also safeguard the interests of local government bodies including recognised organisations, as these bodies are closer and more responsive to the villages.
“The type of near federal system proposed by the CPC would create many legal and administrative problems if introduced suddenly. The system should evolve through experience and it is not possible for the Constitution to lay down a blueprint for future development. A system of devolution of power by Act of Parliament is favoured.”
Elsewhere the Government response added the following notes: “The principle of a provincial government is strongly supported and therefore ought to be embodied in the Constitution. The real challenge, however, is the implementation of this policy and ensuring a vigorous and healthy growth for the provincial government.
“Existing administrative structure is highly centralizsed and provides little wisdom and experience on how the whole process of decentralisation can be guided and nurtured. Much will be left to trial and error.”
The Government then recommended that each province (then referred to as districts) ought to apply for provincial government as it became ready.
No truer statement has been stated before, at or since Independence regarding the provincial government system in PNG. Forty-six years of ‘trial and error’ has proven the prophetic accuracy of that classic gem of wisdom.
PNG’s might have been a different story had the Provincial Government system been applied in the slow-phased gradative process suggested by the executive government.
Alas, that was not to be.
With so much on the Constituent Assembly’s agenda and with Independence only a month away, it could ill afford the time required to deliberate the arguments for and against introduction of the Provincial Government system.
The entire Section 10 was rejected out of hand and shelved for possible debate and introduction at a later date.
When the Provincial Government system was finally reinserted back in the National Constitution a full year later, it was introduced on the back of a blackmail and thrust upon a country not in the least prepared for it.
Catholic priest (he has left the active office of priesthood since) and Regional Member for Bougainville John Momis had assumed almost all responsibilities for collation, compilation and drafting of the Constitution as Deputy Chairman of the CPC, because the Chairman, Chief Minister Somare was much too busy elsewhere – what with the pressing matters of negotiating with Australia and preparing the country for Independence.
Then, as today, Momis was a very strong supporter of devolution of power and believed fervently that real power was vested in the people and that only when they were empowered and emboldened to make decisions affecting their own welfare, that was when true democratic government would prevail.

The blackmail
So when Section 10 was cut out of the Constitution, Momis staged a walkout of Parliament with the other three members from the island province with the blunt message that Bougainville would secede from the newly Independent Papua New Guinea.
If Bougainville would not have its own provincial government, then it would not be a part of PNG.
Bishop of the predominantly Catholic province, the late Gregory Singkai and several others lobbied unsuccessfully for recognition of a separate Bougainville state at the United Nations and a unilateral Declaration of Independence failed to gain traction. You gain independence by the consent of your people but you remain so by the consent of your peers (other nations) and here Bougainville was found wanting.
Somare did not want to wait for whether or not the UN recognised Bougainville.
Faced with the real threat of a dissolution of the one-year old union of many tribal nations, Parliament in October 1976 made the first amendment to the National Constitution to reinsert the provision on Provincial Government.
Bougainville, as the North Solomons Province, was the first to attain provincial government in 1977 and Somare gave his friend John Momis captaincy of the second tier government process as Minister for Decentralisation. “Go on yu wokim na yumi lukim.” Typical Somare style, typical Somare dispersion of a problem. May his soul rest well now.
Bougainville, as it transpired later, might have been ready for provincial government but most of the other provinces of the country were not.
Yet because the provision was open-ended, all other provinces were also eligible and all moved within the first two years to attain provincial government status.
A few valiant successful attempts were made in the early years in the North Solomons, on Manus, in East New Britain, Morobe and the Western Highlands provinces but for the majority, the system began to unravel.
Within the first decade serious problems of governance, administrative capacity and financial management emerged. In domino fashion provincial governments were suspended one after another, even the better performing ones such as Western Highlands and Morobe.
That failed experiment, we shall touch on in detail soon, but let us next week briefly explore the Strange Landscape in which a constitutional democracy was born to give us some context.