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Papua New Guinea comprises the eastern half of the largest
island in the Pacific region and more than 600 offshore islands, including New
Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville, with a total land area of a little over
450 000 sq. km and a coastline of more than 5000 km. The main island consists of
a high mountain chain broken into ranges divided by wide valleys running east to
west, with extensive foothills and swamps to the north and the south. It shares
a land border of 820 km with Irian Jaya, a province of Indonesia, and sea
borders with Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east. It has
a tropical monsoon climate, with annual rainfall averages from 119 cm at Port
Moresby, to 508 cm in the mountainous Western areas.
Its population in 2007 was estimated at 6.3 million people,
with an average annual growth rate of 2.2 per cent; lower than Nigeria's, but
still high. The capital, Port Moresby, has an estimated population of
about 254 000, the next largest town being Lae with a population of
about 78 000. Other urban centres are considerably smaller and less than 15
per cent of the population live in urban areas.
The Summer Institute of Linguistics lists 867 separate languages
and dialects for the population, giving an average speaking population for each
language of less than 4300 people. However, numbers of speakers range from
100-200 people to more than 10 000 for some of the larger language groups.
Pidgin has emerged over the past century as the lingua franca of the
region and forms one of the official languages (with English) of the nation.
Prior to independence, Papua New Guinea was governed by
Australia as a United Nations Trust Territory. Until after the Second World War,
peoples of the interior of the main island had very little direct contact with
the Western world. The highlands of Papua New Guinea were only entered by
Europeans during the 1930s and no substantial administrative presence developed
until the mid-1950s. So, most Highlanders had been involved in Western forms of
administration for less than thirty years when Papua New Guinea gained
independence in 1975. It is, therefore, unremarkable that national and regional
politics in the country take their flavour from indigenous forms of
leadership.
As in any Third World country, political activity and
performance can only be understood in terms of indigenous political
understandings and practices. As Tony Barnett has described:
Political leadership in the local community in PNG, and
particularly in the highlands, has always had its origins in complex sets of
ceremonial reciprocal exchanges. Status in the local community is achieved
through processes of political manipulation. Through these manipulations a man
becomes a big man. Successful big men become village councillors. Of these, the
more influential gain access to the next level of local government, the area
authority. Some area authorities have become, or are in the process of becoming,
provincial governments ... the more effective big men from the area authorities
are the main contenders for, and occupants of, seats in the [national] House of
Assembly. Their election to the house and continuing presence therein depends on
their ability adequately to meet the obligations in ritual exchange upon which
their status and thus political support is dependent.
(Barnett 1979, pp. 769-70)
To prepare the country for independence, a Constitutional
Planning Committee was appointed by the Papua New Guinea House of Assembly in
1972. In investigating possible alternative structures for the future government
of the nation, it spelt out its view of what had happened to Papua New Guinea
communities during the colonial period:
When Europeans first settled in PNG, they did not find a
political vacuum on the shore and plains, or in the mountains and valleys of our
islands. Our ancestors lived and worked in communities - villages, hamlets,
clans and tribes-with their own forms of social organisation, appropriate to
their needs. However, colonial rule has an important impact upon the character
and lifestyles of our people. It placed new requirements upon them. It ignored,
or opposed, or sought to alter, our traditional forms of social organisation
without proper consultation with our people. It deprived us of
self-government, and even of self-respect. The proud independence of our
local communities was replaced by dependence-upon the all-powerful
representative of the colonial government-the Kiap [District Officer].
(CPC Report 1975, cited by Premdas & Steeves 1984, p. 34)
District officers, in most colonial countries, were given
authority over administrative districts. They were the face of the colonial
power for most of the indigenous population. As the above report says, the
district officer, or Kiap, was 'the all-powerful representative of the colonial
government'. On the political and directive level, communities were subjected to
district officer's authority and to the authority of those deputised to carry
out the requirements of the administration.
This form of autocratic, bureaucratic government could not, of
course, continue in an independent country. Australia, inevitably, saw its own
system of government as the most effective it could offer the new nation and set
about devising a Westminster-style parliament, bureaucracy and electoral system.
Fundamental to the new system was the idea of participatory democracy. Whereas
the colonial administration had been a directive, non-consultative one, those
who exercised power in the new nation could be held accountable to the
electorate for their actions, and for the actions of the bureaucracy they had
inherited. The new government would have to address two major issues: 'the
establishment of political control over the bureaucracy and the breaking down of
the highly centralised pattern of exercising control' it inherited (PPC 1990, p.
6). Both would be strongly resisted, since the bureaucracy, though 'localised'
initially, still functioned as it had in the pre-independence period.
The new government also inherited a population divided into more
than 800 distinct groups which had no history of unified activity, or of
thinking in terms of the possibility of 'national interest'. The dilemma for
national politicians required to take responsibility for the nation as a whole
was that having been elected by local communities, and relying on those
communities for re-election, Australian advisers insisted that as national
parliamentarians they were required to make decisions 'in the national
interest', rather than in the interests of their supporters.
In September 1975, at the time of independence, Bougainville, a
province of Papua New Guinea, seceded, but returned to the fold several months
later after negotiating preferential terms for itself, and, by extension, for
other provincial governments. A number of provinces have used the threat of
secession over the past twenty-five years in the attempt to gain improved
conditions and terms from the national government, although only on Bougainville
has that degenerated into open war between secessionists and the national
defence force. Although the terms negotiated extended the powers of provincial
governments beyond those initially envisaged in pre-independence planning, the
decentralisation of government from the centre to the periphery was in line with
that planning.
In the 1970s, when Papua New Guinea was being groomed for
independence, conventional wisdom in development circles held that in order to
ensure grassroots involvement in political and economic development, it was
necessary to involve people as directly as possible in the responsibilities of
government. Premdas and Steeves spelt out the rationale clearly:
If decolonisation means anything, it would at least entail the
dismantling and re-orienting of the inherited bureaucracy rendering government
administrative behaviour subservient to community will ... The overdeveloped
centre must be deconcentrated to the periphery; a meaningful measure of autonomy
in political decision making should be devolved to the vast majority of citizens
who are rural dwellers (Nyerere 1968; Maddick 1968).
(Premdas & Steeves 1984, p. 2)
Those responsible for Papua New Guinea's moves to independence
took the advice of Australian development personnel seriously. As Andrew Axline
describes:
At the time of independence in 1975 Papua New Guinea embarked on
a series of policies which, among other things, aimed to overcome two of the
legacies of the colonial experience: the high degree of centralisation of
political and administrative power, and the great geographical inequality of
wealth and distribution of government services within the country '" Papua New
Guinea embarked on a process of decentralisation at a time when thinking about
development put an emphasis on self-reliance, more equitable distribution of
wealth, and greater political participation. It is not surprising, then, that
these aims are reflected in the existing decentralised system of government in
Papua New Guinea ...
(Axline 1988, pp. 72-3)
A key element in the decentralisation program was the
establishment of provincial governments with responsibility for a variety of
government services including health, education, primary industry, commerce and
bureau of management services. According to the legislation, the national
government was obliged to provide 'unconditional' grants for the maintenance of
the transferred services. These grants were based on the actual 1977
expenditures for those services, the year before the first of the provinces, New
Britain and New Ireland, were given full financial responsibility for their own
operations. Provinces were also guaranteed the net proceeds of a number of
national taxes within their regions-such as registration and licensing fees-and
were given power to impose a range of taxes of their own.
As Keith Hinchliffe has argued:
... one of the prices which has had to be paid to preserve
national unity by both the public service and the state has been a very
substantial amount of administrative and financial decentralisation ... Demands
for decentralisation came from the provinces ... It was perhaps inevitable that
the new political leaders of Papua New Guinea would be strongly influenced by
the new doctrines of development theory and policy which were emerging in
academic, and in some aid agency circles. These doctrines stressed the benefits
of self-reliance, greater interpersonal and inter-regional equality, plus
administrative decentralisation.
(Hinchliffe 1980, pp. 820, 830 & 837)
So, as a result of pressures from provincial regions and
development advisers, and an attempt to particularise service provision at the
regional level (thus making the provision of services more directly the concern
of people within their own districts), Papua New Guinea devolved governmental
responsibility to a second tier of politicians and bureaucrats.
Within five years of moving to establish provincial governments,
questions were being raised as to their viability and usefulness. As William
Tordoff describes, in 1984 the Prime Minister, Michael Somare:
... announced that a referendum would be held in order to
determine whether or not provincial government should be retained ... A number
of considerations probably led So mare to take this initiative. First, the
Auditor-General's (delayed) reports on the public accounts of provinces for the
fiscal year ended 31 December 1982 revealed serious financial mismanagement in
several provinces, causing a number of provincial governments to be suspended.
Secondly, the weakness of financial accountability and budget control in many
provinces increased back-bench and even ministerial pressure for change ...
Warren Dutton (North Fly), a former minister, stated: 'The evidence everywhere
is that provincial government is closer to the people in towns and far, far
further away from the people in the villages than the national Government
district administration ever was.'
(Tordoff 1987, pp. 51-2)
Nothing came of the move and provincial government remained in
Papua New Guinea until 1995. During that period, however, a number of provincial
governments were sacked for maladministration and corruption and there was
growing dissatisfaction at the national level with the performances of regional
politicians and bureaucrats. Provincial politicians were accused of siphoning
large amounts of money out of government coffers as competition developed
between politicians for the allegiances of voters-though provincial politicians
accused national politicians of being responsible for this misappropriation of
government funds-and of mismanaging their responsibilities. As Sir Barry
Holloway, a former national parliamentarian, wrote in the Papua New Guinea
Times:
Some provincial governments have been suspended, others are bad
and some may look good and I would be the last to make judgement on a premier or
his assembly. They are, however, part of a system which is a total disaster for
this country. In the same breath I would say that regional government would even
be a greater disaster. It is a system of government that neither decentralises
or supports the central system. In most parts of the country it is the root
cause of the deterioration of services to the people and an inhibiting factor in
the quest for economic development. It is totally destructive to the true
philosophy of decentralisation and a grass roots system of government ...
Provincial governments in most cases represent nothing but an arbitrary
collection of the numerous ethnic groups of this nation without any tie as to
how they should relate one to the other ... No longer does the local government
council have a pride in its affairs, the capacity to upgrade schools and clinics
or even to maintain the potholes in the secondary and tertiary roads. Basic
community medicine programmes in relation to hygiene, nutrition, infant welfare
and malaria control do not even exist in the villages any longer. Small ethnic
groups in well settled peaceful provinces are fragmenting into warlord kingdoms
as a result of there being no longer any contact or involvement with any
government.
(Holloway 1990, p. 22)
National dissatisfaction with the performance of regional
politicians had its roots both in the objective performance of provincial
governments and also in the direct rivalry which developed between provincial
and national politicians. (This same competition between parliamentarians for
recognition as leaders amongst their constituents was a very real problem in
Nigeria's brief experiments with democracy.) As the Permanent Parliamentary
Committee on Provincial Government Suspension (PPC) suggested in 1990, the
most:
... obvious manifestation of the new pattern of political
relationships is to be found in the interaction between national and provincial
political leaders. With the creation of nineteen political systems at the
provincial level, opportunity for the emergence of a whole new set of political
leaders was also created. These new leaders-provincial assembly members,
provincial ministers, and provincial premiers are elected by and represent
the same constituents as do national Members of Parliament. While the two sets
of leaders do not compete for the same elected office, they are very much in
competition for recognition as leaders of the same people.
(PPC 1990, p. 15)
This, inevitably, set national and provincial parliamentarians
against each other, with each arguing for ascendancy. As the report says:
This underlying political rivalry has contributed to a
nationalprovincial polarisation in Papua New Guinea, resulting in strong
antiprovincial government sentiments in Parliament and among national
ministers.
(PPC 1990, p. 15)
According to the report, one manifestation of this rivalry has
been persistent attempts by national politicians to divert public money to their
supporters. 'The capture by politicians of the NPEP Sectoral Funds in Transport
and Agriculture which were designed to offset the disadvantage of less
well-endowed provinces in obtaining development funds is the most notorious of
these' (PPC 1990, p. 16). According to the Commission, provincial governments
have also been undermined in a number of other ways through decisions made in
Port Moresby, aimed at the breakdown of effective administration at a provincial
level.
This rivalry culminated, in 1995, with a bill being passed
through the national parliament disbanding provincial government and returning
all their powers to Port Moresby. 'The legislation swept through with a crushing
86-15 vote after [Prime Minister] Chan smoothed Opposition protests by promising
amendments after the Bill's passage'. As David Robie, writing for Gemini News
Service described:
Papua New Guinea has thrown out its provincial government system
in spite of bitter opposition from several premiers. The Prime Minister has
hailed the new law as the 'most crucial achievement since independence'. However
... some opponents claim the country is sliding into dictatorship ... Eighteen
out of 19 provincial governments will be tossed out. Only the National Capital
District and peace transition administration in Bougainville province will
survive: the latter has a deadline for a new political arrangement by the next
general election in 1997. Financial power in Papua New Guinea will now become
centralised and provincial development programs will need backing from the
national government in Port Moresby ... A senior politician losing his job under
the reforms, West New Britain Premier Bernard Vogae, claimed the country was
sliding towards dictatorship: 'This is an example of a dictatorship and the
beginning of the disappearance of a democracy that the people have enjoyed over
the past 20 years ... The people of PNG have the right to know what the reforms
are all about and how they are going to be affected,' Vogae added. Maino warned
the reform concentrated too much power on MP's. 'The reform Bill is designed to
give our MPs more powers and more control which could lead to more abuses, more
misappropriation of public funds and more corruption,' he said. Prime Minister
Chan described the legislation as the most crucial achievement since
independence. He praised the 'guts and courage' of MPs who voted for the
bipartisan legislation. 'This is probably the greatest moment of my political
career-it wasn't a government or political victory of any particular party,' he
said. 'We had a system of provincial government that has failed our people, and
it is fitting that as we approach our 20th anniversary of independence, we make
a change for a brighter, better future.'
(Robie 1995)
Rather than making government more effective, decentralisation
provided another tier of parliamentarians whose primary allegiances were to
their constituents rather than to the provincial government, and who saw
government as a resource to be tapped rather than as an efficient and effective
provider of services. And, since local rivalries were played out in relations
between provincial and national parliamentarians, decentralisation simply
provided an elaborated set of big man rivalries, with all the requirements of
redistribution and favour through which Papua New Guinea leaders cement their
positions among their supporters.
While decentralisation proved less than workable, attempts to
ensure that national parliamentarians were insulated from the corrosive effects
of local, constituent demands were little more successful. In an attempt to
provide national parliamentarians with resources to satisfy the demands of
constituents, in 1984, Michael Somare provided funds which could be used by
members of parliament within their own electorates. Rather than each
parliamentarian trying to carve out funds for his or her1 own region from the general
governmental coffers, people could focus on how their politician disbursed the
funds allocated to him or her for this purpose. This still produced weak
government, since those elected were only weakly-or not at all-committed to
particular 'parties' and coalitions of parliamentarians were unstable and easily
disrupted, but it was an attempt to resolve the problem of members being judged
by their ability to bring amounts of money and goods to their communities.
As might have been predicted, in the ensuing years a great deal
of parliamentary debate and activity went into attempting to expand the amount
of money made available to parliamentarians for disbursement in the electorates.
By 1995, the amount obtained by each member of parliament for this disbursement
had increased from an initial 30 000 kina2 to 500 000 kina a year. Yet, this strategy had
not made members of parliament any more secure. As many as sixty per cent of
parliamentarians lost their seats in each election during the 1990s. This huge
turnover seems largely to have been due to two factors. First, since members of
electorates considered election to parliamentary office a sinecure, it was
widely felt that no-one had the right to permanent election. When a member had
served one or two terms, a likely argument in electing someone else was that it
was time another person, and therefore another group, was given access to the
resource. Second, unless the amounts being siphoned from government to
electorates constantly increased, there was a perception that the member was not
doing the job for which he or she had been elected.
At the national level in Papua New Guinea, politics was based on
opportunism, on seeking alliances which would best secure access to the funds
necessary to ensure political survival, or on preventing others from entering
such alliances. As Griffith and King (1985) say:
If big man democracy and political opportunism were MA's
[Melanesian Alliance] bugbear, opportunism almost constituted the ruling
philosophy of the United Party. In a disarmingly frank presentation at the
University of Papua New Guinea, Roy Evara elevated political flexibility into a
principle: 'During my time in office as leader of the United Party, when there
were changes of government, the United Party was always there. We never missed
... It was the United Party who brought the change of government [in March 1980]
... We were able to cross the floor to join this party and that party. Other
people have said these people are like pamuk meri [prostitutes], they go here,
they go there. Yes, we did that ... Having achieved these changes in government
we also undertook the task of breaking every other party ... We wanted to make
Julius [Chan] weak, and then we wanted to make Somare weak. So in this
election we will all be saying, no party is going to be strong enough to form a
one-party government'.
(Griffin & King 1985, pp. 63-4, in King 1989, p. 15)
This form of activity not only reflects the opportunism of
parliamentarians intent on gaining as much as possible for themselves and their
own electorates and, at the same time, intent on minimising the returns to other
parliamentarians and their constituents. It also reflects the particular focuses
of big man activity within many Papua New Guinean communities.3 Big man activity is as
focused on undermining one's opposition as it is on building up one's own
status. In fact, given the rapidly mounting costs of increased recognition and
status, it is often far more effective to be recognised as adept at undermining
those with whom one competes than it is to attempt to promote oneself. In the
face of these pressures, political leaders were compelled to satisfy the demands
of parliamentarians like Roy Evara in order to maintain power. And the chief
demands of parliamentarians related to funding 'development' activities in their
home regions in ways which would clearly demonstrate to their constituents that
they had personally delivered the expenditures involved.
Papua New Guinea, in common with many Third World nations, has a
splintered past. As Peter Loveday has described:
PNG was not one country, institutionally or in any other way when
its history as a colony began. It was and still is a collection of societies and
a stateless collection at that ... It has no sense of a past as a society, let
alone as a polity, and no residue or memory of traditional national institutions
that it can revive and adapt to the needs of a modernising country. The present
chief minister, Michael Somare, summed up the consequence not long ago: the
country, he said, had a problem of identity-'we have no feeling of national
consciousness, no unification, tribes are fragmented, there are no large tribes
... no chieftains or ruling societies and no common language' (Somare 1970:490-1
'Problems of political organisation in diversified tribes in Papua New Guinea'
in Ward 1970:489-493). Traditional politics had no national component and still
is largely the politics of establishing and maintaining a functionally
undifferentiated and normally nonhereditary leadership, limited in
geographical scope and social range and unable to call on authority or the force
behind it to sanction its decisions and recommendations ( ... Salisbury
1970:313,328-31). As a form of politics it is intensely individualistic and yet
also intensely communalistic.
(Loveday 1975, p. 2)
In order to understand the nature of leadership in Papua New
Guinean communities and the ways in which the exercise of that leadership
affects parliamentary performance, we need to understand the nature of big man
leadership. It is a contention of this discussion that parliamentary leadership
in any Third World country betrays the characteristics of the dominant forms and
requirements of leadership in that country's communities. In Papua New Guinea,
despite a wide variation in the particulars of leadership forms and
requirements, leadership is competitive, yet consensual. An understanding of big
man leadership will provide us with an understanding of the forms and styles of
leadership found in Papua New Guinea politics at the provincial and national
levels. We need, therefore, to briefly examine the nature and forms of big man
leadership in Papua New Guinea communities.
The relationship between leaders and the communities they lead
can be understood on a continuum 4. At the left pole of the continuum is
consensual leadership, and at the right pole is coercive leadership. The
mid-point on the continuum is charismatic, consultative leadership. Papua New
Guinea community leadership is consensual. The leader who leads by consensus is
one who is approved by the community and is subject to constant community
scrutiny of his or her performance. When the performance fails to satisfy
community members, a variety of disciplinary processes are enacted through which
the leader is either corrected or displaced. In the Papua New Guinea context, as
Podolefsky suggests:
... the authority of the traditional big man was embedded in his
network of social relations ... Big men had influence but there was no formal
authority vested in the position ... Big men take the lead in a variety of
settings, including speaking during disputes. However, 'No leader can be sure
that his opinion will be respected, that his orders will be obeyed, that he will
be helped in avenging his wrongs, that his suggestion to hold a ceremony will be
taken up, or that the points he makes in a bragging speech to another tribe will
be supported by his fellow-tribesmen' (Brown 1963:6).
(Podolefsky 1990, pp. 67-8)
In societies where leadership is consensual, leaders can never
be sure that those they represent will back them unless they have first obtained
their approval and support for an undertaking. This requires constant
interaction with the community, constant reaffirmation of support. To act alone
is to run the risk of being accused of arrogance, of ignoring public opinion. Of
course, such leadership is tenuous and communities which allow their leaders as
little leeway as this will find it difficult to co-ordinate group activities or
interact readily with other communities. Big men had and have a variety of means
for increasing their authority and therefore their ability to lead.
Wayne Warry spells out some of the general features of big men
for Chuave leadership among the Simbu:
Three generalisations, still applicable today, seem justified.
First, bigmen could be associated with particular men's houses and still act as
leaders of subclans and lineages. Secondly, where men of equal power existed
they reached tacit or implicit agreements concerning their respective domains.
Thus, rivals resided in different men's houses and, in exchanges, dominated only
those distributions involving their own social groups. Thirdly, young men first
achieved recognition within their own lineage and men's house group and only
later became authorised leaders of subclans or extended their authority to other
men's houses ... the defining characteristics of a bigman were and are
oratorical skill, expertise as a distributor or manager of group valuables, and
an ability to mediate in disputes ... In order to distribute valuables and
challenge the authority of an existing leader, a young man must contribute a
large amount of his own personal wealth in given exchanges or sponsor his own
ceremonies ... Once a bigman has demonstrated his ability to provide a fair
distribution of valuables and to act as group spokesman, however, he needs only
to expend a minimum of his wealth and may even act in this capacity when he has
not contributed to particular exchanges. In the past young men also built
reputations as fierce warriors, but an established bigman's life, some say, was
too important to be risked and a bigman rarely, if ever, participated in battle
...
(Warry 1987, p. 56)
So, while big men were, and are, directly answerable to the
community which supports them, there are strategies through which they can
enhance their prestige and gain increased support from the community. In effect,
a successful big man builds a reputation for generosity, fairness and for
'looking after' those who depend on him. He can then, in specific situations,
trade on that reputation, and so act with a fair degree of certainty of
community support. There are, of course, other ways in which a big man might
bolster his authority. Warry says:
In Chuave a generalised ideology of hereditary leadership and a
specific method of succession within the lineage endowed certain individuals
with advantages most of their peers did not have and so enabled a few men an
easier pathway to power ... Achieved criteria are the basis for initial
recruitment, but when ambitious men emerge appeals to hereditary rules further
bolster their status and power, and disadvantage their competitors. Furthermore,
where no hereditary advantage exists, or conversely where people regard the
advantaged few as inadequate leaders, men adjust beliefs about ascribed status
to accommodate or rationalise post facto the status of the emergent bigman. This
contradiction is real: in Chuave an ideology of hereditary leadership exists,
but the nature of succession is such that achieved and not ascribed traits
predominate in the selection of leaders.
(Warry 1987, p. 57)
So, once recognised as a big man, an individual can appeal to
hereditary ties to further bolster his position. He can show that he is related
to other successful and important leaders from the past and thus hope that some
of the prestige and status of those leaders will accrue to himself. In fact, in
a number of Papua New Guinean societies, the hereditary basis for leadership is
more strongly established and leaders gain some prestige and authority from
their clan and family connections. As Karen Brison has claimed:
Melanesian societies are often described as 'egalitarian' Coo.
Sahlins 1963), but Kwanga society also is not entirely lacking in concepts of
rightful hierarchy or in legitimate means of coercion. In fact, it could be
argued that Kwanga communities are permeated by a sense of rightful hierarchy.
The genealogically senior men of lineages have authority over their juniors,
allocate group resources, make decisions on communal exchange obligations, speak
for their lineages in public gatherings, and control hunting and gardening
magic. Furthermore, Kwanga men are initiated into a multigraded cult in which
they are taught hunting, gardening, and war magic necessary to the well-being of
the community. The cult also creates hierarchy within the group of initiated men
since initiates of higher grades have authority over their cult juniors.
Initiated men not only have authority but are also believed to have coercive
powers to punish violations of social norms and cult rules, in the form of
sorcerers who act at their bidding. In short, Kwanga society has both legitimate
hierarchy and (at least in local belief) leaders with power since, whether or
not magic is practiced or effective, as long as people believe that it is, this
amounts to coercive sanction.
(Brison 1992, pp. 29-30)
Papua New Guinean societies have often been described as
'egalitarian'.
That is, there is an assumption of 'equality' amongst community
members, and individuals act in a non-egalitarian manner at their own peril.
However, as Karen Brison describes, and as others have noted, most communities
are inherently hierarchical, not egalitarian (Geddes, Hughes & Remenyi 1994,
p. 107; Jolly 1987). Although individuals who attempt to accrue power to
themselves do so at their own peril, various roles in the community are imbued
with authority, and those who aspire to those positions, obtain, with the role,
the authority inherent in it (Geddes, Hughes & Remenyi 1994, pp. 104-8). To
the extent that individuals carry out the responsibilities of their positions,
they gain respect and recognition in the community. To the extent that they
attempt to use their acquired position as a basis for personal power, to further
their own ambitions, they attract suspicion and opposition from other members of
the community. In big man societies, individuals achieve increased status and
changed role definition through behaving in ways appropriate to a person with
the position to which they aspire. To do this, they need to convince community
members that they conform more closely to the defined characteristics of big men
than those who are already identified with such roles in the community. That is,
they don't demand new status definition, but act in ways which demonstrate that
they have all the characteristics and virtues of one with such status.
Since young men are brought up to want to aspire to increased
status, to being recognised as big men, many young men try to act in ways
appropriate for big men. The trick is to act as a big man without appearing to
be promoting oneself at the expense of anyone else. So, the lower one's present
status, the more clearly and completely one needs to comply with the community's
perceptions of ideal leadership behaviour. As Paula Brown has shown (1990, p.
98), most communities are very aware of the behaviours expected of big men and
those who aspire to being recognised as such must conform to those community
understandings. Among the attributes of a big man identified by Sahlins (1963)
are 'oratory and the capacity to attract followers to political programs and
group activities'. Oliver (1955) says that the leader is qualified by ambition,
generosity, skill and industriousness; Chowning and Goodenough (1971) claim that
they are managers distinguished by seniority, industry, wealth, responsibility,
courage, knowledge, and ambition; and Read (1959) claims that they are
assertive, aggressive, influential, gift-giving directors whose success in
warfare was tempered by the values of equivalence and consensus.
Obviously, there is a fine line to be drawn between the kinds of
behaviour expected by the community and behaviours which will draw accusations
of self-interest and self-promotion. As Karen Brison has observed:
Something seems to be constraining assertive leadership, but what
is it? I will examine the dense network of social relationships in a small
village society and argue that these create a situation in which almost anything
anybody does provokes a negative reaction. Consequently, people seek ways to
influence events without incurring the personal costs of taking responsibility
for leadership. Spreading malicious rumours is one such strategy; making
speeches in meetings is another.
(Brison 1992, p. 31)
To be assertive, unless one has already achieved a position
which legitimises this, leads inevitably to opposition from community members.
In any society, those who clearly act in ways inappropriate to their current
status attract criticism and opposition. So, one must find ways of influencing
events, of acting as an emergent big man without attracting negative
consequences. Also, since any attempt at attaining big man status inevitably
affects the status of other aspirants as well as of those who are already
recognised as big men, others will be on the lookout for possible challengers
and will attempt to undermine their reputations. Brison explains this well:
People like to drop hints and to spread malicious rumours in
small communities because it is a way of influencing events without facing the
consequences; but everyone realises that since individuals prefer such covert
strategies, nothing anyone says or does can be taken at face value. Indeed, I
will suggest that small communities like Kwanga villages are characterised by a
pervasive spirit of distrust in which everyone looks for nefarious hidden plots
behind apparently innocuous surfaces. This spirit of distrust, in turn, both
creates rumours as people speculate about what lies hidden from view and makes
villagers particularly prone to believing inflammatory gossip-because they are
predisposed to think that their neighbours are up to no good. In short,
suspicion and distrust create a preference for gossiping which increases
suspicion and distrust and so on.
The result is an environment where it is difficult for anyone to
attain or consolidate power. Almost anything leaders do creates resentment and
rumours; some try to influence events in covert ways to escape the criticism and
backbiting; but such strategies increase the people's distrust of leaders and
can blacken the reputations of particular leaders to the point where they may be
attacked or ostracised. Thus, ironically, the same leaders who hint and gossip
to attain 'power without responsibility' ultimately become the victims of
rumours themselves. Talk, then, does more than reflect egalitarian social
conditions created by political ideology or the economy; patterns of talk in
many ways create and maintain the egalitarian ethos by making it difficult for
anyone to consolidate power.
(Brison 1992, pp. 31-2)
As Podolefsky (1990) suggests, the control exercised within
small communities, such as those within which big men operate, is implicit
rather than explicit. That is, there is not an objective, spelt-out
set of rules governing behaviour and interaction which is applied by recognised
authorities. Rather, people in the community, when they find a particular person
difficult to deal with, will mobilise public opinion by gossiping about them. If
others also have a problem, or if the person initiating it is good at it, the
gossip becomes rumour and is spread throughout the community, gathering momentum
as it goes.
The nature of rumour makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint
its origin, and so those who find themselves the butt of gossip and innuendo
must find ways of countering it. In Kwanga communities, as in many other small
communities, people take advantage of public meetings to clear their names. In
the process, if they are not careful, the very act of addressing a rumour might
give it added substance, and so discussion becomes oblique and referential, with
people alluding to issues which are often not spelt-out and which require a
knowledge of the circulating rumours. This, in turn, makes it important that
people know the rumours that are circulating and adds further impetus to
community gossip. In order to protect their names and to stifle gossip, people
must constantly interact with others and project themselves in ways which will
call into question any negative gossip. So, people work at conforming, at
behaving as they know others expect them to. It is dangerous to stand out and
act as an independent individual.
Parliamentarians who decide to act in the national, rather than
in the local and regional interest, risk far more than the loss of their seats.
They risk their reputations, their acceptance as leaders at the regional and
local levels and social ostracism. They must ensure that they have relatives and
friends in their regions who will actively promote their interests, who will
defend them against rumour and gossip. And in order to ensure this,
they must show that they have the best interests of those people in mind in
their activities while in the capital.
So parliamentarians find themselves having to constantly
remember that their actions and attitudes are being scrutinised, that stories
are being passed back to their communities and that people at home are
gossiping. To counteract gossip, which is far more often scandalous than
laudatory, they must very evidently behave in ways which undermine circulating
stories. Whether in the capital or at home, parliamentarians must behave as big
men behave towards their own communities. So, being elected to the national
parliament does not free a person from the pressures and responsibilities that
go with status in Papua New Guinean communities; it accentuates them. The result
is a national parliament in which most politicians are more concerned with
self-preservation and with promoting their reputations in their home communities
and regions than in 'national' government. As Andrew Strathern has
described:
By the 1980s it was understood that politicians are in power to
benefit themselves and their factions, and they concentrate on consolidating
their existing power bases. As a result of armed conflicts between groups these
bases had become more, rather than less, rigidly defined and a process of
neotribalism was well under way ... One long term friend of mine, who told me
that of course now it was absolutely necessary for rival candidates to outbid
each other in offers of bribes to every individual elector, added that the
people were sure (from what the candidates themselves had said) that this was
'the way of the white man' and had just reached Papua New Guinea. When I
protested this view, he appeared shocked and begged me not to spread the point
around, for fear that I might be physically attacked and silenced by politicians
and their followers alike.
(Strathern 1993, p. 48)
The rivalries that develop, both within and between electoral
regions, result in escalating tension, as Strathern describes:
Politicians ... by fostering local factions in pursuit of
personal power, may actually stir up conflicts and increase their significance
beyond the local level ... the situation has been made much more precarious
since the introduction of firearms into fighting and criminal actions in the
Highlands (and elsewhere). The ambiguous role of politicians in this situation
is made clear by the recurrent suspicion on the part of ordinary people (and
some electoral officials also) that certain politicians are amongst the most
important suppliers of guns to their constituents, largely because guns buy
votes.
(Strathern 1993, pp. 46-7)
Not only do communities oppose one another, they view all
opposed forces and groups as communities with whom they are competitively
opposed and act against them on that basis. So, attempts by provincial and
national governmental groups to superimpose their wishes and ideas on local
communities trigger similar reactions from the communities to those which are
triggered by the activities of rival communities. As Strathern says:
Clans seem to treat the state, national and provincial
authorities as another clan and to direct their demands against all entities in
the outside world in the exact way they do against their immediate neighbours.
They appear to know that violent actions can be effective in changing
governmental attitudes towards them, whereas peaceful methods tend to be futile.
From their perspective, then, their behaviour is highly rational, while at the
same time it is deeply damaging to the fabric of state legitimacy.
(Strathern 1993, p. 54)
As the state becomes embroiled in the tensions and antagonisms
of regional politics, it increasingly loses legitimacy as an integrating,
superior authority, and becomes recognised as just another player, opposing the
selfinterested activities of particular communities and regions with its
own self-interested alternatives.
The politician, as a member of the national or provincial
government, faces the problem of increasing violence and the subversion of
national priorities to regional interests and is required to address these
issues in legislation. At one level, the parliamentarian finds himself a member
of a community of politicians and bureaucrats, and, instinctively, acts within
that community to obtain big man status in relation to other community members.
Since all those who belong to this community are already successful to one
degree or another within their constituent communities, the competition at the
national level becomes far stronger than that at the local level. And
parliamentarians are constantly forming and breaking alliances as they prove
useful or counter-productive, and participating in rumour-mongering or defending
themselves against gossip and innuendo. The political games in provincial and
national centres echo those at the local level, and parliamentarians find
themselves preoccupied with the problems of maintaining big man status in the
various communities within which they are placed.
As parliamentarians operating within that community, they accept
the responsibility of setting legislation in place which will provide government
agencies with authority in dealing with escalating tension and corruption. They
also actively oppose such corruption since it is against their own interests for
others to successfully siphon resources from national coffers. Yet, at another
level, those who are responsible for enacting legislation must deliver results
to their home communities, since otherwise they will lose status and
support.
They are, therefore, directly involved in activities which lead
both to legislation opposing violence and corruption and to the violence and
corruption which they have opposed and which plague the country. As Strathern
says:
... the roots of this decline date to at least the time of
independence, when many Highlanders were opposed to the departure of the
Australian Administration. The indigenous politicians had therefore a hard job
to replace their colonial mentors in the first place. But their attempts to set
up patronage networks of their own, mingled with their almost-inevitable
embroilment in intergroup conflicts, have now created a situation in which they
on the one hand make laws to control violence and crime and on the other are
implicated in processes that escalate the overall level of violence in their
areas ... Politicians are admired and accepted by the people as personal leaders
in the style of leaders of small-scale polities in the past. They are not judged
in terms of their adherence to laws but purely in terms of what they do for
their people, however they manage this. In a sense, their legitimacy in the
people's eyes depends solely on this aspect of their role. But actions that are
legitimate in this sense may in other ways harm the longer-term stability and
legitimacy of the government. A cycle of patronage and the unmasking of
patronage (and exploitation) is thus set up that makes the political future
uncertain.
(Strathem 1993, p. 57)
Not only has there been an escalation in violence, there has
been a similar escalation in forms of activity which, by Western standards, must
be deemed 'corruption'. Since politicians are as concerned with their standing
and support in their home regions as they are with the management of government,
administrative organisation is subverted to their requirements. As Strathern
observes:
One can see a conflict of opinion developing here between the
public service and the politicians. Senior public servants largely see their
task as the expansion of the sphere of administration and of 'law and order'.
They sometimes are of the opinion that politicians can get in the way of this
process both by commoditizing, and so corrupting, politics and by attempting to
usurp the spheres of administrative work in favour of their own patronage
networks ..
(Strathern 1993, p. 46)
Papua New Guinea faces an uncertain future. Its
parliamentarians, for many years to come, will remain caught between the demands
of membership in a community of politicians and the demands of their
electorates. Leadership will continue to reflect the consequences of those
demands. And the national government will continue to be seen, by the vast
majority of Papua New Guineans, as a source of wealth to be tapped by members of
parliament for the benefit of their supporters, whether at the national or the
local level.
1 Papua New Guinea communities provide women with few
opportunities in public life. Since 1975, there have been only three female
members of parliament. Those women who have exercised political leadership have
most usually done so through the Kafaina or Wok Meri Movement. As Warry (1987)
has described for the 1980s: 'Today Kafaina, or Wok Meri as it is called in the
Eastern Highlands Province, provides an institutional framework that links
together thousands of women from different tribal and language areas ... Kafaina
beliefs are concerned with the inherent power of females and their ability to
produce wealth ... Kafaina groups parallel traditional beliefs about the power
of women as producers of food, caretakers of pigs and sources of male wealth in
general.' (Warry 1987, p. 147). See Sexton (1986) for an account of the
movement.
2 A kina was roughly equivalent to an
Australian dollar through the period.
3 There is a wide-ranging literature on the
characteristics of big men and other leaders in Papua New Guinea communities.
The following is a brief selection of texts dealing with the issues: Brown 1990,
1987; Jolly 1987; Lederman 1990; Lindstrom 1990, 1988; McDowell 1990; Podolefsky
1990; Strathern & Ongka 1979; Strathern 1985.
4 See A Reciprocity Continuum for more on this.
Axline, W.A. 1988. 'Policy implementation in Papua New
Guinea: Decentralisation and redistribution', Journal of Commonwealth and
Comparative Politics, vol. 26, no. 1, March, pp. 72-103.
Barnett, T. 1979. 'Politics and planning rhetoric in Papua
New Guinea', Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 27, no. 4,
pp. 769-84.
Berndt, R.M. & Lawrence, P. (eds) 1971. Politics in
New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change, Some Anthropological
Perspectives, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, W A.
Brison, K.J. 1992. Just Talk: Gossip, Meetings and
Power in a Papua New Guinea Village, University of California Press,
Berkeley, Calif.
Brown, P. 1963. 'From anarchy to satrapy', American
Anthropologist, vol. 65, pp. 1-15.
Brown, P. 1987. 'New men and big men: Emerging social
stratification in the Third World, a case study from the New Guinea Highlands',
Ethnology, vol. 26, no. 2, April, pp. 87-106.
Brown, P. 1990. 'Big man past and present: Model, person,
hero, legend', Ethnology, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 97-115.
Brown, P., Brookfield, H. & Grau, R. 1990. 'Land tenure
and transfer in Chimbu Papua New Guinea: 1958-1984. A study in continuity and
change accommodation and opportunism, Human-Ecology, vol. 18, no. 1,
March, pp.21-49.
Chowning, A. & Goodenough, W. 1971. 'Lakalai: Politics
in New Guinea', in Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of
Change, Some Anthropological Perspectives, eds R. Berndt & P. Lawrence,
University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, W A, pp. 113-36.
Griffin, A. & King, P. 1985. Issues and Leaders in
the 1982 Elections in Papua New Guinea: A Collection of Campaign Speeches,
Dept of Political and Administrative Studies, University of Papua New Guinea,
Port Moresby.
Hinchliffe, K. 1980. 'Conflicts between national aims in
Papua New Guinea: The case of decentralization and equality', Economic
Development and Cultural Change, vol. 28, no. 4, July, pp. 819-38.
Holloway, Sir B. 1990. 'Decentralised system is a
disaster', New Times, 1 February, Port Moreseby.
Jolly, M. 1987. 'The chimera of equality in Melanesia',
Mankind, vol. 17, pp. 168-83.
King, P. 1989. Pangu Returns to Power: The 1982
Elections in Papua New Guinea, Dept of Political and Social Change,
Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Australian
National University Press, Canberra.
Lederman, R. 1990. 'Big men, large and small? Towards a
comparative perspective', Ethnology, vol. 29, no. 1, January, pp. 3-15.
Lindstrom, L. 1988. 'Big men and the conversational
marketplace of Tanna (Vanuatu)', Ethnos, vol. 53, no. 3-4, pp. 159-89.
Lindstrom, L. 1990. Big men as ancestors: Inspiration and
copyrights on Tanna (Vanuatu)', Ethnology, vol. 29, no. 4, October, pp.
313-26.
Loveday, P. 1975. Parties in Papua New Guinea,
1972-74, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton,
UK.
McDowell, N. 1990. 'Competitive equality in Melanesia: An
exploratory essay', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 99, no. 2,
pp.179-204.
Maddick, H. 1968. Democracy, Decentralisation, and
Development, Asia Publishing House, New Delhi.
Nyerere, J. 1968. Freedom and Development,
Government of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam.
Oliver, D. 1955. A Solomon Islands Society,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Podolefsky, A. 1990. 'Mediator roles in Simbu conflict
management', Ethnology, vol. 29, no. 1, January, pp. 67-81.
PPC 1990. Report on the Investigation into and on
Matters Giving Rise to the Provisional Suspension of the Morobe Provincial
Government, vol. 1, Permanent Parliamentary Committee (PPe) on Provincial
Government Suspension, Port Moresby.
Premdas, R.R. & Steeves, JS. 1984. Decentralisation
and Political Change in Melanesia: Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands, and
Vanuatu, South Pacific Forum Working Paper, no. 3, Suva.
Read, K.E. 1959. 'Leadership and consensus in a New Guinea
society', American Anthropologist, vol. 61, pp. 425-36.
Robison, R. 1990. Power and Economy in Suharto's
Indonesia, The Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers, Manila.
Sahlins, M.D. 1963. 'Poor man, rich man, big-man, chief:
Political types in Melanesia and Polynesia', Comparative Studies in Society
and History, vol. 5, pp. 283-303.
Salisbury, R.F. 1970. Vunamami: Economic Transformation
in a Traditional Society, Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne.
Sexton, L.D. 1986. Mothers of Money, Daughters of
Coffee: The Wok Meri Movement, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Strathern, A.J. 1985. 'Lineages and big-men: Comments on an
ancient paradox', Mankind, vol 15, no. 2, August, pp. 101-9.
Strathern, A.J. 1993. 'Violence and political change in
Papua New Guinea', Pacific Studies, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 41-{j0.
Strathern, A.J. (trans) & Ongka 1979. Ongka: A
Self-Account by a New Guinea Big-Man, Duckworth, Fort Worth, Tex.
Tordoff, W. 1987. 'Issues in decentralisation in Papua New
Guinea', Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 25, no.
1, pp. 44- 70.
Ward, R.G. (ed.) 1970. An Atlas of Papua and New
Guinea, Dept of Geography, University of Papua & New Guinea, Port
Moresby.
Warry, W. 1987. Chuave Politics: Changing Patterns of
Leadership in the New Guinea Highlands, Dept of Political and Social
Change, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University,
Canberra.
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