As Sir Julius wanted, let’s keep PNG united
04 February 2025
BUSA JEREMIAH WENOGO
PORT MORESBY - The recent passing of Sir Julius Chan has prompted me to reflect on the life and journey of the founding fathers of Papua New Guinea, especially their work to establish a new nation.
I am reminded of the Spanish-American philosopher and essayist, George Santayana, who said: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
No doubt there are many lessons my and future generations can learn from studying the lives of these leaders.
PNG is on the brink of turning 50 and this is an opportunity for every Papua New Guinean to ask what kind of nation we want for the next 50 years, and what each of us should to do to make sure that becomes a reality.
Sir Julius Chan and the other founding fathers rose to the occasion to lead PNG into independence and nationhood.
Their achievement recalls Matthew 22:14, which tells the story of God calling upon everyone to take up the mission nut few heeded His call and acted upon it.
In the years before 1975, amongst a host of abled people in PNG, the founders were the exceptional ones who heeded the call to give birth to a new nation – a feat that the late Sir Mekere Morauta described as “a date with destiny”.
The historical records and literature of the time chronicle that, contrary to the general view that independence was offered to PNG on a golden platter, our road to independence was not always smooth and had to overcome much internal strife.
Of course, internal strife can be just as destructive as external discord in bringing down a nation or an empire.
Imagine how precarious the situation was for our founders when the time came for them to push for independence.
Certainly, the general mood of the population at that time was mixed.
While some looked towards the future with hope, others wondered what the reaction would be when news of imminent independence spread throughout the land.
The sheer diversity of our tribes and regions, the many unique cultures with their own traditions, the vastness of the land and its uncompromising terrain and required people of extraordinary wit, foresight, conviction and courage to forge a nation.
The very creation of our Constitution called for deep understanding and respect of the diversity and traditions of our people.
Gaining independence from Australia was indeed a great victory but the founders’ true legacy may well be their ability to bring all Papua New Guineans together under one constitution and one flag and keep it that way until now.
Maintaining a unified PNG is a continuing task for the present generation and for those who will come after us.
When asked if America would become a monarchy or a republic, Benjamin Franklin famously said “a republic if you can keep it”.
In the context of the passing of Sir Julius and others before him like Sir Michael Somare and Sir Mekere Morauta, we are asked if we can keep PNG united for the next 50 years.
Many of us did not know these giants personally, but their history is our history because they gave us identity and they created for us the nation we call Papua New Guinea. This is what binds us to them.
Their dream becomes our dream. Like all people, they were not perfect yet in their fallacies and imperfections they gave us a nation and a Constitution to empower us to realise our full potential and God-given purpose.
The nation that will turn 50 on 16 September next is not the nation it was 50 years ago. It is now a land more than capable of competing with the rest of the world with a people smarter and sharper than their forebears.
Yet, that said, the sad reality is that our nation is still struggling to find its place in the world.
Education and wealth we have amassed beyond the dreams of our forefathers but our inability to work together for a common cause and our lack of foresight will make the journey of the next 50 years a perilous one.
Many of the Constitution’s goals and principles are far from being achieved. If anything, we have stagnated or regressed in many of our efforts.
And, when we have made progress, it has too often been uneven and unfair.
For a nation that is materially one of the world’s richest in mineral wealth, it is absurd that our biggest enemy is poverty. Why is this so?
The wealth of this great nation has benefitted only a minority and we have allowed to arise a burgeoning ruling class.
It is unacceptable that we still have villages without reliable roads, power, schools and health facilities. It is unacceptable that so many children are uneducated and that men and women are not empowered despite the gold mines and oil fields.
It is unacceptable that we have a political system that has become disconnected from the people despite it being run by Papua New Guineans.
Of gravest concern, however, is the corruption that has been allowed to permeate into the very heart of service delivery and become so difficult to detect and seemingly impossible to remedy.
The late Sir Mekere succinctly described the gravity of corruption in PNG when he identified it as being both “systematic and systemic”.
As our nation embarks on another 50 years of aspiring to new heights, two key factors - unity and autonomy - will be crucial in shaping this future. The late Sir Julius would often talk of these prerequisites for effective nationhood.
If we are not vigilant and wise, PNG may become just another remnant of history. The past is littered with nations that rose and fell, that unified but then fragmented. In our own time we need only look at the Middle East and what is happening in Europe.
There are increasing signs that PNG’s unity rests on shaky ground. Our democracy has been formed, deformed and reformed so many times that to many Papua New Guineans the democratic idea remains vague.
When asked about democracy, Papua New Guineans link the term with a parliament that each five years allows them to exercise their right to choose their representatives.
True as far as that definition goes but it fails to capture the full picture of what a flourishing democracy we could be.
Parliament should conduct itself in a manner that preserves democracy and the rule of law. To most Papua New Guineans, it is a symbol of democracy and unity. But already people believe there are two sets of laws, one for ol bigman and the other for the rest of us.
So the buck stops with our present generation of leaders to usher in a new era for PNG. Our forefathers did their part and it is now our time. The past is gone. That we cannot change. But we can learn from it. We can become agents of change.
Over the next 50 years, like in the time of the founding fathers, we will be called to rise to the occasion.
The highest peak of that call will be to keep Papua New Guinea united – a great blessing they bequeathed to us and which we must protect.
What each of us does to safeguard that blessing will determine our own place in history.
I agree with much written in this article. In many respects, the last 50 years in PNG reflect a long list of lost opportunities and governance failures.
Endemic corruption and incompetence have had a deeply corrosive effect on the country.
Contrary to the popular believe, the true foundation stone of a viable democracy is the rule of law, not the right to periodically vote.
Voting in elections is, in some important respects, merely the 'theatre' of democracy, not its true substance.
In a viable democracy, changing who governs does not and should not axiomatically change the fundamental nature of the governance structure, at least not without the specific consent of the people.
Right now, we have some disturbing examples of nominally democratic countries such a Russia, Hungary, Belorussia and even the USA, where incumbent governments have either entirely subverted the rule of law or are trying to do so.
So far at least, no PNG government appears to have actively sought to do this. The PNG judiciary is apparently still able to function separately from the executive and resist efforts to compromise its independence. Sadly, not all Indo-Pacific nations can say this.
I think that it is PNG's very diverse population as well as its geography that has so far protected it from being taken over by any specific group.
The downside of this is that it is a hard country to govern, even assuming a competent and mostly honest public sector.
As Busa's article makes clear, the hard task ahead of the new generation of Papua New Guineans is to crush endemic corruption and foster a culture of at least basic competence in governance so that their country can fulfil its potential.
Posted by: Chris Overland | 15 February 2025 at 10:32 AM
Before you can fix a problem, you must effectively define it. For those of us who met many of these previous PNG leaders 50 years ago, many had mixed feelings.
There was hope for the future and well wishes for our PNG friends. But there was also the gloomy knowledge that what was being offered to the PNG people was a sugar coated, bitter pill of reality.
We who worked with PNG rural people feared that the celebrated handover of power was an illusion that was sold to the few elites, as a touted welcome relief from the claimed tyranny of power, by a so called ‘foreign power’.
To the new generations of PNG people who never experienced what it was like before independence, the expectations of what might happen when one set of higher archeologists handed over power to another set of virtually unsuspecting young players, often gave us apprehension.
Many of us were both happy to see our friends being offered a future they had some control over and knowing full well the traps and pitfalls of power and the known problems of human frailty were never far away.
No one should claim moral ascendancy when it comes to effective government. Current world examples abound.
Fifty years ago, many young leaders in PNG had a good starting point from which to move forward but were not given the opportunity of practical experience of how to control the reins of power.
As Busa says, George Santayana effectively ‘pinged’ the problem. Turn your back on history and you are doomed to repeat it. Those who forced young PNG leaders to accept independence were totally blind to anything but their own selfish desires and wishes, based on their own hundreds of years of acquired history.
But that acquired basis of law and government was not PNG’s collective history at the time.
That PNG has remained a democracy, albeit with some notable ‘wobbles’, says a lot for the future. PNG leaders are effectively having to play catch up, in relative very short space of time.
Congratulations PNG on your 50th Birthday.
Posted by: Paul Oates | 05 February 2025 at 08:34 AM
While I agree with most of what is said in this article I would take issue with the statement that PNG "is now a land more than capable of competing with the rest of the world with a people smarter and sharper than their forebears."
Nowhere have I seen the acumen, dedication and honesty displayed by those young men and women who guided PNG to independence among the present crop of leaders and elite.
I don't see "smarter" or "sharper". Instead, with a few exceptions, I see greed and corruption.
It doesn't bode well for the next fifty years.
It is past time to do something about it.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 04 February 2025 at 08:07 PM