A 50-year unbroken chain of democracy
02 March 2025
MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad
PORT MORESBY - I’m working on a paper looking at possible explanations of how Papua New Guinea has survived as a democracy despite lacking strong democratic principles.
I am reminded of the introduction in Ron May’s book on the first 25 years of PNG’s independence, State and Society in Papua New Guinea: The First Twenty-Five Years.
The book reminds us that, at the time around independence, every respected ‘expert’ predicted that PNG would collapse:
“On the eve of Papua New Guinea’s independence in 1975 there were many – Papua New Guineans, resident expatriates, and overseas observers – who were sceptical about the future of an independent Papua New Guinea.
“While people in the New Guinea highlands were apprehensive of being dominated by better educated coastal and Island people, and Papuans around the capital, Port Moresby feared being swamped by immigration from the highlands, well informed commentators, looking to the experience of post-colonial states elsewhere, spoke of the likelihood of political anarchy, an army coup or authoritarian single-party dominance, and of economic collapse.
“Australian journalist Peter Hastings, for example, commented in 1971 on the “inescapable similarity between Africa and Papua New Guinea’, and suggested that after independence ‘the Army will inevitably be involved in the political direction of the country’.
“The perceptive historian Hank Nelson wrote, around the same time: ‘After the formal withdrawal of Australian authority the new government may seem to work well, then, as corruption, inefficiency and secessionist movements become more obvious, the few educated and competent will take over, either dismissing the institutions of government established by Australia or ignoring them’.
“And former patrol officer, politician and planter Ian Downs wrote a novel centred on a Mau Mau style uprising on the eve of Independence.”
In State and Society in Papua New Guinea, Ron May tried to explain how PNG defied all expectations and lasted 25 years as a democracy.
What he didn’t know at the time was that the next 25 years would be even worse.
Yet PNG survived as a democracy.
Think back to the 2011 constitutional crisis where we had two prime ministers, two deputy prime ministers, two police commissioners, two departmental heads for almost all government department and a failed mutiny as Taurama Barracks….
Yet PNG survived as a democracy.
So what makes PNG so resilient?
Will our democracy last another 50 years?
Kia ora Michael, I wanted to mention Wouter Veenendaal's 2021 article 'How Instability Creates Stability', which explains the success of Vanuatu's democracy and the Melanesianisation of its Westminster system. I found it really useful in understanding politics in Vanuatu - and I suspect there are parallels to some extent with PNG. It was published in the Third World Quarterly but I think the author has put it online for free.
Posted by: Scott Hamilton | 19 March 2025 at 10:52 AM
In these uncertain times things like democracy tend to be in the eye of the beholder.
What looks like democracy may not be democracy at all, even when it ticks many of the boxes.
You have elections in PNG, like democracies should, but are they actually free and fair? Sometimes that is doubtful.
You have separation of powers but are they actually separate when you read about both complicity by the judiciary and interference in the judiciary?
When politicians manipulate the judiciary in the courts to stay out of gaol, that is not democracy.
I think claiming that PNG is a democratic country is drawing a long bow.
It may look like a democracy and can be technically proven to be one but is it really?
I don't think so.
Posted by: Philip Fitzpatrick | 03 March 2025 at 05:28 PM