See, for example, Standish 1989, 164, 191 30 First put by Sahlins 1963.

3 * Summarised in May 1997. 32 See Standish 1978.

Finally, just as PNG traditional society appears to have adapted relatively easily to the procedures of modem representative democracy, so democracy has necessarily been adapted to suit the needs of PNG’s aspiring political elite. Because no group is capable of fully capturing or subverting the state to serve their own ends, the most rational strategy for aspiring leaders has been to gain access to the state — which, in the circumstances of the PNG economy, is itself by far the most effective way to access wealth — by constitutional means. In electoral terms in PNG, this means first accumulating personal wealth, and then distributing this wealth to one’s supporter base so as to solidify one’s position in power and the wealth associated with it. In this sense, the apparent constitutionalism of elites in PNG may be less a genuine commitment to democratic values than a rational strategy for gaining and maintaining power. However, the fact remains that the electoral arena is almost universally accepted as the appropriate and legitimate route to power — suggesting a clear commitment to the procedures, if not the values, of liberal democracy.33

Constitutionalism and decolonisation

The scramble by Western powers to decolonise the Pacific Islands had, in many ways, as great an impact as the scramble to colonise a century or so earlier 34 In some ways, the nature and timing of PNG’s somewhat hasty decolonisation and independence can be seen as assisting its progress towards democracy. PNG did not attain internal self- government until December 1973, and independence was not attained until 1975. Coming near the end of a worldwide era of decolonisation that had begun almost thirty years before, this relatively late start meant that the nation’s new leaders had the opportunity to observe the successes and failures of decolonisation elsewhere, and to learn from the experience of other post-independence countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The experience of democratic failure in the new African states was particularly timely: scholarly justifications, for example, for a ‘one party system’ in PNG, which were relatively common in the period immediately prior to independence, quickly lost their appeal35 Other lessons were similarly well-taken and given effect in the Constitution or soon after independence: the military was placed under civilian control,

33 See Regan 1995, 9-11.

34 For a general overview see Davidson 1971.

3^ For a discussion o f arguments supporting a ‘one-party system’ in PNG, see Premdas and Steeves 1983, 18-20.

the role of the opposition was recognised, government was decentralised and attempts were made to involve all backbenchers in the legislative process through an extended ffontbench and a committee system. While some of these exercises have been less than successful in terms of efficient government (e.g. the establishment of provincial governments as part of the attempts at decentralisation), they have almost certainly contributed to PNG’s relative success compared to most new democracies.

Signs of a shift in Australian policy towards self-government in PNG started to become apparent around the time of Harold Macmillan’s famous ‘winds of change’ speech to the South African parliament in 1960, which signalled a speeding up of Britain’s decolonisation program. While in the early 1960s most of the Australian administration “seemed to conceive of the political development of Papua New Guinea as essentially an educative process” (Loveday and Wolfers 1976, 4), with thoughts of self-government still many decades away, international observers and a small but influential number of Papua New Guineans saw indefinite extension of colonial rule as misguided and unacceptable. In 1962, a United Nations Visiting Mission led by Sir Hugh Foot recommended that a 100-member elected parliament should be established in PNG before 1964 (Thompson 1996, 167). The Australian administration, partly in response to the Foot Report, as it was known, in 1964 established a 64-member House of Assembly, 54 of whom were directly elected. In his speech to the Australian parliament on the introduction of the Papua and New Guinea Bill 1963, which provided for mass suffrage elections for the new Assembly, Hasluck made it clear that he saw PNG’s political development in the same terms as that of the original Australian colonies: that is, a gradual historical progression towards constitutional government, extension of the franchise, and ultimately a fully independent parliamentary democracy (House of Representatives 1963, passim).

In reality, the actual progression to independence in PNG was more akin to a rush to the finish line of independence rather than a gradual and measured process of constitutional and political development. While later UN missions criticised the relatively slow pace of PNG’s move towards self-government (Loveday and Wolfers 1976, 4), increasing nationalist and independence-oriented political movements in various parts of the country meant that the Australian administration ultimately departed with considerably more haste than was earlier anticipated — although primarily in response to what it saw

as its own interests. Thus, whereas in Australia the process of ‘nation building’ and the struggle for political power and sovereignty led to the formation of representative institutions and popular suffrage over a fifty year period in the second half of the 19th century, in PNG the situation was reversed: parliamentary democracy and mass suffrage elections were seen by the Australian government as the beginning of the nation building process, and the total period from the first elections to the attainment of independence was a mere 11 years. Even this short period did, however, serve to introduce and begin to inculcate the values and practices of competitive democracy to large sections of the indigenous population, thereby broadening understanding and acceptance of the electoral process. Emerging elites in particular had already been co­ opted, to a large extent, into embracing the democratic process as the legitimate and acceptable means for accessing political power. This stands in sharp contrast to the decolonisation process which took place in many failed democracies in Asia and Africa, where the sudden introduction of an often poorly-understood model of elected democracy almost guaranteed its subsequent failure.36

While decolonisation came late, forms of representative government came somewhat earlier to PNG. Local government councils were established under the active initiative of the Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, during the 1950s. By 1960 they covered approximately one-third of the country, and Hasluck considered they had provided PNG’s indigenous population with enough experience to elect a number of their countrymen to the Territory’s (largely appointed) Legislative Council, which had featured only three nominated local members since 1951 (Thompson 1996, 167). The final Legislative Council which met in April 1961 had nine elected and three nominated nationals in its total of 37 members. Elected representative democracy in PNG began in 1964, with the mass suffrage election of the first House of Assembly to replace a largely non-elected Legislative Council. The magnitude of the change involved was alluded to at the opening of the fifth (and final) Legislative Council by the Territory’s Administrator, Sir Dallas Brooks:

At this meeting o f the Council the people o f the Territory cross the threshold o f a new political life. The Australian Parliament, in enacting the constitutional reform which led to the changes in this Council, had it clearly in mind that there should be continuous political growth and progressive constitutional change. It is their belief that political growth and constitutional change should go hand in hand so that the political advancement o f the people is never hampered by

36 Similar arguments have been mounted to explain Botswana’s democratic success in comparison to the