Observing the 2007 Papua New Guinea elections: Marcus Pelto questions whether Papua New Guinea has a pretend democracy or a Melanesian democracy.

• Author: Pelto, Marcus

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a young democracy, having gained its independence from Australia as recently as 1975. Unusually for post-colonial countries of its age, its democracy is unbroken. Every change of government has occurred within the bounds of its constitution, which is her-alded as one of the world's most beautifully aspirational forms of political architecture.

Like New Zealand, Papua New Guinea has a unicameral Parliament, an independent judiciary, and Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. The Parliament has fixed five-year terms, and the head of government, the Prime Minister, is the person who leads the party that wins the most seats. Papua New Guinea held its seventh national elections in July and August 2007. The horse-trading has finished and the dust has settled and the incumbent Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, has been returned for another five-year term. I observed the elections in the Eastern Highlands province, in the rural district of Okapa. This article records my observations.

Papua New Guinea has had a turbulent journey as a modern state. This comes as no surprise to those who know the geographic entity that was bestowed with modern statehood in 1975. With the state famously made up of more than 800 distinct language groups, and countless thousands of clans and kin-groups, there is very little that binds the people of Papua New Guinea together, apart from being part of the same modern state. Some may refer to 'Melanesians', or 'Highlanders', or 'Papuans', and there is some salience to these identifiers, but when normal Papua New Guineans on the streets of Port Moresby refer to a 'mixed race' marriage, they may easily be referring to a marriage between two tribes separated by a series of hills and separate languages. Port Moresby may very well be the most multicultural city on Earth, if judged by the number of different language groups that reside there.

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Endemic instability

A direct-consequence of this hyper-diversity is endemic political instability and disagreement. Until the 2002-07 government, no PNG government had ever made it through a five-year term. When the Prime Minister needs the support of just 50 per cent of the 109 members of Parliament to gain power, then power can be easily gained, but it may just as easily be lost. High member turnover has been a characteristic of PNG elections, with about 50-55 per cent of MPs losing their seat at every election since independence. At the 2002 elections, 73 per cent of members were not returned.

Political parties, adopted by Papua New Guinea as part of the Westminster model in the hope of emulating some aspects of liberal democracy, had a loose connection with ideology at independence, with the PANGU (Papua and New Guinea Unity) Party being loosely based on emerging African socialism, and the opposition grouping of parties such as Julius Chan's People's Progress Party and the Highlands-based United Party being more oriented to capitalist modes of economic organisation. However, ideology was an early casualty of power and politics and by mid-2007 it could fairly be said that the national elections were largely ideology-free.

Okapa District

Okapa District in the Eastern Highlands, where I observed the elections, has an official population of 82,042 from the 2000 census, but the true number in 2007 is probably closer to about 100,000. (1) To put this in perspective, Tonga has a population of 97,784. (2) The road that branches off the Highlands Highway to Okapa District is impassable as much as it is passable, and if you can get through to Okapa Station it will take you 4-8 hours by 4WD truck. There are two high schools to serve the whole district

To conduct the general election in Okapa, the PNG Hectoral Commission had to assemble 113 polling teams of five to seven officials each, all of whom by law had to have at least a grade 10 education and be drawn from within the district. That is at least 565 officials with a grade 10 education or higher. My discussions indicated that this requirement was generally...