UNCLE JOHN KANAKA TO ANGRY BUBU

JOHN FOWKE

Stretok, having read your reply to Guest I do understand your need to use a pen-name, and commiserate with you sincerely on the loss and the experience you outline, if you will allow such expression from an old ex-colonial fool.

Your depth of feeling, your commitment to the future of your country and your ability to express yourself are certainly not in doubt, and nor is the depth of frustration which your postings imply. Where you don't do yourself justice is to allow your obvious antipathy towards people like me and those who in one way or another, concur with the views I express, to go overboard so as to play the man, not the ball.

Not that I take offence at your characterisation of John; as you will readily understand you are by no means the first to put me down as a nosy old bugger who should pull his head in. But both my late wife and I love- ( in her case loved)- your country and its people, and care about it a lot, and this is why, despite the possibility of offending members of the younger generation, I continue to write opinion-pieces which are occasionally published in the two dailies, both weeklies, and certain blogs.

I should add that I no longer live in PNG, where I first arrived in 1958 at the age of 19, and now at age 72 live on the age-pension in my chosen version of Tumba-bloody-rumba.I left PNG in 2005, but still visit when I can. Having been silly enough to waste lots of money and time trying to write books I have very little cash to throw around.. Sorry to say, my contributions to blogs etc. are self-funded. No evil capitalist with designs upon PNG has seen fit to cross my palm with silver, let alone the folding stuff.

To continue, though, I'm sure we do agree that representative politics based on the notion of parties has failed PNG's voters over 35 years. In PNG's case, having been until very recently perhaps the world's most egalitarian society, one where everyone was a landowner and everyone had a voice in clan affairs, the adoption of the party-based system was a bad error. Where land and the burial-places of the ancestors are the basis for society's basic beliefs and conventions, a regional basis using the already-established LLG-( LGC)- system would have met the case and provided the essential connection between "ol asples lain" and the big, new " haus tambaran."

The adoption of the Westminster system came about without planning, in House of Assembly days, to give weight to the views and ambitions of the Bully Beef Club group led by the current PM, and the conservative Highlands leaders together with white businessmen who formed Compass - this became the United Party in competition with the nationalist, progressive, younger generation's Somare-led PANGU.

Once the issues which divided these groups fell away in importance, parties simply became vehicles for ambitioous and sometimes greedy young men who jumped aboard if permitted, to launch themselves in a life which too many came to see as one of power and personal enrichment.Ever since, the plethora of parties in PNG has remained isolated in the "Executive Suite" above a strong, soundproof, self-created ceiling which has isolated the newly-emerged political class from the great mass of the people.

Out of this, and over the years, this disconnect between rulers and ruled, lack of good policy and firm administrative practice and increasing poverty and lack of opportunity has encouraged the exponential growth of PNG's second social class, that comprised of the urban-fringe settlement communities, the marginalised and landless "new tribe" as referred to by another widely-known blogger.

My message, and its one which may have become tiresome as it has been repeated many times in different spaces in PNG and in Oz, is that whilst dramatic changes to the huge and hugely-expensive, inefficient politico-public-service edifice which PNG is now saddled with are not likely to be welcomed or effected by the ruling class and the departments, there is a way which is both constitutional and non-confrontational, as well as having a solid basis for it already well-established and ready for adoption, if only the concept can be spread and talked about. This message and the spreading of it has been my preoccupation for the past two years. As I said in my last contribution;

"This arrangement will be opposed, naturally, by PNG's established political class which has luxuriated in a level of freedom and unilateral decision-making which has led to present-day dissatisfaction. There will be a contest here, but wise MPs will see that there is the advantage of long-term tenure for those who play the game.

An assurance of security which has always been notably absent in PNG politics. The parties have always been too fluid, focused on momentary advantage rather than good policy, to provide the basis for lasting success for even the best of the nation's MPs. 

Such a movement for change might very well be backed by a renewed effort by PNG's Christian community; a commitment to combine to enter the field as a second nation-wide focus group in support or in coalition with the LLGs. Here may lie the seed for stability, honesty and full equity in the commonwealth of PNG.

The end of powerlessness and the beginning of true nationhood."

Stretok, do comment on my idea; shoot it down if you can; its true that the LLGs dont all function like clockwork; but once people see them as the conduit for their wishes and needs and criticisms of policy and administration, true democracy will be beginning to dawn in your country.