🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea general election, July 2022

[Estrella]

Papua New Guinea is one of those countries that are almost known for being unknown. Among normies it’s known for… nothing, really. It’s a young country that hasn’t accomplished much in its current post-colonial form. It’s just not enough of a Dubai or a Somalia to stand out to Westerners. It’s not even a big tourist destination, despite – or because – being seen as one big mysterious tropical jungle. What is PNG, really?

New Guinea is huge - it’s the second largest island in the world. Far from being one large rainforest, it’s one of the most diverse places in the world: geographically, from, yes, tropical rainforests to mountains with glaciers (!), coastal swamps or volcanic islands. More than 800 (!) distinct languages are spoken here, and the island is one of the cradles of agriculture with an astounding amount of history and knowledge behind it (this video actually inspired me to turn this into more than “hey, there’s an election coming up”).

The western half of the island belongs to Indonesia, which annexed it in the 1960s following an ingenious act of electoral fraud. Indonesia still rules Western Papua very much like a colony, having sparked a still-ongoing armed conflict with separatist movements. In the eastern half of the island lies the country of Papua New Guinea, separated from Indonesia by a mostly-straight line originally drawn as the border between Dutch East Indies and German/British territories. In the south, it shares a maritime border with Australia running through the Torres Strait. In the east, it controls several relatively large islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, including New Ireland/Neu-Mecklenburg and New Britain/Neu-Pommern (don’t you love WW1 anti-Germanism). Further east lies the strife-torn Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the maritime border with Solomon Islands.

The country is divided into 22 provinces with significant devolved powers for provision of services. From Wikipedia:



(most of them have really sweet flags too, check them out!)

I’ve mentioned how the island of New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse place in the world. With ethnicity, it’s no different. PNG’s population is actually so divided that it went full circle: the Bougainville issue aside, there is very little ethnic division in national politics (which is not to say there aren’t many, many ethnic disputes, just that they usually don’t percolate all the way to Port Moresby). The vast majority of these small ethnic groups are a part of the broad Melanesian umbrella. There are also small populations of descendants of British and German colonists. There used to be as much as 50,000 Australians living in PNG, but most of them have left since. Only 7,000 remain today, replaced by immigrants from Philippines and China.

About 95% of the population is Christian, with traditional beliefs driven to near-extinction. Some 25% are Catholic, 18% Lutheran (a result of German missionary activity) and 10% United Church (Methodist+Calvinist). The rest belongs to various Evangelical sects/cults.

PNG’s total population is about 9 million and rapidly growing, with a median age of only 22 years. The capital Port Moresby is the largest city with a population of nearly 300,000. There are only seven other cities with a population of more than 20,000 - the vast majority of people live in rural areas. English is used by the political and business elites, but the principal lingua franca is Tok Pisin, a fascinating English-based creole. Have a listen. This has nothing to do with politics, but I’d just like to show you the etymology of some common Tok Pisin words:

as — bottom, cause, beginning (from "ass"/"arse"). "As ples bilong em" = "his birthplace". "As bilong diwai" = "the stump of a tree".
bagarap(im) — broken, to break down (from "bugger up") — (the word is commonly used, with no vulgar undertone, in Tok Pisin and even in Papua New Guinea English).
belo — bell — as in "belo bilong lotu" = "church bell". By extension lunch or midday break (from the bell rung to summon diners to the table).
bensin — petrol/gasoline (from German Benzin)
haus — house or building (from German Haus and/or English "house")
hausboi/hausmeri — a male/female domestic servant - hausboi (or haus boi) can also mean "servants quarters"
haus kaikai — restaurant (from "house food")
haus moni — bank (from "house money")
haus sik — hospital (from "house sick")
haus dok sik — animal hospital (from "house dog sick")
haus karai — place of mourning (from "house cry")
maski — it doesn't matter, don't worry about it (Probably from German macht nichts = "it doesn't matter")
maus gras — moustache (lit: "mouth grass")

This is why I love linguistics.

The modern history of Papua New Guinea began in the 17th century, when it was first sighted by Dutch explorers. Due to difficult terrain and climate conditions (for Europeans, that is), exploration was very slow and colonization did not get very far, apart from a small number of missionaries. By the 1900s, the west of the island was under Dutch control, while the eastern parts comprising today’s PNG were divided along the Highlands range. To the south was the British Territory of Papua, annexed by Queensland in 1884 over the objections of British government. To the north was the German Deutsch-Neu-Guinea, comprising the mainland Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and the Bismarck archipelago. Like in other possessions of theirs, Germans weren’t nice colonial masters.

When WW1 broke out, Australia invaded the German territories and seized them after a few brief battles. They became the Territory of New Guinea, officially a League of Nations/United Nations trust territory but in reality a British colony like any other. The island was the site of heavy fighting during WW2 and some of the bloodiest yet forgotten battles of the Pacific theatre: more than 40,000 Allies and 200,000 Japanese died. In 1949, the two territories were merged and in 1975, they became independent.

PNG’s economy is rather underdeveloped, beset by reliance on unstable export markets, low levels of education and rampant corruption. Approximately one-third of GDP comes from agriculture and much of the rest from other natural resources, especially forestry, mining and fishing. There is very little industry and the service sector is stunted due to low income of the vast majority of population. The GDP (PPP) per capita is $4,300 - comparable to Sudan or Ethiopia.

The country suffers from a host of social problems: a high level of poverty even by regional standards, extreme levels of sexual violence and gang violence (“raskols”), the lack of effective government control over some areas of the country and certain controversial cultural practices (an example | warning: NSFW).

With how culturally distant PNG is from the rest of the Commonwealth, it may surprise you how many remnants of the colonial era it still keeps. The Independent State of Papua New Guinea, as it’s officially called, is a constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II as its head of state. The law is enforced by the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (and because this is PNG, they also have their own language). The country uses a Westminster system, albeit with some differences. For a start, governments are protected from votes of no confidence in their first 18 months in office and in the last 12 months of legislature’s term. This seems blatantly undemocratic, but as I’ll show you later, it might actually be necessary.

The unicameral National Parliament has 111 seats elected in single-member electorates: 89 open seats (with equal population) and 22 provincial seats (one per province). PNG used to use instant runoff voting with compulsory preferences (aka the system used for Australia’s House of Reps), but the sheer volume of candidates combined with low levels of literacy meant that there were tons of invalid votes. To give you an idea what “the sheer volume” means - it’s not uncommon to see constituencies contested by twenty, thirty or even forty candidates. When IRV was abolished and replaced with standard first-past-the-post, well…



F/ck you, Maurice Duverger. Hopefully the 93.4% of voters in the constituency of Gumine who did not vote for Mr. Wamil had their concerns heard. And victories like this weren’t rare at all!


_{Fraenkel (2004)}

Note also the absurdly high number of MPs failing to get reelected.

In 2002, after the farce a majority of MPs being elected on less than 20% in three straight elections, the government finally came to their senses and brought IRV back. They only allow three prefences now to solve the problem they were originally trying to get rid of without making it possible for people to get elected on the votes of their extended family.

Even today, elections in PNG take place over two weeks due to difficult geography and poor communication networks. The campaign is very… passionate. And corrupt, obviously.

The most recent election took place from June 24 to July 8, 2017. Here’s a map of the results. Right click for full size.



Yes, that’s an election map, not a proof of the four color theorem. More useful data about PNG elections since independence can be found here, courtesy of the good people of Australian National University. Oh, and a word about turnout: it’s said to be reasonably high, somewhere between 50% and 80% depending on the election, but good luck maintaining an electoral register in a country like this.

As you can guess from the sheer number of parties, their meaningless names and the apparent lack of rhyme or reason to their support, PNG’s politics are heavily personalistic in the Pacific “big man” style. Parties are ephemeral vehicles that don’t even pretend to have an ideology. MPs regularly change their allegiance, cabinets come and go. Disagreements are not about policies, but about who and what gets the pork, with occassional vague promises of new social spending or crackdows on corruption. It’s not particularly important how many seats a party gets; who wins seats is what matters.

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at the National Parliament, housed in this incredibly cool building.

Government (64 seats), Prime Minister: James Marape (since May 2019)

People’s National Congress (22 seats), the party of ex-PM Peter O’Neill (2011-2019), mostly driven by populist economic policies (tbf every party has those) and various bigwig networks that come with being a governing party.

Pangu Pati (12 seats), the oldest party in PNG and the (former) party of “father of the nation” Michael Somare who served five stints as PM totalling 16 years. Currently doing pretty well thanks to defections from National Congress, including the incumbent PM.

Melanesian Alliance (10 seats), founded in the 1970s by a man who later became the president of the Bougainville autonomous region in the aftermath of a civil war (more on that sordid episode in the next post).

People’s Progress (5 seats), the party of former PM Julius Chan, brought down in the aftermath of his attempt to use South African mercs to end the aforementioned Bougainville conflict. After Chan’s downfall, the party was relegated to being Pangu’s junior coalition partner.

Our Development Party (2 seats) and National Party (2 seats), unremarkable personal machines.

Allegiance Party (1 seat), the party of prominent anti-corruption activist Bryan Jared Kramer.

Triumph Heritage Empowerment Party (“THE Party”) (1 seat), a single-issue Christian social conservative party. Hey, at least that’s an actual ideology, though most of them are splitters from National Alliance (see below).

Independents (5 seats)

Opposition (26 seats)

National Alliance (11 seats), a splinter of Melanesian Alliance joined by Michael Somare after he was fired from Pangu. Under Somare it led a string of governments in the early 2000s, inclunding the first one to serve a full five-year term. The party split after Somare's cabinet fell in a vote of no confidence, with anti-Somare people joining the O’Neill government and Somare later leaving himself.

People’s Party (3 seats), a personal machine of Peter Ipatas, the governor of Enga Province. Tried to merge with National Congress but the electoral authorities refused the move on administrative grounds and so it still exists as a zombie party.

Country Party (2 seats), another unremarkable personal machine except for the fact it was founded with the support of Australian Country Party, aka today’s Nationals.

Social Democrats (2 seats), yay ideology! Except it’s another personalist blob supported by a governor, this time Powes Parkop of Port Moresby. Interestingly, one of their MPs is a white guy called Justin Tkatchenko - presumably a descendant of German colonists, judging by the German spelling of his Russian surname

Eight parties with one seat each, including more name-stealers to add to Country Party: Labour, Melanesian Liberals and One Nation (lol).

Crossbench (21 seats), not that that means much in such a fluid party system

United Resources Party (12 seats), founded as yet another personal machine of a governor. They went through an acrimonious split in mid-2000s and in 2014, their leader got sacked from the Cabinet for being friends with everyone’s favourite mining magnate Clive Palmer (lol).

Independents (9 seats)


I’m busy with finals right now, but in the next post I hope to tell you more about PNG’s convoluted political history and what’s actually at stake in this election.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The unicameral National Parliament has 111 seats elected in single-member electorates: 89 open seats (with equal population) and 22 provincial seats (one per province).

Fantastic summary all round, but there's a couple points to add for this specifically.
Equal population belongs in heavy air quotes. In spite of a constitutional requirement for redistributions every ten years the open seats haven't been redrawn since 1977. Why? Because the Parliament can simply vote down the Electoral Boundary Commission's report, which they have done in 1981, 1991, 2006 and 2011. (two new provincial seats were created in 2012 for new split provinces but open electorates were left unchanged). So there's now a rather absurd degree of malapportionment.
The EBC did finally pass a limited redistribution in March, which will create 7 new electorates for this election and a further 6 in 2027. So this election will have 118 seats with 96 open seats and 22 provincial seats.
However this redistribution is fairly flawed. Firstly while open seats are constitutionally required to be based on total population, the 2021 census has been delayed to 2024. So the commission has been forced to rely on the electoral rolls, which are known to be unrepresentative with massive roll inflation in the Highlands region. And secondly they've chosen to only split existing open seats in half and they haven't particularly adhered to population. So while it reduces malapportionment it's still rampant.
However it must be said this is intentional. The EBC's own report says their report was limited by the Electoral Commission's inability to conduct elections in totally redrawn open seats, and it will take many years to slowly redraw the boundaries.

(Here's a great ANU paper that goes into more detail)

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

That election map looks like the first time I got my hands on Mapchart and wondered how many colors I could put on it.

[CumbrianLefty]

Wow, terrific thread.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Despite all it's problems the country has a suprisingly low emigration rate. It's one of the poorest countries to have visa free travel rights to the UK and Canada

[Estrella]

Papua New Guinea in the colonial era was the extreme form of what was then called "uncivilized lands". It was little more than a collection of some twelve thousand semi-independent tribal villages living on subsistence agriculture. Due to challenging geography, there was little communication or trade between them, never mind any shared institutions or a feeling of nationhood. The closest thing to a State that existed on the islands were the few hundred kiap. A kiap was a white soldier - usually an Australian - who simultaneously acted as an explorer, patrol officer, lawyer, civil servant, mayor, policeman, judge, jury and executioner. This state of affairs was in place, unchanged, all the way until the 1970s.

The first electoral type event in the Australian-administered Territory of Papua and New Guinea took place in 1951. This election was the culmination of a series of reforms by the Ben Chifley government to establish something resembling actual state institutions in the newly united territory. It followed the model of other reluctantly democratizing majority non-white British colonies: of 29 Legislative Council members, only three were elected, the rest being civil servants or appointees by Australian authorities. Only whites (mostly soldiers, civil servants and a handful of farmers) and Chinese immigrants (shopkeepers and so forth) were allowed to vote: there were a total of only 1,697 eligible voters. A few natives who spoke English were selected to act as assistants and translators for the Council, among them a certain Michael Somare.

The following “elections” were similar non-events. The actual head of government was the Administrator, a role carried out by a series of Australian military officers. In 1959, the introduction of income tax forced through over the heads of the Council led to the creation of PNG’s first political party, the Taxpayers’ Association. In 1964, PNG finally had its first fully democratic election using universal suffrage, albeit carried out under, er, difficult conditions:

The electoral roll was created over several months in 1963, with field staff of the Native Affairs Department visiting over 12,000 villages and recording the names of all adults in the territory, except in an area of 6,000 square miles that were classed as "restricted" due to the likelihood of being attacked by the inhabitants.

A tape recorder was apparently used, but no one seemed to know its function. The people seem to have been less impressed by the talk than by the crowd (probably 300 or so), which forced men and women to sit close together, contrary to native custom. Under the circumstances, it is probably not remarkable that they did not absorb much of what was said. They did return with a few new words, notably wot for  'vote'; a list of place names that, with few exceptions, meant nothing to them, but were apparently the boundaries for West New Britain; the name of the District Commissioner in Rabaul; and a confused impression that Europeans would no longer be giving them orders. They also brought a mimeographed sheet giving the time and place for the actual voting, four weeks away in Pomalal. They brought this to Chowning, who was asked  numerous questions, but was on the whole unable to answer them, not knowing what the Cadet Patrol Officer had told them and what terms (Neo-Melanesian or English) were being used to explain the elections to them.

Still, the election went well. Turnout was surprisingly high, on average 60-80% and up to 90% in some places. The new House of Assembly was majority indigenous and provided with actual powers, few though they were. A few candidates were members of political parties; we aren’t sure how many, but that’s not particularly important. Then as now, PNG’s political parties are little more than clientelistic groupings of friends and associates. Personal connections were the key to achieving political success. This was leveraged by the elite, a small - we're talking a few dozen people here - group of native, English-speaking civil servants and their leader, Michael Somare.

During his term as Chief Minister, there was a spirited debate within this elite as to what should the Territory do: should it stay as it is, become an integral part of Australia as the seventh state, or become independent? Eventually, they came to an understanding with each other and with Australia - now run by progressive Gough Whitlam - to choose the latter. Somare's Pangu Pati won the 1972 territorial elections on a separatist platform. On 16 September 1975, Papua New Guinea became an independent constitutional monarchy with Elizabeth II as the Queen and Michael Somare as the Prime Minister.

Straight off the bat, the country had a problem. Just because these institutions were run by the locals now did not mean they were any more in control of the vast wilderness that was PNG than their Australian predecessors. There were no institutions that could bring the country together: political parties were ephemeral clubs for the elite, there was no charismatic leader to push for grand ideological visions, religious groups were generally apolitical, there were no industrial workers or landless peasants to rouse (it was a society of tribal farming villages after all) and the economy was too... nonexistent to argue about Keynes this and Friedman that. Nationalism could not exist in such a divided society and tribalism never extended between beating up people who wandered into the wrong village.

On the other hand, there were no institutions that could divide the country either. The only way politics influenced the lives of ordinary people was that they voted once every few years and maybe got some pork if their man buttered up the PM enough. If you wonder why I'm not going to go into more detail about elections and governments, it's because PNG reminds me of what Beagle once said about Bulgaria:

A chronicle of Bulgarian politics will read a lot like a classical Russian novel – a bunch of loathsome characters doing loathsome things to other loathsome characters without any plot twists, dei ex machina, happy endings or redeeming features whatsoever, to the point where the reader, which would be you, wishes that the entire cast is hit by a train (but only one train, wtf, Tolstoy) - including the narrator, which would be me.

Anyway, the short version is that Somare and his clique played a pivotal role in PNG's politics from independence until his death last year, albeit certainly not unchallenged. He served as Prime Minister in 1975–1980, 1982–1985, 2002-2010 and for a few weeks in 2011. In office, he was pragmatic: allying with whoever could help him stay in power and not doing all that much, save for ocassional moments of assertiveness in PNG's relationship with Australia. In opposition, he played as a power broker between various political groups while plotting to come back as soon as the situation allowed. The same can be said for every other PM, really.

Over the 1980s, a glaring exception to the aforementioned lack of tribalist or nationalist feelings emerged. Geographically, Bougainville is an island in the far east of the country, much closer to Solomon Islands than to PNG mainland. Culturally, its population of some 200,000 stands out as identifying with the Solomons rather than PNG. Geologically, it stands out as the location of some of the largest copper and gold deposits in the world. Economically, it saw a mining boom, undercut by the fact that most of the profits went to Australian megacorps and the central government in Port Moresby. Demographically, it experienced an influx of hundreds of "white-skins" (Australians working for Rio Tinto, the owner of the mine) and thousands of "red-skins" (poor migrant workers from elsewhere in PNG, perceived as basically foreigners). You can probably see where this is going.

In 1987, the leadership of the powerful Pangu Landowners Association was deposed by a certain Francis Ona. He spearheaded a campaign to scrap the agreement between Rio Tinto and PNG government. Initially motivated by environmentalism, he soon shifted to rabble-rousing separatism. In 1988, he co-founded the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. At first little more than a raskol gang engaging in beatings in the area around the mine, in a matter of months the BRA turned into an actual paramilitary group: Bougainville was the site of one of the largest battles of the Pacific theater of WW2 and half a century later remained littered with old weapons and ammunition. They overran unprepared government forces and declared independence as Bougainville Interim Government, with Francis Ona as its president.

PNG withdrew from the island and imposed a naval blockade as the situation came to a stalemate. The unrecognized statelet immediately succumbed to anarchy, as various criminal gangs attempted to exploit the power vacuum. In PNG, frustration with the diplomatic/wait-and-see approach led Julius Chan to become PM. Chan ran on a hardline platform, vowing to end the dispute by force.

While the PNG Defence Force was much better equipped than the BRA (they were the principal recipient of Australia's retired military tech), they lacked combat experience. Chan came up with a creative solution. In secret, through a series of intermediaries, he negotiated with private military company Sandline International and their South African subcontractor Executive Outcomes* to send their men to retake Bougainville. On 10 February 1997, the plan was leaked to Australian media and all hell broke lose.

Australia did not like PNG's abandoment of diplomatic solutions and the idea of having private militia running around in their backyard. The army was incensed at the slight to their authority. Civil society organizations called for protests. Everyone took matters into their own hands: the plane carrying Sandline's equipment was forced to land at RAAF Tindal by the Australian air force**, while PNG military disarmed and arrested the mercenaries. Governor General took out a newspaper advertisment accusing Chan of corruption, parliamentary opposition threatened a vote of no confidence and a wave of violent protests spread through the country.

On 16 March, Chan fired the Defence Forces chief of staff. The army reacted by staging a mutiny against pro-Chan officers, while Australia threatened to withdraw all aid if the Sandline deal wasn't cancelled. Faced with resignations from cabinet, massive demonstrations and the threat of a coup, Chan resigned on March 27. He briefly regained the post of PM a few months later, but lost the subsequent election.

The fall of Chan and the general tinpot-ness of Bougainville prompted both sides to start negotiating. Later in 1997, Chan's successor Bill Skate reached a truce with the BRA. In 1999, Bougainville rejoined PNG as a province and in 2001, it received significant autonomy as the Autonomous Bougainville Government. Since then, the island has been mostly peaceful. The number of deaths during the decade-long conflict is hard to estimate, but it could be up to 20,000.

To be continued.

_{* What a delightfully creepy name.
** This is only one version of the story - the other is that Australia agreed to allow it to land at Tindal on request of PNG authorities.}

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

You forgot to add that Bougainville voted in a 2019 referendum by a margin of 98.3%-1.3% to become an independent country, a dubious sounding result albeit with the referedum being held under international supervison by the famously non-corrupt and un-banked Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern. Regardless of the democratic valadity of the election, Papua New Guniea has accepted the results and we will be getting a new country to add to our atlas come 2027.



https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210706-bougainville-sets-2027-deadline-for-independence-from-papua-new-guinea

[Estrella]

You forgot to add that Bougainville voted in a 2019 referendum by a margin of 98.3%-1.3% to become an independent country

Which is why I put "to be continued" at the end

The detailed roadmap to independence is this:

– 2021: where the Sharp Agreement was signed;
– 2022: the implementation of the one line budget, Completion of Sharp Agreement implementation, establishment of Bougainville Constitutional Planning Commission;
– 2023: Report to 11th Parliament, Tabling of the results and outcomes of consultations, Commencement of PNG Constitutional Amendment Assumption of s289 Powers;
– 2024: Report to National Government stakeholders by GoPNG, Amendment of Constitutional Law Process to repeal and replace Part XIV in its entirety and preparations for self government;
– 2025: Implementation of Bougainville Constitutional Planning Commission, Bougainville Constituent Assembly considers and adopts draft Bougainville Constitution;
– 2026: Prepare Treaty and preparations for declaration of Independence; and
– 2027: Assume all or any Sovereign Powers and Declaration of Independence for Bougainville.

Some adjustments were made in April this year that sped up the process, specifying that independence should come sometime in 2025-2027. The new constitution is already being drafted. Really, the negotiations are going surprisingly well, but there's an if to all this: it needs to get ratified by PNG's parliament. That was a... problem with Bougainville business in the past. It's still very likely though given how strongly the locals feel about it and how PNG doesn't really care. Something of a sticking point within Bougainville is their government's proposal to reopen the Panguna copper mine, shut down since the war. It would be an economic boon, but it could also lead to same problems as those that sparked separatism in the first place.

[Estrella]

Achieving peace in Bougainville didn't bring Bill Skate lasting popularity. In 1999, he was ousted by Sir Mekere Morauta. He led what was perhaps the most active government PNG ever had. Exhausted by the war, public finances were in an alarming state, with public debt at over 70% of GDP. Morauta privatized state-owned banks and government's stakes in natural resource companies. He also reformed parliamentary procedure, instituting restrictions on motions of no confidence, floor-crossing and MPs voting against party line.

The 2002 election was won by Michael Somare's National Alliance, who returned for a third term as Prime Minister. He stayed on for nearly a decade, buoyed by record economic growth thanks to high natural resource prices. He was getting increasingly decrepit and unpopular towards the end. During a long stay in hospital in 2011, long-simmering disputes came to a head. National Alliance split and got together with opposition to install Peter O'Neill as PM.

Somare wasn't removed through a motion of no confidence but rather a motion declaring the position of PM vacant due to his ill health. This led him to challenge his ouster in court. O'Neill supporters argued that his long absence from Parliament meant relinquishing his position as MP, which made him ineligible to be PM under Westminster system. This legal dispute continued for most of 2011 and 2012. Both O'Neill and Somare claimed to be the rightful Prime Minister, though O'Neill was actually in charge.

The 2012 election was riddled with problems: incomplete voting roll, rushed reorganization of the process, a rise in corruption and vote buying as money from the resource sector replaced traditional tribal ties, and certain country-specific issues:

In the remote jungle area of Tangu and Biamb villages, near Madang, cult killings disrupted the voting process after at least seven people - five men and two women - were killed over the past three months as they practiced sanguma. The killed persons became victims of cannibalism. On July 4 the police arrested twenty-nine people who allegedly ate their victims.

The election at least finally put an end to the crisis. O'Neill People's National Congress won the most seats. After some more disputes that included pro-Somare police officers blocking entry into Parliament, O'Neill was elected PM. Leadership of the Opposition went to Carol Kidu, until 2012 the only (!) female MP. O'Neill stayed on for the whole five-year term and his party won the (even more disorganized) 2017 election. With the departure of Kidu, PNG became one of the very few countries in the world with zero women in its parliament.

O'Neill appointed some former Somare allies to cabinet to broaden his support base. One of them was James Marape, made Minister of Finance. In 2019, after O'Neill's perceived mishandling of a multi-billion LNG deal, Marape and other ministers resigned. O'Neill decided that this meant it was his time to go and resigned as PM, replaced by Marape.

As soon as the grace period protecting new governments from confidence votes expired, Marape was faced with an attempt to topple him that ended up getting nowhere. His handling of the pandemic was... nonexistent, but that relates not so much to his actions as to the nature of the country and its culture. He did pass some good policies, including a 40% increase in healthcare spending, but otherwise... meh.

Economy and infrastructure aren't in a great shape. The vast majority of economic activity and employment is informal, the budget is overly dependent on fluctuating resource prices, there are frequent blackouts caused by mismanaged electricity network and chronic shortages of foreign currency (PNG's currency, kina, uses a weird system with a pegged exchange rate set not by the government but a cartel of banks). There are problems relating to organization of elections as well, especially security: bush knives and guns are a common sight at polling stations. Police is planning a massive operation to safeguard the process together with 130 Australian soldiers, but voting hasn't started yet and the situation is already dire. Just take a look today's front page of PNG's largest newspaper.

But social problems are the most serious: there are rampant levels of poverty and sexual violence, widespread addiction to alcohol and betel nut, vaccination rates for hepatitis or measles lower than even Somalia. And then there's SARV, or sorcery accusation related violence. But there isn't much reason to think that this will have an impact on the election - that's not how things work here. Prime Ministers usually get reelected and then change mid-term.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

today's front page of PNG's largest newspaper.

Gotta love State of Origin taking up 20 pages! The enduring Aussie cultural influence.

[Estrella]

Thanks to a dumb mistake, I gave the month of the election wrong - it's in July. Not gonna give you an exact date because f/ck knows. We should know the results by end of the month, though.

In further encouraging news re: organization of the election, the Electoral Commission seemingly f/cked up something with the hosting of their website and intended to operate from a Facebook page.

[Estrella]

The count is on, but it's still early.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The Parliament is meeting today to elect the Speaker and Prime Minister. By all accounts the Marape block will continue in power, in fact Marape got seventeen (!!!) parties to sign a Memorandum Of Agreement to form government. From what reporting I can find it sounds like the coalition will hold about 80-90 of the 118 seats in Parliament.

[PSOL]

The Parliament is meeting today to elect the Speaker and Prime Minister. By all accounts the Marape block will continue in power, in fact Marape got seventeen (!!!) parties to sign a Memorandum Of Agreement to form government. From what reporting I can find it sounds like the coalition will hold about 80-90 of the 118 seats in Parliament.

At this point I don’t think elections in PNG matter if they all can agree to be in coalition with one another. In places like the Czech Republic, the government doesn’t have extra-majority coalitions that large.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

The Parliament is meeting today to elect the Speaker and Prime Minister. By all accounts the Marape block will continue in power, in fact Marape got seventeen (!!!) parties to sign a Memorandum Of Agreement to form government. From what reporting I can find it sounds like the coalition will hold about 80-90 of the 118 seats in Parliament.

At this point I don’t think elections in PNG matter if they all can agree to be in coalition with one another. In places like the Czech Republic, the government doesn’t have extra-majority coalitions that large.

If you can only view politics through an ideological prism then you may well come to that conclusion. But it misses the forest for all the trees. Oceanian politics makes perfect sense in the context of their own cultures and traditions of tribal governments and “big men” as Estrella has alluded to. Everything centres around a rich tradition of consensus which is very alien to Western European norms of state society.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Marape and his nominated Speaker were both elected by parliament unopposed, 97-0. 13 seats are still counting (the aussie spirit of drawn out counting) but two women have already been elected to Parliament after a decade's absence.