Papua New Guinea: Papua New Guinea Government Profile

Government and society

Constitutional framework

Papua New Guinea’s constitution was adopted in 1975 and has been amended frequently since then. The country is a constitutional monarchy and a member of the Commonwealth. The British monarch, represented by a governor-general, is head of state, and the prime minister is head of government. The unicameral National Parliament has 111 members who are elected to serve five-year terms. Of those, 89 represent single-member “open” electorates (districts); each of the other 22 represents one of the provincial electorates. Parliament nominates the governor-general, who is then appointed by the British monarch. Parliament also elects the prime minister, who in turn appoints the ministers of the National Executive Council (cabinet).

Local government

Provincial-level government formerly consisted of 19 elected provincial assemblies and their executives. In 1995 the National Parliament instituted reforms that replaced this system with one in which the members of Parliament (MPs) who were elected to represent the provinces usually became the provincial governors while retaining their seats in the National Parliament. MPs from the “open” districts constitute the membership of the provincial assemblies along with presidents of local-level councils. This has meant that national legislators effectively control executive government at local levels. Although the parliamentarians gained control over considerable funds for their electorates, few provinces have seen appreciable benefits, and in most districts the coverage and quality of government services declined markedly after 1995.

Justice

Papua New Guinea’s judicial system has at its base a network of district courts presided over by magistrates. The higher-level National Court has the power of judicial review over the lower courts and handles serious civil and criminal matters. The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal, and it also reviews the decisions of the National Court and issues rulings on the constitutionality of laws. The Ombudsman Commission is a significant constitutional body with a major role in monitoring the ethical behaviour of national leaders under the Leadership Code—a set of ethical guidelines and responsibilities for state officers that is established in the constitution—as well as monitoring public administration.

The courts have dealt increasingly with political disputes over elections, constitutional and parliamentary matters, and Leadership Code cases. Below the formal court system but not integrated into it is a network of more than 1,000 village courts run by part-time local community appointees; these use customary law, mostly in dispute resolution aimed at preventing the escalation of local conflicts. Village court magistrates, almost all male, are assisted by local peace officers. Each province has a system of correctional institutions.

Political process

National elections are held every five years, and many hundreds of candidates run for seats in the National Parliament. Commonly, a high proportion—as many as three-fourths—of sitting MPs may lose their seats in a given election cycle, indicating popular discontent with the performance of legislators and reflecting the intensity of competition and fragmented nature of their electorates. Some regions have seen electoral violence and fraud. International and domestic observers, including civil-society watchdog groups, citizen election monitors, and local churches, have for decades alleged problems of corruption in government.

There are dozens of political parties in Papua New Guinea, although they generally lack clear policy differences or bases in ideology or class. Many of them succeed in gaining parliamentary representation, which prevents the dominance of the legislature by one or two major parties. Parties tend to be, essentially, parliamentary factions based around prominent leaders. Most MPs owe their election to local connections rather than to any political party that may have supported them. That has tended to create among elected officials a lack of loyalty toward parties, resulting in a fluid party system and party-hopping by MPs seeking personal advancement—often called “yo-yo politics.” A 2001 law, the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates (OLIPPAC), created a degree of relative stability by forbidding individual MPs from leaving or changing parties, although some of its provisions were later successfully challenged in court. Most parties have negligible local organization, although, after the institution of the OLIPPAC, incumbency helped the National Alliance Party to develop a branch structure in the provinces, gain more parliamentary seats, and lead the government for a number of years.

Security

Papua New Guinea’s principal external security issue concerns its western border, which abuts Indonesian Papua. West Papuan nationalists of the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka) have often been in conflict with the Indonesian armed forces. That, in turn, has often led to incursions into Papua New Guinean territory by refugees, rebels, and Indonesian troops pursuing them. The Papua New Guinea Defence Force has stationed small detachments at each end of the largely unmarked north-south border, but the two states have sought to avoid conflict with each other. In the mid-1980s a wave of refugees sought shelter in Papua New Guinea, and it was estimated that in the early 21st century some 10,000 West Papuan refugees remained there.

The country’s borders are somewhat porous; firearms have been smuggled from Indonesia and Australia into Papua New Guinea. During the civil warfare over Bougainville’s independence, the waters between Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands were a major line of communication for the rebels, a channel for weapons and personnel, including medical evacuations. Just before Papua New Guinea’s independence, following a few decades of peace under the colonial regime, the Highlands region became notorious for interclan disputes that still continue. Those disputes have at times escalated into small-scale warfare, termed tribal fighting, that worsened from the mid-1980s with the replacement of spears, arrows, and axes with shotguns and, later, the introduction of high-powered military assault weapons.

Crime rates are high, and, for most Papua New Guineans, the primary security issues are personal and involve fear of crime, be it property theft or interpersonal violent acts, including rape. Security concerns are also a major problem for businesses and are regarded as a serious deterrent to investment, both foreign and local, as well as tourism. The police service is understaffed, poorly trained, and underfunded. As a consequence, private companies have come to play a significant role in security.

Papua New Guinea’s major foreign policy concerns involve managing ties with Australia, the rest of the Pacific Islands region, and the country’s Asian neighbours, especially Indonesia. Relations with the latter have occasionally been strained as a result of nationalist upheavals in Indonesian Papua. In the early 21st century, relations with China were close; China provided direct foreign investment. Immigration of Chinese workers—much of it illegal—was considerable.

Health and welfare

Essential services such as safe water supplies, sanitation, and electricity are far from comprehensive in the rapidly growing urban areas and have barely expanded in rural areas since independence. Roughly half of primary health services and of primary schooling are provided by church agencies, with some funding from the government. In several provinces the coverage of primary schools and basic health services has declined since the mid-1980s, due to lack of staff and supplies, a trend exacerbated by the decline of the road network.

While Papua New Guinea’s per capita expenditure on health is relatively high for a developing country, it has not risen in proportion to the rapidly growing population. Provincial hospitals are under pressure, as are the general hospitals, few in number, that serve their neighbouring provinces. In Port Moresby private hospitals serve the elite. In the early 21st century the rate of HIV infection was the highest in the South Pacific and was increasing rapidly, especially in rural areas. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal diseases, influenza, malaria, and HIV/AIDS were among the leading causes of mortality, especially for small children. Primary health care at the village level is inadequate, and maternal and infant mortality remain high by global and Pacific Islands standards. Immunization rates are low.

There is no social security system in Papua New Guinea; the nearest equivalent of welfare support that government typically provides in more-developed countries comes instead from the extended family and fellow villagers, known as wantok (Tok Pisin: “one talk” or “one language”). In acute emergencies such as severe droughts, cyclones, and floods, foreign aid has provided food supplies and logistics.