By Dr HENRY OKOLE
Political Elites and State Legitimacy
As the new political elite around independence acquired personal
interest in the new state structure as well as continuing colonial institutions
– including the economy - an opportunity to serve the public without
reservation was then missed.
It came to
pass therefore that political elites and public servants carried out their
responsibilities but with a foot each firmly placed in their respective
traditional societies and the modern state.
To be sure, PNG was not unique in this regard.
All the same, it became a problem for the
country when the state system was compromised by individuals who took advantage
of public institutions and laws to serve their private ends – even when
decisions were legitimately taken.
What is seen today is the existence of a hybrid national political
culture that has evolved over time out of the hundreds of cultural units.
It defines the way the government exist and
state institutions operate.
It is this political culture that offers legitimacy
to the country’s political practices.
It does not mean that the practices are
always beneficial, lawful and public-centred.
It simply means that they are the
way things are done, understood and sometimes condoned – i.e. the PNG way of
doing things. Recognition and acceptance
offers credibility and legitimacy.
This
in turn becomes the basis for political authority.
State legitimacy therefore derives its
meaning and intent from other additional sources of authority quite apart from
the country’s body of laws and conventions.
The weakness of public agencies to impose the will of the state in turn
reinforces the credibility and even public acceptance of these extra sources of
authority.
The Weberian state’s claim to the monopoly of power is then
marginally true in the country.
Three or two Arms of Government?
What was starkly evident over the last few months in this standoff
has been that the traditional separation of powers among the three arms of
government now exist in law and theory only.
There are in effect only two
functional arms of government: the judiciary that for a large part has always
persevered to maintain its independence, and the executive.
What has transpired is the latter has slowly
usurped the authority of the legislature.
This caused Hon Carol Kidu to describe the situation as having a “parliamentary
democracy with NEC dictatorship.”
The
executive dominates everything even to the point where perhaps it is fair to
say that the opposition can either be accommodated or isolated – depending on
the mood of the government of the day.
The fact that there is a gravitational pull towards the government side
is to be expected.
To survive, most MPs
see the need to align themselves with the government of the day just to ensure
that they have access to pork barrel resources and other perks.
However, by
swelling the side of the government over the opposition, legislature itself
loses its grit in its oversight role.
The parliamentary committee system has not been functioning
properly over the last 20 years.
The committees normally should have catered
for the backbenchers in the government as well as members of the
opposition.
Instead we have seen the
increasing use of Vice-Ministers which again strengthens the arm of the
executive.
The committees have important
roles to play to enhance oversight in Parliament, shore up accountability in
the public service and establish another opening for dialogue between MPs and
the public.
Then there is the role of
the Speaker’s office that is supposed to be impartial.
In all, there is a serious need to revise
Parliamentary Standing Orders.
While ‘majoritarian rule’ is
the core of our Westminster system of government, it does not bode well with
weak political parties and voters’ perception of MPs who are judged as
deliverers of tangible goods and services - and much less as legislators.
Therein lay the principal causes of
parliamentary instability: (1) a legislative design that consistently
guarantees the dominance of the executive over the legislature, and (2) voters
who mistake their elected representatives for deliverers of goods and services,
which in fact is the role of the state.
The MPs on their part entertain the expectations of the voters because
it matters for their political careers.
Then there is the role of money politics that has conveniently served
as a lubricant either to form or break coalitions.
Money politics is palatable to power politics
given that securing the executive comes down to amassing the numbers on the
floor of Parliament through financial inducement, be that as personal gain or
constituency projects.
Another trend associated with the dominance of the executive has
been a propensity to amendment existing laws and provisions to suit
circumstances of the day.
Understandably, such changes can only be done with
sufficient numerical strength in Parliament.
The rather raucous manner in which piece-meal amendments have been made,
or new pieces of legislation have been pushed through without proper debate,
have led to poorly conceived government undertakings over the years.
For instance, the merits of the provincial
government reforms in 1995 are yet to be fully understood today.
The present women’s bill is in danger of
becoming another farcical law if its potential implications are not aligned
properly with the existing political reality on the ground.
Possible Way Forward
If it took a national consultation process under the Constitution
Planning Committee (CPC) to place the foundation of the country in the early
1970s, perhaps it is high time a similar exercise is commissioned to review the
pillars of the state.
It is truly a pity
that the consultation process that was set up to lay the ground work for the
PNG Vision 2050 was not capitalised on to assess the merits and performance of
state institutions.
A
CPC-like consultation process SHOULD NOT be a licence to alter the National
Constitution.
On the contrary, it should
offer opportunities to explore ways that protect and strengthen the
Constitution.
Very often, it is not the
precepts of the Constitution and other laws that are out of vogue with reality
in the PNG society.
Rather, the laws are
often unfairly projected against people’s conniving actions and behavioural
issues. Inherent to our political
culture has been a tendency to “bend the rules” to accommodate private interests
rather than allow the rules as intended to guide community conduct.
Without public consultation, the onus to
address issues of institutional decay will be in the hands of the MPs.
The challenge therefore is a question of
political will.
And even if political
will is granted, it then becomes a question of whether MPs will be willing to
make the hard choices that may end up jeopardising their political
careers.
Moreover, a national
consultation process would allow more credibility and legitimacy to the
proposed changes.
For all of the above, the
country needs to go back to the starting blocks and allow the public to decide
what is best for them.
Terms of
reference for the review can be appropriately drawn up, but the underlying rationale
is that it is high time the public stands up and remind the MPs that they are
mere caretakers of their interests.
The
danger with not doing anything is it is almost guaranteed that another
standoff, perhaps of another type, is bound to happen. The pillars of the state
are already out of synch with the political reality in the country.
* Dr.
Henry Okole is a Senior Research Fellow under the Institutional Strengthening
Pillar at the National Research
Institute
