Page 26 - IB June 2019

Opinion

Is PNG part of Pasifika? and resources of the people, apparently in the national interest.
In terms of the provision of public goods and services, the
State tends to throw out its people to fend for themselves and
By Martyn Namorong and Patrick Kaiku be exploited without social safeguards or even access to justice.
Pasifika governments tend to take better care of their people
IS our region’s largest country, Papua New Guinea, part of Pa- and protect their interests.
sifika? It’s a debate that has recently played out on the pages of There are other perhaps more controversial areas of contrast
an influential PNG blog. Two of the country’s most prominent like culture, sovereignty, decolonisation, demilitarisation and
commentators have their say here, in important discussions about West Papua, but I won’t delve there for now.
the future of regionalism. My view is that PNG has a very different development trajectory
PNG is not Pasifika – we are not so much of the ocean to that of other Pacific island nations.
By Martyn Namorong It won’t be easy to chuck PNG out of the regional space due
Last year in Goroka I attended a party at a hotel. Although to historical and geographical reasons, but I believe PNG’s place
hundreds of kilometres from the sea and high in the clouds of in the Pacific is similar to that of Australia and New Zealand.
the Papua New Guinea highlands, it was a Pasifika themed party. We are a friend, but we are not a member of the Pasifika fam-
Luckily I had taken along my sulu on that work trip and so, ily of nations
wearing my sulu and a bula shirt, I was pretty much 100 percent Martyn Namorong is the Coordinator of the Papua New Guinea
Pasifika for the night. (It also turned out I was the only Pasifika- Resource Governance Coalition, and a member of the PNG EITI
dressed party goer, so by default won the prize that was on offer.) Multi-Stakeholders Group (PNGMSG).
My Goroka experience provided a glimpse into how PNG wants PNG is Pasifika by necessity: A response to Martyn Namo-
to be Pasifika but doesn’t behave as such. Not just in fashion, of rong
course, but in terms of common values and more importantly the By Patrick Kaiku
customs (kastom) that define this region and its people. The commentary in PNG Attitude by Martyn Namorong, ‘PNG
My first observation of why I think PNG is not a Pasifika nation is not Pasifika – we are not so much of the ocean’, needs rebuttal.
is that of how we perceive our physical environment. Namorong’s critique is not new. Solomon Islands scholar
One really gets a sense of Pasifika as the ‘liquid continent’ when Tarcisius Kabutaulaka made similar observations in relation to
taking off from Honiara, Nadi or Nuku’alofa and noting how tiny Epeli Hau’ofa.
are the islands and how vast the ocean. From Port Moresby, you Kabutaulaka stated: “We need to recognise that focusing on the
can look to the horizon and see land stretching to the peaks of ocean as the element that connects us immediately marginalises
the highlands. the millions of people who live inland, in places like the highlands
This is an important contrast because it gives Pasifika people of Papua New Guinea, for whom the ocean has little significance.”
a sense of their place in the world. Do we Papua New Guineans Kabutaulaka concedes however, that Hau’ofa “challenges us
see ourselves as people of that liquid continent of which wrote to think in ways that empower us, rather than marginalise and
Tongan-Fijian writer and anthropologist ‘Epeli Hau’ofa? weaken us.”
In the current context of regional integration, do we see our- This terrestrial orientation of Papua New Guineans is natural.
selves as part of the Pacific Islands Forum’s agenda as people Insulated as we are from others by the perceived vastness of
of the Blue Continent with a Blue Economy? Is PNG’s economic our land expanse, Papua New Guinean exceptionalism can re-
future on land or in the ocean like other Pasifika nations? strict a more holistic, and wholesome, knowledge of our Pacific
Questions about a shared Pasifika future are important because, neighbourhood.
while some policy thinkers at the regional and national level may I teach PNG students who initially struggle to name the coun-
think so, my view is that PNG doesn’t share this common future tries and territories on the unlabelled map of the Pacific region.
with its Pasifika neighbours. This is not surprising. To their own peril, even citizens of the
The first and most important reason I say PNG is not Pasifika United States are terrible with geography, given their own mis-
is that it needs to and wants to industrialise to take care of its conception of their place in the world.
eight million people. Why learn and immerse yourself in the knowledge of other
Indeed we are already extracting large quantities of carbon (oil places and cultures, when you are the most powerful state in the
and gas) from the ground selling it to the world. And we have world, a continent unto yourself?
coal which we might soon be exploiting. The first point in Namorong’s commentary states: “why I think
Harsh as these words read, whilst we will feel negative conse- PNG is not a Pasifika nation is that of how we perceive our physi-
quences of climate change, these may not erase our nation from cal environment.”
the surface of the earth like they might other Pasifika states. Sure, the ocean is not a common identity marker for thousands
So while industrialisation means increased carbon emissions of Papua New Guineans. The Bainings of East New Britain or
and contributing to global warming and climate change, perhaps Lelet plateau inhabitants of New Ireland don’t identify much with
we can afford to do this because much of our land mass is 1,000 the ocean, even though they live in island provinces.
meters above the sea. But is the Blue Pacific or Pasifika simply about the “physical
PNG is also not Pasifika because of the nature of the relation- environment”? Pacific Islanders use metaphors to communicate
ship the State has with Society which is different from other universal values and ideas.
Pasifika countries. Regional integration is easier if nation states The Blue Pacific is a metaphor, just like Hau’ofa’s “our sea of
have shared values and principles of governance. islands”. The Blue Pacific must be read together with the Boe
The relationship between State and Society in PNG is one I Declaration of 2018 to understand the context in which it is used.
would describe as paternalistic whereas Pasifika states tend to The Boe Declaration emphasises environmental and resource
be more Maternalistic. security, among other things. Surely, these are concerns Papua
In PNG, the economic relationship between state and society is New Guineans share. The Blue Pacific represents values that PNG
a predatory relationship. Waigani’s predatory elite exploit the land acknowledges in its national development blueprints.

26 Islands Business, June 2019