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Political pig-trading comes at a price on PNG's hustings
Sydney Morning Herald - June 30, 2012
"The big thing is sometime down the line I might have to repay these pigs," says the 41-year-old former accountant. "I have planned my finances for the future but I haven't planned for that."
Yoka is one of 14 candidates running in the Hagen Open electorate in Papua New Guinea's national elections, which opened last Saturday and roll on next week, despite widespread violence and logistical difficulties that have delayed voting in the seven highland provinces around Mount Hagen.
But Yoka is by no means the best resourced candidate in Hagen Open. He is up against two powerful figures. One is William Duma, the Minister for Petroleum and Energy in the outgoing government of the Prime Minister, Peter O'Neill. The other is Simon Sanangke, a former chief of the National Gaming Control Board, which licences poker machines and other forms of gambling.
Duma has a lot of money behind his United Resources Party, which had six of the 109 MPs in the old parliament. A fund-raising dinner in Port Moresby in May last year was reported to have yielded 1.6 million kina ($800,000) in contributions. Among the guests were executives of the Chinese state minerals firm MCC, which is opening the Ramu nickel mine in Madang province, and Clive Palmer, the Queensland coal billionaire, who flew up in his private jet.
It is a tight little circle, a Melanesian mirror of resources politics in Australia. MCC is an investor in Palmer's Mineralogy group, which owns half of Chinampa, a company that has three oil exploration leases awarded by Papua New Guinea.
"This is the promised land," Palmer declared at the fundraiser, Port Moresby's Post-Courier newspaper reported. "And with a stable government and support from the community, this country can take off."
Sanangke is also very well funded, say election analysts. He also has had other firepower. Early this month police raided his home and found two guns and ammunition. They charged him with possession of illegal firearms and he was released on bail.
But gun ownership is not uncommon in the highlands. Many people with small businesses and possessions to defend confess privately to having a gun. Drawn by the high prices in the local blackmarket – up to 65,000 kina for a military semi-automatic – weapons are trickling in from Indonesia and Australia.
In addition to their funds and national fame, Duma and Sanangke both come from the Jiga tribe, one of the two biggest around Mount Hagen. Yoka comes from a much smaller tribal federation called the Andakelkang.
"It's tough. It's David against Goliath," Yoka says about his chances. "But that's the situation."
Yoka is a well-educated man, established in business after graduating from a small shop to a mini-bus operation to service station ownership and property development, and has views on national issues: more education instead of one teacher for 90 pupils; promotion of small business; and more effective collection of taxes to fund it.
Like many of his countrymen, he is incensed at the influx of small traders from China permitted under the decade in power of the previous prime minister, Sir Michael Somare. These Asian businessmen run cash businesses to escape tax, he says.
"They are coming and doing the small jobs that we can do, running the tucker shops, going out into the villages, then pretending not to speak English and running to pay off the big people."
But on the hustings, it comes down to primordial ties, money, and pigs. "We are tribal society," Yoka says. "Tribal lines run very deep."
Other candidates explain that first and foremost in appeal is fellow tribal membership. Then comes tambu, or marriage relationships. Finally comes an appeal to any other find of shared linkage.
While Yoka, coming from the third and weakest tribal group, might be battling uphill against candidates such as Duma and Sanangke from the Jiga, or rivals from the big Moge tribe, intratribal rivalries could play out his way in the limited preferential system where voters list their top three candidates in order of preference.
As well as Sanangke's rivalry, Duma has a long history of antipathy with an even more legendary big man from the Jigas, former prime minister Paias Wingti, who is seeking a return to Parliament in the regional seat, and who might be putting in a word against him.
With these candidates from the big tribes telling supporters not to give preferences to the other, a popular third candidate such as Yoka may have a chance of gaining the preferences and slipping past them.
Meanwhile, money is flowing, with voter bribery going down through tribe and clan into the basic extended family grouping known as the hausman, each having 50 to 150 closely related members. Typical payments to a hausman grouping are running between 5000 and 20,000 kina in this election, says one candidate.
"I know of one payment of kina 30,000 to a hausman in Tumbil by a regional candidate," he says.
Yoka won't say how much he is spending on his campaign – "a lot of money" – but he has been working for the past four years at building his popularity in Hagen Open. But he runs a "campaign house", which is a virtual open-house party that candidates operate for their constituents, providing meals, somewhere to sleep for out-of-towners, and fares home. Often, the campaign houses are next to the sing-sing (ceremonial) ground, ideal for large-scale exchanges of pigs during political discussions with other clans.
"It's a very expensive business," Yoka says. "A big pig is more expensive than a cow. It will go for up to kina 5000. The average is about kina 3000.
"When a clan is coming, we relate back to historical times, when we were warriors engaging in tribal fighting. Their clan might have been the one which came and aided us when we about to lose, and saved us. We give the oral histories and find common ground. Speeches are made – that our forefathers were like this and now we are together as a team, and we want to work together to change the country for the better.
"At the right time I show my appreciation by giving them the pigs and some money – 10, 15, sometimes 20 [thousand kina]."
Helping out have been donations of pigs from relatives and supporters. "I have received close to 400 pigs," Yoka says, before mentioning the prospect of one day having to repay them.
But to some observers, the escalating cost of this traditional vote trading in the highlands is posing a systemic threat to Papua New Guinea's politics, given the weight in the population, the competitive vigour of the highlanders, and their skill at getting the best out of any system.
"Candidates are indebting themselves up to their necks," says Jim Leahy, a candidate for the Western Highlands regional seat in National Parliament, and descendant of the pioneering Australian gold prospectors of his name between the world wars.
The gifts come with strings, he points out. "A candidate who accepts cash and pigs from the voters, he has to reciprocate with two or three times the amount if he wins," Leahy says. "So the likelihood of him being corrupt goes up 200 per cent or 300 per cent because he has to pay off these debts."
"Do the people understand the difference between corruption and politics?" he added. "They actually think that's what politics is, not about policies for the good of the country."
Postponement of voting in the Western Highlands from yesterday to Monday, and perhaps as late as Tuesday, is chewing up more cash at campaign houses, as candidates wonder whether they will end up as big man or rabis (rubbish) man. Either way, they will hold a lot of debt.
Waiting for it to be over is Paul Ogil, backing his cousin Gabriel Pepson in the regional seat. "Here it's a life and death thing," Ogil says, speaking of the cost of the political gamble.
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