FEATURE - Elections In Papua New Guinea Unlikely To Address Exploitation By Multinationals

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th June, 2022) With national elections scheduled to take place in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in July, a veteran local activist shared with Sputnik how the vote results could affect the lingering social issues in the country.

Growing up in Daru in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, Martyn Namorong witnessed the environmental impact of a copper mine operated by Australian mining giant BHP in the 1990s. Soon he realized the problems associated with the copper mine were only the tip of an iceberg.

"We live in this situation where many countries like Papua New Guinea get exploited by huge global multinationals. PNG is rich in minerals, oil and gas. ... We've had BHP Billiton create a huge environmental disaster in my home province in Western Province. We had a Fly River environmental disaster related to BHP's copper mining. And up in the central highlands, we have another big global coal miner Barrick. And it has been associated with human rights issues. And there was pollution of the river associated with gold mining up in Porgera. So PNG has had a lot of human rights issues associated with logging, mining and fishing. The issues were associated with the exploitation of indigenous communities by global multinationals," Namorong told Sputnik.

Determined to take on the multinationals that have been exploiting his home country, Namorong, 36, became a full-time activist advocating for the local communities.

"I've been doing this for 10 years now. In 10 years, I worked across the country in different areas, in logging and mining, trying to assist communities and do advocacy work," he said.

With the general election of Papua New Guinea scheduled to take place in July this year, the vote results could have a direct impact on how the country deals with exploitation by global multinationals, the activist pointed out.

"The elections this year are critical because we have the two main players: the Pangu party, which is currently the party leading the government, and the main opposition PNC, the People's National Congress. They have very different views about the exploitation of PNG's resources. Pangu has some more nationalist stance on how much PNG should take from its natural resources, while PNC's position seems to be more business friendly in encouraging foreign direct investment and all that. So they have very different policy views on natural resource exploitation," he said.

Namorong suggested that Papua New Guinea should legally define the obligations of those global multinationals and establish a human rights commission to handle grievances from different local communities.

VIOLENCE ARISING FROM LOCAL FEUDS

After gaining its independence in 1975, Papua New Guinea has experienced various periods of political instability. Violence and attacks on political candidates have become a common scene when national elections were held every five years.

Similar attacks took place when the nomination of local political candidates was announced earlier this year. But Namorong argued that the violence would not have an impact on the election results at the national level, because the attacks were mostly triggered by feuds between different local tribes.

"There has been, earlier on during the nomination process, some violence up in the highlands with supporters of different parties vandalizing campaign materials, as well as burning of vehicles. And this is typical of elections in PNG, but it seems like for this year, the violence seems to be much more increased than previous elections. But mostly it's because the supporting of candidates along tribal lines. And the competition creates tensions and brings in all the other previous issues as well. So people tend to support leaders along tribal lines, and that creates this sort of disharmony in the community," he said.

Namorong explained that the conflicts were mostly revolving around local issues and grievances.

"These are local communities that are still very isolated from the rest of the world or even the rest of the country. And a lot of the election issues are mainly local issues, such as basic stuff about roads and schools and health facilities. Those are the things that people are more concerned with as opposed to national policy agendas. So people generally hope that their own candidate from the tribe would be able to get in and then be able to facilitate the delivery of these local government services and infrastructure. That's what creates the tensions and the violence, because people feel that they have a lot at stake and have a lot to lose if they don't win the elections," he said.

However, at the national level, the activist believes the current government has a good chance of winning and forming a new ruling coalition.

"Based on our recent election history and the current campaigning, the current government, the Pangu led government, looks set to win at least a significant number of seats and will be invited by our Head of State to form the next government. But politics in PNG can also be very unpredictable. There are new players who have entered the scene and we'll see how they perform. But things at the moment the current government looks set to form the next government, if they can get the most number of candidates to win their seats and have the support of various smaller parties to form a government. PNG historically never had one party forming the government. We've always had a coalition government," he said.

Being an island nation in Oceania, Papua New Guinea has become the center of geopolitical contest in recent years amid the growing competition between China and the US-led Western Bloc in Asia Pacific.

As more and more Chinese investments poured into Papua New Guinea, Western countries began to match China's offerings with other big projects, Namorong noted.

"We had huge Chinese investments in a nickel cobalt mine. And that was an eye-opener for the West. In 2008, in response to the major Chinese investment in mining, we had Hillary Clinton and everybody come in here to support ExxonMobil with a big gas project," he said.

When the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was held in the country in 2018, rivalry between China and the United States was in full swing and resulted in the summit failing to agree to a joint statement.

Former US vice president Mike Pence had to change his schedule during the APEC summit because of the competition with China, the activist pointed out.

"PNG hosted APEC in 2018. We had big competitions between China and West. In fact, in the lead up to APEC, we had a lot of Chinese investment in infrastructure in Papua New Guinea. And it was quite interesting for APEC proper when it was being hosted (in PNG). Initially, Mike Pence was supposed to just come, give his speech and fly out of PNG. But because (Chinese president) Xi Jinping was actually staying in Papua New Guinea during the APEC, Pence was forced to stay as well," he said.

Nevertheless, Namorong believes the geopolitical rivalry would not have an impact on the national elections in Papua New Guinea this year, because all the political parties in the country are rather very pragmatic in dealing with foreign investments.

"I've seen people accusing each other (of representing one side over the other). But in my honest opinion, I think both sides of PNG politics are pragmatists. They work with whoever supports and promotes the PNG agenda. They do not necessarily take sides. I think this is the thing sometimes misunderstood by the Western media, because when they see a project funded by China, they put all the geopolitical implications to it. But it's probably just people taking the money. It has nothing to do with geopolitics," he said.

The activist gave an example that the former prime minister of PNG benefited a lot from the Chinese investments building infrastructure in the country. But today, the same politician accused the Chinese foreign minister of visiting the country during "election hour."

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Papua New Guinea for an official visit on Thursday.