The conventional wisdom that been that the PNG Defence Forces, like the country generally, is so ethnically fractured that the army would find difficulty acting politically in unison. Anyway, there is a well-trodden route enabling senior officers to enter civilian politics without resort to guns. Peter Ilau, the former commander of the PNG Defence Forces, for example, is said to be about to be appointed as the country’s next ambassador to China.
The contrast between Fiji and neighbouring Tonga could not be more marked. While Fiji in 2009 has seen an entrenchment of military rule with the abrogation of the constitution in April and heavy media censorship ever since, Tonga has been deliberating on a new framework to underpin its first ever democratic elections, due to be held in late 2010.
Until recently, Tonga’s King selected the Prime Minister and cabinet. The country’s 105,000 citizens have only been allowed to elect nine members of parliament, while another nine are selected by the holders of 33 aristocratic titles. Popular frustration with that system has been building since the early 1990s, initially focused on issues of corruption but gradually developing into demands for democratisation. While Fiji’s coup leader Frank Bainimarama insists that military control over government is necessary for his ‘clean up’ campaign against corruption, a succession of top-level scandals convinced Tongans that enlightened despotism is not the best way to run the affairs of state. During the 1990s, the royal-controlled government squandered state revenues in a series of misconceived ventures – including $56 million lost in dubious investments by an American rogue appointed by the former King as his Court Jester. Popular demands for greater accountability in regard to state finances have led Tongans to demand that government should be accountable to parliament, not the King, and that citizens should control through the ballot box which sits in the legislative assembly.
Tonga’s monarchs have, belatedly, embraced change. In 2005, King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV for the first time appointed two people’s representatives to cabinet and a year later one of these, Dr Feleti Sevele, became Prime Minister. Strikes in the civil service in 2005 and riots in the capital, Nuku’alofa, in November 2006 that left six dead and destroyed much of the business district indicate a continuing threat of major civil disruption, but they have not been allowed to derail the reform process. After his father’s death, the new King, George Tupou V, upon his accession to the throne in August 2008, indicated his preparedness to forfeit his powers and to assume instead the role of a ceremonial monarch. He will, however, remain head of state, and is likely to retain considerable reserve powers.
Tonga’s parliament is currently scrutinising a report by the Constitutional and Electoral Commission, which sets out proposals for reform that need to be in place before elections due in late 2010 – if the agreed timetable is adhered to. It was written by a five-member team chaired by Justice Gordon Ward, previously President of Fiji’s Court of Appeal until he fell out with Bainimarama. His villa was subsequently burnt to the ground in suspicious circumstances. The report recommends that the Tongan King no longer control ministerial appointments, and that the Prime Minister henceforth be selected by parliament. It proposes that the number of Peoples Representatives in parliament be increased from nine to seventeen, who will sit alongside the nine nobles in a parliament of 26-members. That may prove unacceptable to Prime Minister Sevele, who urged in October that the King should continue to nominate four of the cabinet ministers in a 30-member parliament.
As in Fiji at the time of the adoption of the 1997 constitution, no referendum is to be held on the Tongan reforms. Had there been a referendum in Fiji, and strong public backing for the reforms, it might have proved more difficult for Bainimarama to sweep the constitution aside in April 2009. Despite the absence of broad consultation, the Tongan Commission wants the revised constitution to require a two thirds majority for any amendment. Time will tell if that proves to be a major mistake.
The weakest part of what is otherwise a careful, well-reasoned and sensible report is the section on the electoral system. This recommends the adoption of a complex preferential voting system. Ironically, one of the few issues on which representatives from the European Union, Commonwealth and United Nations have agreed with Fiji’s Bainimarama is his desire to replace Fiji’s preferential voting system, which did not work well at elections in 1999, 2001 and 2006.
Adopting a preferential voting system in Tonga would mean an end to the established practice of counting ballots at the polling stations, which has enhanced public confidence in the management of the electoral process and served to lessen allegations of maladministration or fraud. While marking candidates in order of preference on the ballot papers may be easy, methods of counting preference votes can appear obscure. Where those ahead at the first count are dislodged by candidates who leapfrog to victory on preferences this can generate controversy, as occurred in Fiji particularly after the 1999 election and in the run up to the May 2000 coup. Fiji made a poor electoral choice for a transitional era during which popular acceptance of electoral outcomes was always going to be of critical importance. Tonga should avoid following suite.
Jon Fraenkel is a senior research fellow at the Australian National University. He led the official observation team at the Tongan 2008 general elections.
This article was first published by The Australian.