Comments

Thanks Terence for this analysis and comments In general, people would agree that women candidates do well in the LPV system than in the FPTP system. Especially doing well with 2 and 3 preference votes. It will only take a women candidate to appeal further out and wide to all voters and be popular so that it will attract most votes. Off course other factors do contribute like education and better standing in society. In the last LLG election, one Ward council in Simbu Province gave a surprise by declearing a woman councilor after mustering 2 and 3 preference votes and withstanding the elimination. I talked to her and she said, " people thought i would not win this ward council election, many men stood, and they undermined me, but I did it with 2 and 3 votes and they lost". She will now going out to depend her seat. So, in fact LPV did change the game in some ways. Hope to see the same in the up coming 2017 PNG election.

Avery good points and agendas being discussed .My name is John Ezekiel currently studying in Divine Word University studying PNG studies and International Relations.I come from the remote highlands part of PNG and after reading this site , i would like to give a bit background of how we live in daily struggle basis. My place is a mountainous districts where 99% of the total population of 54 thousands are subsistence farmers.We do shifting cultivation and our stable food is sweet potatoes and pig is a major source of protein. Many students progress but due to school fees problems they were left home practicing illegal activities and staying nothing with no hope.They have the full potential to apply but there is no opportunity to grab.GOVERNMENT DID NOT TAKE US INTO ACCOUNT AND WE ARE STILL SUFFERING. i wonder if there is a door for such young boys and girls to go to Australia and do seasonal work and return. For more information or arrangement, call or email on my ph: 67570723337 or jezekiel@student.dwu.ac.pg so that we can help those unfortunate ones .

Thanks Ash. One of the most interesting seminars we've had this year was with Anderbrhan Welde Giorgis, who is now basically in exile from Eritrea, a country which, I learnt from meeting him, can only be described as a modern-day tragedy. In his book, Eritrea at a Crossroads, he writes of Eritrea's "infatuation with Singapore" shortly after independence. "Virtually every 'who is who' in the government and the ruling Front," he writes "visited the small island city state in the mid-1990s to observe the modus operandi of the Singaporean model, witness its achievements, and learn from its experience". (p.191). But, alas, for nothing. As Giorgis comments, with masterful understatement: "[T]he Government of Eritrea clearly lacked what it takes to implement such a model successfully, including political will, leadership quality, functional institutions, accountable and transparent public administration, meritocracy in the civil service etc,. to transform the country into an African Singapore." (p. 194). The road to development seems at once broad and narrow.

Super interesting to consider - Singapore is such an interesting case, particularly the way it has codified race and language in this very bureaucratic way in order to minimise disharmony. Imagine walking into a country like PNG and going 'you are all one of four ethnic groups now and this will dictate what language you learn and what schools you will go to.' I always found it bizarre how many small island least-developed countries (I'm thinking particularly of Timor Leste) now make goals to 'become' a Singapore (or Macau). The ZEESM project in Oecusse is reportedly being done with idea of turning the enclave into a Singapore or Macau (complete with the country's only MRI machine, which will be for 'medical tourism', not the country's own people, and a casino). Speaking with friends who were there recently after many years away, there has been no consultation with the people, the big infrastructure projects don't meet their needs and are really poorly done (already falling apart before they are even finished), and it's probably just going to be a white elephant and a huge waste of resources. I think countries forget that authoritarian development is not just charging in and doing stuff but that it also still depends on having institutions underneath the leadership that can execute the plan, and not having resources vanished away by corruption or incompetence, and people actually seeing some kind of result so that the reduction of freedom seems to have some kind of conciliatory outcome. Functional quasi-authoritarian developmental states still have some kind of good governance structures underlying them right?

Thank you Gerard, those are very good questions. My hope is that reseachers from PNG can take their own knowledge of the country and combine it with the information in the database to provide answers to important questions like the ones you raise. Terence

Thank you John, That is an excellent comment. As I said in the last paragraph of the blog, there are other areas where LPV may have had an important impact. Unfortunately, there are not good data on issues such as violence. This makes it hard for a data-oriented researcher like me to make clear claims. For this reason I really appreciate your on-the-ground insights. Thank you again. Terence

Thanks Terence for this remarkable analysis In addition, the outcomes/impacts brought about in the new LPV system is also to do with socio economic impact and votes choices and these includes; • Unlike FPTP system where candidates isolated themselves and consolidated votes along ethnic, tribal linkages and family relations are now tending to work together and foster good friendship, plan to trade LPV choices of 1, 2 and 3 votes. The vibes of working together and accepting one as the winner is very much understood and accepted among the candidates. The candidates reach out to voters where they would not to that in the FPTP system. • Unlike FPTP system where candidates create adversaries among themselves during and after the election and even broke into tribal fights and damage to properties (Highlands), is no longer happening (only some isolated cases). Under the LPV system; many warring candidates and tribes accept the election outcome and no longer take it into the battlefield. • After LPV election, normalcy resumed into the socio-economic lives of the voters, free movement of village people into towns, teachers and children go back to schools and families resumes their village chores without fear. The sense of security for lives of people is guaranteed after the election. However, what has gone worse as a result of the new LPV in the last few elections includes; • Excessive votes buying by candidates with money, the conscience of free voting with a choice of 1, 2 and 3 is dictated by influence of cash handouts • Candidates are co-sponsored by other candidates with money into areas of big voting base where it seen as a threat to the sponsor. Purposely to re-distribute the base votes so that majority votes did not go to one candidate but shared among 2 or more candidates. The exercise of free votes is not there but subject to undue influence by candidates whose real intention is not to win but weaken other potential candidates’ majority votes in the area. These are points that you can actually see it at play during election times, changes as a result of the LPV system.

Thank you Terence for this wonderful tool for shaping public policy and planning etc - something I think the electoral commission Office of Political Parties can't do without. I do note your Point 5 on women participation in national election and they are spot on. While 165 women are recorded for 2017 nationally,looking at the interest rate for each provinces for 2017 Chimbu(11) EHP(13)East Sepik(11)Madang(14)Morobe(13) Central (14) Gulf(12)NDC(13) I am wondering what could be the underlying factors in these high numbers?,Could they be Education, Cultural(Matrilineal /Patrilineal) Better awareness?

Hi Paul and Harry, Thank you for the positive feedback on our paper and blogs. We agree with your comment that it is difficult to get the right balance between the (sometimes competing) sovereignty interests of the host country and the development partner when it comes to the placement of non-citizen TAs. The events in PNG in 2016 which led to the departure of some SGP advisers certainly highlighted this tension. Our model suggests PNG is the employer of the TA. It doesn’t seem appropriate or logical to us that the adviser is employed by a third party contractor when in reality they work within the PNG public service. As you point out, advisers can have access to all sorts of information about government business/interests which can often be of a confidential nature. A lot of the frustration from the PNG side in 2016 centered around the fact that there was essentially no legal relationship between the various Australian advisers embedded in the public service and their Agency head. We think the new requirement to sign a performance contract (PCA) only goes a part of the way and the best model should recognise PNG as the employer. This approach shows appropriate respect for PNGs sovereignty. Having said that, you make the very valid point that TAs are ultimately funded by the Australian taxpayer. We agree with your observation that there should be appropriate accountability back to DFAT to ensure taxpayers resources are being spent wisely. It is perfectly legitimate for Australia (or any other development partner) to have this expectation. We think a model where aid-funded TAs are employed by PNG can still have appropriate monitoring and accountability mechanisms, including via the contractor who is retained to provide the logistics and other support. We also accept this couldn't happen overnight primarily because there is no regulatory framework in PNG to accomodate it. At the very least we hoped to generate some discussion and thought through the NRI piece and the blogs. Thanks again for your comments, Michael, Joachim and Carmen

Minister McCully explained his logic nicely in a recent speech: "And slowly improving our delivery of agricultural programmes not only provides many countries in the Pacific, South East Asia and Africa with the support they most want from New Zealand, it also paves the way for our commercial agricultural interests to play the more active global role that this country will require in the future." URL: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/address-new-zealand-institute-international-affairs

Dear Greg, Thanks for your post - timely given the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Kokoda campaign is only a few months away. Anyone who wants to see an outstanding exemplar of a collaboration to raise awareness of the impact of WWII on Papua New Guineans (an estimated 40,000 died from 1942-45), come along tonight (26 April) to our screening of ANGELS OF WAR. 5:15pm for 5:30pm start, Weston Theatre, Crawford School ANU. More event information can be found <a href="http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/cap-events/2017-04-26/film-angels-war-1982-54mins" rel="nofollow">here</a>. This screening will be followed by a Q&A discussion with Mr Deveni Temu (whose father was drawn into the war) and Dr Keiko Tamura, who can offer Japanese perspectives on the New Guinea campaign (in which 150,000 Japanese, 9,000 Australian and 3,000 American military personnel lost their lives). Hope to see you there! Mike

Scary budget. It is good to review all this because it is public money that is at stake