GOVERNANCE
Native ideology within introduced democracy
I WAS writing this in a week that might have decide the fate of our democracy.
Soldiers had blockaded Murray Barracks. The Opposition has issued ultimatums. And through it all, the same question keeps surfacing; whose interests are being served? A certain tribe’s or the nation’s? This essay was already in motion before this week’s events and those events have given it a new urgency.
What exactly is the cause for all this? Corruption? Of course. But it’s much deeper than that and we have a term in Tok Pisin for it. Wantok system. The former is a blend of the English words “one talk,” and it means someone who shares your language, clan, or your corner of the map. In the village, it is survival. If you fall, they pick you up. If you starve, they share. If a fight comes, they stand beside you. This is how our ancestors made it through fifty thousand years of mountains, coasts, and isolation. The tribe was the state before the state existed.
But we, their descendants, do not live in that world anymore. We live in a country bound by a democratic constitution, a parliament, a police force, and a flag. We are supposed to be governed by laws, merit, and what we know. Not lineages, blood and who we know.
And yet, when an election comes, what do we do? We vote for the man from our district or clan. From our wantok line. All because he shares our face paint and speaks our mother tongue and will, if he wins, send money back down the tribal line. It has nothing to do with policies or plans. This is tribalism, and it is eating our democracy from the inside.
What tribalism actually is
Let’s get one thing straight. Tribalism is not the same as ethnic identity. Every human group has identity. The Japanese have Japan. The French have France. That’s not the problem.
Tribalism, as I am using it here, is the elevation of kinship loyalty above every other form of loyalty. It says, my tribe first, always. My tribe’s interest over the law. My tribe’s man over the qualified outsider. My tribe’s victory even if the nation loses.
This is not unique to PNG. It exists everywhere. In the United States, political parties have become tribes. You can predict a person’s vote by their zip code, their church, and the news channel they watch. Just look at how Christians in USA step over their own toes trying to defend Donald Trump’s recent attack on the Pope, just because Trump is from their political party.
In some African states like Kenya and Nigeria, elections often turn into ethnic census counts. They literally vote by ethnicity. And Yugoslavia, a favourite former country of mine, spent 50 years pretending tribalism was dead, and then it tore itself apart in the 1990s.
No country is immune to this. But Papua New Guinea has a unique version, because our tribalism is not a recent invention. It’s not a reaction to colonialism or a product of modern politics. It is the original operating system of our societies.
Democracy that cannot land
Democracy rests on a simple idea. One person, one vote. The will of the majority. Equal protection under the law. The peaceful transfer of power to whoever wins the argument, not whoever has the biggest clan.
Tribalism rejects every part of this. When you vote for your wantok, you are not voting for policy. You are voting for access. The candidate knows it. You know it.
The whole system is a transaction. Your vote for his favour and if he wins, your road might get fixed. Or it might not. But at least your tribe has a seat at the table. That’s the whole logic.
Now watch what happens to the parliament. It fills with men who did not win on ideas. They won on surnames, on regional blocks, and on the promise of distributing state money to their people. They owe their seats to a bloodline, not a platform. So when they legislate, you already know who they serve. It would be political suicide if they tried to change.
Visible costs
When I say tribalism is eating at our democracy from the inside, this is what I mean. It kills merit. A qualified person loses a job to an unqualified person all because the latter knows people in the recruitment process. They have tribal ties. This is just tribalism choking the life out of democracy. The job was never about competence but about whom you know.
It also fragments national projects. Try building a major infrastructure project that crosses tribal boundaries. Try allocating mining royalties fairly. Try passing a law that hurts one region’s interests for the good of the whole.
Every national decision becomes a tribal negotiation. Every member goes to the parliament with his electorate’s wish list, not the country’s priorities.
Then there’s the election-related conflicts, especially up in the highlands. Videos of images spread online, showing men with high-powered rifles, but those fighters are not the cause. They are just a tool.
The cause is tribalism pushed to its extreme. When two tribes contest a parliamentary seat, the loser does not accept defeat. Because during the election period, a lot of funny things happen, like ballot box tampering, among others. So the loser feels wronged and calls his fighters. The winner calls his. And villages burn.
Also, it makes corruption invisible. If a politician gives a contract to his brother-in-law, is that corruption? Yes, by law. But not by tribe. Because in the tribal mindset, the brother-in-law is the community. Taking care of him is the job.
The line between public money and private obligation simply does not exist. So they don’t see it as wrong or criminal. And most who see this do not speak out on it because, firstly, they themselves also have participated in similar transactions, like securing a scholarship for their kids, or getting their smaller siblings a small desk job somewhere, and secondly, they know that tribal retaliation is always around the corner. It’s safe to just shut up.
Why it is not inherently bad
I said at the beginning that tribalism is not inherently evil. I meant it.
In a functioning democracy, tribes become interest groups. They lobby. They advocate. They make sure their voices are heard. That is normal. The Maori seats in New Zealand are a form of tribal representation, and New Zealand is one of the most stable democracies on earth. Indigenous groups in Canada and the United States have tribal sovereignty and self-governance. That works.
The difference is scale and supremacy.
Tribalism becomes destructive when it overrides every other loyalty. Like when you cannot hire the best person because she is from the wrong clan. Or when you cannot convict a politician because his tribe would riot. That’s not identity. That is a veto over modernity.
Tribalism and democracy do not see eye-to-eye. Democracy asks you to be a citizen first. Tribalism asks you to be a tribesman first. You cannot serve two masters. Eventually, one wins.
What democracy actually requires
Democracy requires a public square where arguments win and not identities. It requires institutions that treat a highlander the same as a coastal, an Engan the same as a Morobean.
None of this comes naturally. Every democracy in history had to build these habits. The British spent centuries killing each other over royal bloodlines before they figured out parliamentary government. The Americans fought a civil war over whether the nation or the state came first. The French executed their king and then spent a hundred years cycling through republics and empires.
We are not special nor uniquely broken. PNG is young, but we are pretending that we can keep our tribal loyalties exactly as they were and still run a modern democratic state.
Path forward, such as it is
I have looked at how other fractured nations hold themselves together, and I keep coming back to one word. Federalism.
The Russian Federation has 85 federal subjects. Some are republics for ethnic minorities, and some are oblasts (ordinary regions defined purely by territory, not tribe).
An Ingush lives in the Republic of Ingushetia. A Russian lives in Moscow Oblast. The system accommodates both the person who needs ethnic recognition and the person who just needs a functioning government. Nobody has to choose between being Ingush and being Russian. They are both, at the same time, because the constitution makes room for both loyalties.
We could do the same. But not with 22 provinces which is too many; each one too small, too poor, and too dependent on Port Moresby to function as a real government.
The better model is already being discussed in this country. The four regions – Highlands, Momase, Islands, and Southern. Four autonomous state governments within a single sovereign nation. Each with control over its own resources, its own police, schools, health system, etc. The national government keeps defence, foreign affairs, currency, and national infrastructure.
Why four? Because there’s already four regions. Also because four is manageable. Four can raise their own revenue. Four can negotiate with the centre as equals. Four can be laboratories for different approaches.
For example, the Highlands might want intensive agriculture and mining regulation, the Islands might prioritise tourism and fisheries, Southern might focus on forestry and customary land, etc. A one-size-fits-all policy from Port Moresby has never worked.
The regions would be defined by territory. A Highlander who moves to Port Moresby does not lose his identity. He simply gains a second one, citizen of the National Capital Region. An Engan living in Lae remains Engan. But he also becomes a citizen of Momase. The constitution protects both loyalties.
This is not a push for division but for fair representation, regional empowerment, and inclusive nation-building. I do not claim I came up with this on my own. It is already being called for by national voices across civil society, political parties, and the media. There have been proposals to divide PNG into a number of autonomous governable states. The details can be debated but the principle is what matters.
I know what you are thinking. The Highlands already stands apart. A lot of fingers are already being pointed to people from that region to being too tribal minded. Dividing the regions into actual governable states could harden that divide and could possibly drive the collapse of PNG, the very thing that prompted all this. The coastal regions might gang up on the Highlands and a civil war might break out. But here’s the thing. The divide is already here. It won’t go away. The question is whether we manage it through institutions or leave it to burn.
Federalism would not destroy the tribe. It merely channels it and gives tribal loyalty a legitimate home – the region – instead of forcing it to operate in the shadows of national institutions where it corrodes everything.
None of this will work if we the people don’t also change how we vote. But I am not naive enough to think you can change how you vote before the system changes. That’s the trap. Federalism loosens the trap. It does not spring it. The springing, that absurd, irrational act of voting against your blood for the first time, that part really is on you, and I have no policy for that.
I do have to point out that regional federalism is not a perfect solution. Russia still has tensions between its republics and Moscow. India still has communal riots. Switzerland still has regional rivalries.
Some will even bring up Ethiopia and say look how federalism worked out there. It led to civil war. But that is a completely different beast. Ethiopia organised its states around tribes. Oromia for Oromo. Tigray for Tigrayans.
That constitutionalised division. That’s not what I’m proposing. PNG’s regions would be territorial, not tribal. A Highlander in Momase becomes a citizen of Momase. His tribe stays with him, but the state does not belong to his tribe. Ethiopia’s mistake is a warning about a path we are not taking.
But neither Russia nor India nor Switzerland have collapsed into civil war. None of them have soldiers blockading its parliament because one tribe seems to be consolidating power.
We have pretended for 50 years that a centralised state could paper over our diversity. The events of the past week, and many events before it, prove it cannot. The only question left is whether we will learn from our failures or keep repeating them.
Final thoughts
I am not an expert in governance or laws. I do not have a five-point plan. People who offer five-point plans for tribalism are probably selling something. You cannot legislate away 50,000 years of human wiring. Things of the mind are complicated.
I don’t claim federalism to be a cure. It just gives the tribal identity a place to live without burning down the house. That’s all any constitution can do. The rest is on you.
You can redraw the map a hundred times. You can give regions their own police, their own tax system, their own school curriculums, etc. But none of it will matter if, when you close the ballot box, you voted for your cousin instead of your country.
So here is the only question that counts, ‘If that candidate were not your wantok, would he still get your vote?’
If the answer is no, then you are not a PNG citizen. You are just a tribesman wearing the PNG flag as a disguise. And no law, reform, or federal system will save a nation built on that lie.
- Philemon Kaisa is software developer and writer. His interests span technology, culture, governance and social forces that shape PNG society.
