THE NOTIONAL DIAGNOSIS OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA AS A FAILED STATE has been in the air for almost a decade now. Each time the alarm bells of this prognosis is enunciated by an eminent analyst or an institution of some academic credibility, its reverberations carry on a ring of moral ambivalance. In sympathetic terms it is seen as a confirmation of what is already going on or a projection of an imminent apocalpyse that demands immediate precautionary measures to be installed and executed. Often however, it becomes a dry piece of journalistic trivia that burns immediately in a verbal furnace that emits fiery and deafening criticisms from Papua New Guinea politicians and its army of nationalists. While the ears and eyes of the sympathetic are open and vigilant, their voices are either mute, inert or simply indifferent. Those who ferociously decry this categorisation deny themselves the opportunity to evaluate the kinds of evidence that yield such prognosis and allow no room for such commentaries to provide a moment of genuine introspection and perhaps even the chance of a therapeutic resolve.
With a slight of hand, the so-described academic prophets of doom and pessimism are dismissed solemnly with a politically charged admonition (as if they have a moral and cognitive duty) to mind their own business and to be aware of their self-designated roles as downright patronising and invasive. This arrogant dismissal of academic surveillance and scrutiny of State performance and political culture should not be taken lightly. It generates moral suspicion and carves out an area of ambiguity surrounding the role of academia in the business of securing and governing public rights and interests. How can we avoid the risk of academic credibility mutating into a convenient truth that weighs less than a piece of journalistic trivia? This issue demands that academics concerned with places such as the Pacific Island States must seek for the best opportune moments and methods to communicate, guide and embed their insights in ways that sustain enduring values, outcomes and objectives.
Some years have now lapsed since the notion of failed states gained currency amongst Pacific Island countries and we wonder whether those projections can sustain the credibility of their pronunciations? It is very important to ask about what kinds of motivations and of whose interests does labelling a country as a failed state serve to accomplish? Economic privation, civil strife and disorder, breakdown of government authority and internal security are often cited as some of the indicators of a failed state. In general, analysts look to social, political and economic indicators to describe the idea of a failed state. Wikipedia provides a general definition of what characterises a failed state.
While the World Bank may have a healthy reading of Papua New Guinea’s economic performance, this reading is not commensurate with present living standards and quality of life in general. While the government is generally stable, frustrations are evidently emanating from the ways in which it is unwittingly suffocating the rule of law to flourish and of the ways in which it manages the challenges of internal and external security. The kinds of events we have witnessed such as the Julian Moti saga, the recent stories about highly organised bank robberies and endemic corruption such as the reported US$40 million offshore account, the unending stories about passports given cheaply to non-citizens, the incursion of Indonesian military are amongst the many reasons that warrant us to revisit the question of a failed state. Is this decade a defining moment of descend where Papua New Guinea succumbs to the perils of a failed state? In what ways do the following words of Mike Manning, the Director of Transparency International, speak about the state of PNGs social upheaval and the general question of a failed state:
We don’t have any answers immediately as to how we fix a single part of the breakdown of the system of law and order and the breakdown of the systems which would control corruption….But we do know that we’re reading about them day after day after day and that they’re getting worse.
This is my remix of this blog entry:
Papua New Guineans often react strongly against claims that PNG is a failed state. They are often right to do so, since these claims are often inaccurate and politically motivated. However, there is a danger in this overreaction: sometimes Papua New Guineans do not merely disagree with academics who argue that PNG is a failed state, they argue that the academy as a way of knowing is itself illegitimate. On the one hand, this is going too far. On the other hand, it indicates a serious failure on the part of academics to engage with Papua New Guineans and demonstrate the value of knowledge produced by universities. Given the many problems facing PNG today, perhaps we should look past all of the politics that surround outsider assessments of PNG and ask ourselves a question: do they have a point?
Yes, the important question is “do they have a point?” And if they do what is the best way to make the point work!
Well I think that Andrew’s framing of the question is itself important — the usual story that we tell about ‘failed state’ narratives is that there are two kinds of people: white foreign academics who predict the failure of the PNG state, and Papua New Guineans who disagree.
People tend to attach a moral valuation to this approach which can be flipped into one of two positions: first, some see the Australians and virtuous, hard working, and trying to be responsible while the PNGians have their heads in the sand and are so blinded by patriotism that they refuse to see the truth. Second, the Australians are punitive colonizers who consider pathological anything that does not conform to their notions of propriety, while the Papua New Guineans fundamental decency and triumph in the face of adversity are insufficiently recognized.
These two positions are unsatisfactory — for one thing, they both assume that only Australians are educated. How, then, are educated Papua New Guineans to address the very real problems that plague their country? One option would simply be to take the first position and side, as it were, with the whites against the black. But this sort of thing doesn’t solve the problem that both points of view are inadequate, and it only leads to self-hatred.
Behind the occasionally cluttered prose of Andrew’s entry lies a very important point: not ‘what is the answer to the question’ but ‘how can we reimagine the cast of characters who are asking it?’ How can we provide new and better ways to think not just about PNG, but about the public sphere in which people talk about it, and what roles they would play there?
So… maybe the point is about figuring out not what the answer to our question is, but who ‘we’ are.
-R