Ralph R. Premdas

The Organisasi Papua Merdeka in Irian Jaya: Continuity and Change in Papua New Guinea's Relations with Indonesia

The period 1983-84 would be remembered in the Pacific for the unprecedented inflammation of Papua New Guinea-Indonesia relations over alleged infringements of their border agreement.1 New Guinea, the worlds second largest island after Greenland, is divided into two separate political jurisdictions. The eastern half, Papua New Guinea (PNG), is an independent state, while the western half, Irian Jaya (formerly West Irian), is Indonesias seventeenth province. International controversy attended Indonesias acquisition of Irian Jaya during the days of Sukarnos confrontation with the Dutch.2 While a legal accord in 1962 gave Irian Jaya to Indonesia, a disenchanted indigenous Irianese guerrilla movement has persistently sought to separate Irian Jaya from the Indonesian state.3 The guerrilla group called the Organisasi Papua Merdeka

Guyana: Socialist Reconstruction or Political Opportunism?

Guyana has become the second “socialist” republic in the Western Hemisphere after Cuba. The history of how this occurred is an almost classic example of the futility of inept intervention by outside great powers. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, brought to office in 1965 by Anglo-American intervention that ousted Marxist Cheddi Jagan from power, has turned Guyana from a safe U.S. client committed to a capitalistic economic model into a strident anti-American bastion on the South American mainland, with a politicoeconomic system in theory and increasingly in practice inspired by Marxism-Leninism. The Burnham regime has nationalized all significant foreign firms, declared itself a cooperative socialist republic, and has forged close collaborative links with Cuba, the Peoples Republic of China, and such left-oriented African countries as Tanzania, Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique.

Papua New Guinea in 1985: The Tenth Anniversary of Independence

On September 16, 1985, Papua New Guinea (PNG) celebrated its tenth anniversary of independence. In some ways, this was a remarkable achievement, especially since the formal trappings of its inherited parliamentary democracy remained intact for the most part. The trail to the present, however, was not entirely free from turbulence. At one point the commanding officer of the PNG Defence Force, General Diro, was reprimanded by the Cabinet, nearly triggering military intervention in the government. At another stage, a state of emergency was declared in the Highlands as tribal fighting grew to uncontrollable proportions. Port Moresby, the capital city, has also been placed on two occasions (1979 and 1985) under a state of emergency. At yet another juncture, an executivejudiciary confrontation led to wholesale resignation of almost all members of the countrys Supreme Court and the drawn-out crisis climaxed with a premature change of government. Most recently, in November 1985, in a parliamentary upheaval, Prime Minister Michael Somare was ousted from office. Many other nervous moments marked the steps of the PNG government in 1985. But several positive events also transpired, balancing the accounts on the political ledger of overall performance. Political succession was peaceful and postindependence elections were fair and the results recognized as legitimate. Secessionist strife which bedeviled the new nation at independence has been subdued. And finally, economic well-being did not deteriorate into disaster after recession hit the country severely from 1980 onwards. Events in 1985, however, tended to be turbulent, and as a historic moment of stocktaking, everything was measured in relation to the state of affairs in 1975. In this annual review, I shall in part follow

Decentralization and Development in Melanesia : Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands

more to centralized repressive regimes which have arrogated power to themselves through fraudulent elections, one-party systems or coups d’Etat. At independence, most Third World countries inherited a relatively strong government bureaucracy which the colonial power had employed as the key instrument of repression and domination (2). The new indigenous governors were bequeathed an administrative structure that was steeply centralized and sporadically linked to the outskirts beyond the capital city and major provincial centers (3). Effective decolonization requires dismantling and re-orienting the inherited bureaucracy rendering government administrative behavior responsive to local communities (4). Decolonization at the grassroots becomes more of a reality where legislative and executive power do not remain the preserve of civil servants but rather are controlled by elected councils. A meaningful measure of autonomy in political decision-making should be given to the vast majority of the people who are rural dwellers (5). In this article, we analyse the origins and implementation of grassroots democracy in two Third World countries in the south-west Pacific: Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. In particular, our effort focuses on the transfer of powers and responsibilities from the national to the local level. The term we use to describe the in-