Kidnapping and street war: the O'Neill approach to coalition building

Update: O'Neill has just been reelected by parliament.

Down here in Niu Sila Prime Minister Bill English is thinking about how he might put together a coalition government after the upcoming election. His National Party won't win a majority of seats in parliament, so English has been making overtures to smaller parties like New Zealand First and United Future in the hope that their MPs will side with him in September.

In Papua New Guinea, though, Peter O'Neill has found some altogether more creative ways of constructing a coalition. O'Neill became Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea five years ago, and he isn't keen to give the job up, even though his People's National Congress party looks like winning only a small minority of the one hundred and eleven seats that went up for grabs in last month's general election.

Papuan elections are seldom straightforward affairs - the country's vertiginous terrain, hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups, and poor infrastructure mean that it takes weeks for some ballots to be counted. Most Papuan polling stations closed on July the eighth, but by the end of the month only eighty of one hundred and eleven contests had been declared. That didn't stop O'Neill from insisting that he had assembled a coalition of fifty-six MPs. An alliance of opposition parties disagreed, but last week O'Neill was able to get the country's electoral commissioner and its governor-general to invite him to form a government.

After People's National Congress incumbents were declared losers in a series of seats, gangs of O'Neill's supporters hit the streets, burning the homes and the cars of opposition activists. In the highlands town of Wabag supporters of the opposition fought back, and more than a half a dozen people were killed. As they have flown into the Papuan capital of Port Moresby, newly elected opposition MPs have been met by police and by armed gangs of O'Neill's supporters. The police and the gangs have attempted to kidnap new MPs, so that they can 'persuade' these neophytes to back O'Neill for Prime Minister. Crowds of opposition supporters have begun to assemble at the airport, so that they can defend their representatives.

Papua New Guinea's parliament has not yet convened, so O'Neill's claims to have assembled a coalition have not been tested. Even if he does now command fifty-six votes in the house, the tactics he has used during and after polling discredit him. They also discredit the government of Australia, which has helped fund Papua New Guinea's elections. Aussie foreign minister Julie Bishop has repeatedly been asked about O'Neill's approach to coalition-building, and has repeatedly refused to condemn him. Many observers believe that O'Neill bought Bishop's silence by promising to support the Aussie refugee centre on Manus Island.

If Peter O'Neill can't get a majority when Papua New Guinea's new parliament finally meets, then there's every chance he'll use a politicised police force to again to intimidate his opponents. If the sort of confrontations that rocked Wabag spread to the metropolis of Port Moresby, then O'Neill would quickly require support from Australia's efficient and well-equipped security forces. Will Australian troops end up fighting for O'Neill's regime?

Keith Jackson is providing essential coverage of the crisis in Papua, as well as nourishing the country's writers.