By Kevin McQuillan
The absence of women in the Papua New Guinea parliament is a matter of deep national shame, says candidate, Tania Bale. The former television journalist and producer aims to help bring Papua New Guinea in line with the Pacific and the world.
PNG is one of few countries in the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum not to have any women in parliament and is one of only five countries in the world to have no female members of parliament, according to the Pacific Women’s Political Empowerment Research Group.
While most analyses of the PNG situation point to culture and religion, Bale has told Islands Business that attitude is changing, “particularly in urban areas.”
In February, Bale was endorsed by the People’s Party, one of four women the party has selected in the National Capital District. Currently, the People’s Party has four MPs in the current parliament.
Six million people have registered to vote in the election, between 18 June and 8 July.
Elections in PNG are notorious for fraud – at both the polling booths and in the counting rooms.
Vote-buying, handouts, inducements and pork-barrelling are rampant and blatant. Buying off counting officials is also all too common.
The People’s Party is small and does not have the same deep pockets of the bigger parties.
“It is a special kind of obscenity to be splashing around millions of Kina for a candidate in an electorate where poverty is so high,” says Bale, “and we will not be doing politics that way.”
Funding is the greatest concern, so she will be relying on her network of friends and supporters, and her connection to grassroots communities through the projects she has worked on over the years.
“In the North-East electorate, the main issues of concern to the people are a lack of basic services especially water and power, unemployment, poor transport systems and infrastructure, and an overall lack of opportunity to elevate their standard of living.
“The majority of the people live in settlements.”
Born, raised and schooled in Moresby North-East, Bale had a successful media career in Australia at the ABC for 20 years, where she was known under her married name, Nugent. Then she came home in 2014 for an 18-month project working on the Pacific Games Opening Ceremony.
“Working on this production allowed me to feel first-hand the scale of the widespread dysfunction that permeates all levels of society in my homeland.
“Navigating my way through this event and living full-time in my homeland was a massive dose of reality. The dreams and aspirations of my parents’ generation – the founding fathers and mothers of the nation of Papua New Guinea – were stagnant and eroded.”
She found it impossible to leave.
For the last seven years, she has focussed on development work in education, health, culture, tourism, media and performing arts.
“My efforts have consistently reached too many roadblocks caused by fundamental inefficiencies, a culture of corruption and nepotism, an overall desensitisation and resignation to it all and indifference from many leaders.”
It soon became clear that to effect real change, she needed to seek election to the National Parliament.
Her mother contested unsuccessfully the electorate of Moresby North-East in 1977 and there’s a strong sense of unfinished business.
“I grew up walking the streets putting her campaign posters up, driving into settlements and watching her rallies and staying up all night for the vote counting. There are not many PNG women who can take this journey I am about to embark on who can say “I am following in my mother’s footsteps.”
The exclusion of women from political leadership is a paradox in PNG, where there are a huge number of successful businesswomen – even in rural areas, where women are expected to play only a supporting role.
In its analysis of the embarrassing 2017 election result, the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA)quoted ‘Kate’ of Voice for Change saying that people do want to elect women – but the barriers are huge.
“Some [women] were not even able to make it to the polling place because there were a lot of threats,” said Kate, “a lot of buying and bribery of votes, and it was difficult. People do want to vote for them, but because of the tribal system, the clan system, they were using the young men aggressively to control the vote.
“So they didn’t allow most of the women, and even some men, to vote fairly,” Kate told IWDA.
“Prior to making my decision to contest,” says Bale, “a fair bit of groundwork was done, with lots of just listening.
“Overwhelmingly there was a strong message coming back that it’s time we look for a woman to vote for. I believe the electorates in NCD are more ready than ever for women to represent them.”
In the 2017 elections fewer than 5% of all candidates were women.
The People’s Party has a policy of quotas for women candidates and will be pushing to legislate that 50% of candidates endorsed by political parties must be women.
“But even without this,” says Bale, “for the 2022 PNG National General Elections, I think we are going to see a record number of women candidates standing, which makes me more optimistic than ever that after the results are tallied, PNG’s 11th Parliament will include women.
“Probably not enough, but some or even just one is better than none.”
She believes the answer is not to create seats reserved for women.
“I feel that such a step will forever cement women in a position as second-class MPs. There is the very real danger that it will result in the perception that the women’s representation box has been ticked and it will make it even more difficult for women to line up in the real seats.
“If we want to be in parliament, we need to be in the race. Women candidates should not be a novelty, it should be the normal.”
