GLW: Why PNG soldiers rebelled against the World Bank

[Green Left Parramatta <glparramatta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following article appears in the latest
issue of Green Left Weekly (http://www.greenleft.org.au),
Australia's radical newspaper.

Also at http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2001/443/443p21.htm

*****************************************************

PNG: Why soldiers rebelled against the World Bank

BY NORM DIXON

The protest action by rank and file Papua New Guinea Defence
Force soldiers ? described by the Australian capitalist press as
a ``mutiny'' ? came to an end on March 26. Following assurances
that the PNG cabinet would abandon plans to sack half the PNGDF
and that all soldiers involved in the protest would be granted an
amnesty that could not be reversed, the troops handed back
weapons they had taken from the Murray Barracks armory.

The dissident soldiers, angry and fearful that they may lose
their jobs, had given PNG Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta until
noon on March 26 to respond to demands contained in a petition
handed to the prime minister a day earlier.

In the petition, the troops demanded that the prime minister
reconvene parliament to discuss the future of a defence force
``reform'' package and that the government establish an adequate
permanent retrenchment and retirement scheme for defence force
personnel.

The soldiers also demanded that ``representatives of
the World Bank, International Monetary Fund [IMF] and any
unnecessary military personnel from Australia and New Zealand''
leave PNG immediately. The soldiers' petition added, ``Moreover,
the national government is demanded to immediately cease
employing contract officers from foreign nations who will only
manipulate the decision-making of the government''.

The crisis unfolded after the PNG cabinet on March 7 approved
proposals for defence force ``reform'' made by a Commonwealth
Eminent Persons Group (CEPG). The key proposal was that the
number of PNGDF personnel be slashed from 4100 to 1900.

Following rumours that Australian troops had landed in Port
Moresby to oversee the implementation of the CEPG's ``reforms'',
rank and file soldiers on March 14 armed themselves and demanded
that the government abandon the personnel cuts. In the following
days, soldiers at the Taurama and Goldie River barracks also
joined the protest.

Morauta on March 17 announced that the CEPG ``reforms'' had been
abandoned. However, the protesting troops demanded a meeting with
the prime minister before they would agree to hand their weapons
back.

The ranks of the PNGDF ? already close to breaking point at the
government's inability to provide regular meals and adequate
uniforms, and pay wages on time ? correctly recognised that the
planned sackings were part of the government's wider program of
austerity and deep budget cuts. These are the central components
of the ``structural adjustment program'' (SAP) that has been
imposed on PNG by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

PNG reached agreement with the IMF in March 2000 for a US$115
million stand-by arrangement, and subsequently with the World
Bank for a US$90 million structural adjustment loan. The
Australian government has applied immense political and economic
pressure on the PNG government to adopt and maintain the harsh
SAP. Canberra's approximately A$300 million annual aid was made
conditional on its implementation. The Australian government has
also loaned PNG a further US$30 million, also conditional on Port
Moresby meeting each step of the SAP as demanded by the World
Bank/IMF.

While the soldiers' main motive was to protect their jobs (their
pay packets often provide the only regular income for their
extended families), they also share the PNG people's growing
resentment at the deprivations being forced upon them in order to
please the World Bank, IMF and Canberra.

Education and health services are being run down dramatically and
key public assets ? such as water, power, banks and
telecommunications ? are being privatised. The number of public
servants employed is being slashed by 25%. The living standards
of poor PNG workers, villagers and farmers are plummeting, even
as Australian and other First World corporations are making
millions from the exploitation of PNG's extensive natural
resources.

``The IMF, the World Bank and Australia should leave PNG
immediately because they have only manipulated the destiny of the
nation'', the soldiers' spokesperson Captain Stanley Benny said on
March 22 as he presented Morauta with the soldiers' petition.
``Their foreign ideas have completely destroyed the nation. The
World Bank, the IMF and Australian influences ? I repeat,
Australian influences ? have denuded the nation's vast resources
under the guise of assistance.''

The PNG troops' protest was a revolt against the imperialist
exploitation of PNG by Western, especially Australian, big
business and the international capitalist financial institutions.

Australian capital has huge mining and oil interests in PNG ?
including lucrative projects like BHP's Ok Tedi copper and gold
mine, BHP's involvement in the massive Catawba oilfield,
Canadian-Australian Placer Pacific's Porgera and Misima gold
mines, and Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto's part-ownership of
the Lihir and Mt Kare gold mines ? and hopes that Rio Tinto's
giant Panguna copper mine in Bougainville will resume production.

Australia is PNG's largest foreign direct investor, accounting
for two-thirds of total foreign equity holdings in PNG.
Australian capitalists have an estimated A$2.7 billion invested
mainly in PNG's mining, petroleum and services sectors. Among the
projects that will boost this further will be a A$1.5 billion,
2100-kilometre natural gas pipeline from PNG's Southern Highlands
to Gladstone in Queensland.

This financial year's A$30 million in military aid to PNG from
Australia included an ``emergency'' grant of A$10 million to help
``reorganise'' the PNGDF. Clearly, Canberra knew what the outcome
of the CEPG report would be.

The four-member CEPG included Major-General Michael Jeffrey, a
former senior member of the Australian army who had served in
pre-independence PNG, and Gerard Hensley, a former New Zealand
defence secretary. Another Australian military adviser, Ian
Gordon, was seconded to help Morauta implement the CEPG report.

The Australian government has for many years pushed the PNG
government to ``reform'' the PNGDF because it has felt that it is
not the most reliable force to protect the projects of Australian
and Western big business.

The PNGDF ? structured and trained to deal with largely
non-existent ``foreign'' threats ? rarely comes into hostile
contact with the ``enemies'' that the Australian ruling class fears
most in PNG: landowners fighting to defend their land or obtain
just compensation from the mining corporations; angry villagers
whose gardens and rivers are despoiled by mining pollution;
workers fighting for better wages and conditions; the urban
unemployed demanding jobs; and radical students whose critique of
the policies of the World Bank, IMF and the Australian government
can galvanise a coherent militant opposition movement.

The Australian government's preferred alternative to a large
PNGDF has been the creation of a small, well-trained and
disciplined elite force that could be trusted to act against
``internal'' enemies. The abject failure of the PNGDF to defeat the
independence fighters on Bougainville reinforced Canberra's
distrust of the army.

For a long time, Canberra concentrated on building up the PNG
police. Between 1987 and 1998, some A$105 million in ``aid'' money
was channelled to the PNG police by AusAid. Elite cops were
trained in jungle warfare and counterinsurgency. (PNG's cops ?
especially its Australian-trained elite mobile riot squads ? are
widely hated by the PNG people, an antipathy shared by the PNGDF
ranks.)

In 1996, the PNG government endorsed a policy paper ? written
with the assistance of Professor Paul Dibb, author of the 1987
Australian defence white paper ? which argued that the main
threat to PNG's security was internal. It proposed that a joint
police-army paramilitary force be formed to protect foreign-owned
mineral, petroleum and forestry projects. Opposition within the
PNGDF to a merged force prevented this being implemented.

The intent of the CEPG's report was yet another back door attempt
to achieve Australia's long-term goal of creating such a reliable
military force.

Despite the crisis having apparently been defused, Australia's
ruling class remains worried that militant soldiers may link up
with students, the urban unemployed and other opponents of
``structural adjustment'', threatening the interests of Australian
big business. (The March 21 Sydney Morning Herald editorial had
pointedly warned: ``The appearance of students on Port Moresby's
streets has also significantly escalated the political and
military crisis confronting the Morauta government ...''.)

Members of the militant, anti-capitalist Melanesian Solidarity
(Melsol) organisation actively supported the soldiers. It is
apparent that the soldiers' political demands have been inspired
by the views of Melsol and radical students.

PNG's Trade Union Congress also backed the soldiers and their
demands. The PNGTUC is opposed to the government's privatisation
program and is demanding that workers receive a 160% increase in
the minimum wage.

Melsol and the PNGTUC issued a joint leaflet in support of the
soldiers' demands that was widely distributed amongst the troops.
The leaflet stated that the soldiers' struggle is part of ``the
people's global fight'' against the World Bank and IMF. Melsol and
the PNGTUC asked the soldiers to ``lead us in the fight against
privatisation''.

This revived memories in Canberra and Port Moresby of the 1997
Sandline uprising ? in which students and the capital's workers
and poor supported a military rebellion ? that scuttled the PNG
government's plans to employ apartheid-linked mercenaries to
crush the independence movement in Bougainville. Melsol activists
played an important role in bringing that ``parliament of the
streets'' into being.

The uprising led to the defeat of the government of Sir Julius
Chan and opened the way towards a final settlement of the war on
Bougainville. It was the Sandline uprising that also was the main
catalyst for the creation of the CEPG.

The PNG and Australian governments are praying that Morauta's
acceptance of the soldiers' immediate demands ? the scrapping of
the CEPG report and the granting of an amnesty ? will be enough
to defuse the situation and allow him to quietly ignore the
soldiers' popular political demands for an end to World Bank,
IMF, Australian and New Zealand interference in PNG's domestic
affairs.

Morauta is unlikely to agree to a reconvening of parliament
because he knows his government would not survive the inevitable
no-confidence motion. Parliament has been adjourned to July 23
because, on that date, Morauta will be protected by the
constitutional provision that prevents parliament voting out a
government in the last 12 months of its four-year term.

Similarly, the cravenly pro-Australian Morauta will do nothing to
upset his government's dependency on Canberra, Australian and
other Western mining corporations and the international
capitalist financial institutions. He will not entertain the
removal of Australian military (around 30 defence personnel are
based in PNG), economic and political advisers or the abandonment
of the SAP.

Even as the soldiers' protest was winding up, the Australian
government expressed its confidence that Morauta would stay the
course of the SAP by releasing the second US$10 million tranche
of its US$30 million loan to PNG.

Australian treasurer Peter Costello described the release of the
second tranche as ``a further demonstration of the Australian
government's continuing confidence in the reform program of Sir
Mekere, which has recorded significant achievements in the past
year and a half''. These ``achievements'', said Costello, included
``measures to establish fiscal prudence and financial stability'',
``institutional and public sector reform'' and ``privatisation''.

Costello said that the third tranche of Australia's loan was
dependent on more of the same. He noted that ``further progress in
the privatisation of the PNG Banking Corporation'' was the
condition for the release of the next US$25 million of the World
Bank's US$90 million loan to PNG. Its release would also trigger
payment of the third tranche of the Australian loan.

All this adds up to greater austerity and suffering for the PNG
people ? precisely the real cause of the PNG soldiers' rebellion.

``May I take this opportunity to inform the business houses and
the international community that the situation is back to
normal'', PNG defence minister Kilroy Genia said on March 26
following the troops' handover of their weapons. The minister's
announcement may prove to be premature.