Recovery in the 21st century

Sir Michael Somare joined the new National Alliance Party in 1997; he led it to victory in the July 2002 elections and formed a government in coalition with 20 other parties. Despite having inherited a large budget deficit, Somare’s administration benefited from Morauta’s reforms, and from 2004 it oversaw renewed mining exploration and investment. The government was unstable, however, with four deputy prime ministers in five years. Minister of Treasury and Finance Bart Philemon had trouble controlling the profligate tendencies of other ministers, and Somare eventually sacked him as treasurer in 2006 after Philemon mounted a challenge against him for the party leadership. Philemon then formed the New Generation Party and, joining forces with Morauta’s new Papua New Guinea Party, campaigned against the Somare government in the 2007 elections.

Somare’s well-funded National Alliance was reelected in August 2007, and he formed a new government as the head of a 14-party coalition. The prime minister’s son Arthur Somare, minister for public enterprises, began negotiations on a multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project in the central Highlands that would supply energy to companies in East Asia. Then, in July 2010, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the restrictions on the voting rights of MPs imposed by the OLIPPAC. This meant that MPs were free to resign from one political party and join another and free to vote against the prime minister for whom they had voted at the commencement of the 2007 Parliament. The growing dominance of the executive branch, particularly Somare and his son Arthur, had provoked discontent among the public as well as in the legislature and among some ministers, and the political opposition, led by Morauta and Philemon, attempted to mount a parliamentary vote of no confidence. The government responded by adjourning Parliament for four months without allowing the vote to take place. Another six-month adjournment was agreed to in November 2010.

Meanwhile, a legal case had been pending against the prime minister since July 2008 for official misconduct relating to the filing of financial returns over a 20-year period, and in late 2010 he stepped down temporarily from his post while a tribunal was convened. He was found guilty by a panel of international judges in late March 2011 and received a two-week suspension from office, during which his new deputy, Sam Abal, took over as acting prime minister. Somare went to Singapore, and it was later revealed that he had received treatment for a serious health problem. He remained in intensive care there for months. In his absence political feuding began between some Highlands ministers and Abal, and a potential fissure loomed in the National Alliance over the question of leadership succession.

Papua New Guinea’s fluid and fragmented politics have created unpredictability as well as great possibility. Over the first decades of Papua New Guinea as an independent country, the fortunes of several of its longtime politicians cycled repeatedly, providing a degree of familiarity if not continuity of leadership. In the early 21st century, Papua New Guinea was still searching for stability and determining how to manage political succession. Its mineral and petroleum resources and its economic potential were significant, but its performance was greatly lacking by human development measures such as health, education, and the distribution of wealth. Unlike many other relatively new states, however, it had retained its constitution and duly amended it to reflect changing needs, and it had developed a democratic system that allowed for open critique of the government. Its diverse peoples, once extremely isolated, had entered the wider world, and their difficult project of nation and state building continued.

The question of leadership succession seemed settled in early August 2011 when Parliament declared the prime minister’s office officially vacant and confirmed former cabinet minister Peter O’Neill, leader of the People’s National Congress (PNC), as prime minister. Somare himself returned to Papua New Guinea in early September, only to be removed from his parliamentary seat within hours of his arrival on the grounds of his having missed several sessions of Parliament without leave. He continued to pursue reinstatement in his offices, however, his case furthered by a Supreme Court decision in early December that his ouster as prime minister had been illegal. O’Neill, however, refused to step down and continued in office with relatively broad support among members of the government. In January 2012 Somare returned to Parliament and attempted to retake his seat but was rebuffed. The situation remained unsettled until that year’s elections, which began in late June. Vote counting continued through July, and on August 1 the PNC was declared the winner. Two days later O’Neill was elected prime minister by a large majority of the legislature. Somare, who had won reelection to his seat in Parliament, stepped down as leader of the National Alliance. He also announced his support for O’Neill as prime minister.

In a controversial 2013 deal with Canberra, Papua New Guinea began accepting Australia-bound refugees traveling by boat. The agreement—by which Australia sought to stem the tide of asylum seekers to its shores—called for the boats to be diverted to a facility on Manus Island. As had been the case under previous such agreements between the two countries, asylum claims were to be processed there. In addition, however, those immigrants whose claims were found to have merit were to be settled in Papua New Guinea rather than in Australia. In 2016 the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled that detaining asylum seekers was unconstitutional, and in November 2017 the governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea shuttered the principal detention centre on Manus Island and helped rehouse the refugees and asylum seekers held there.

In the elections of 2017 the PNC remained the largest party in Parliament but fell short of an outright majority. A coalition government was formed, with O’Neill returning as prime minister after becoming the second premier in the country’s history to complete a full term in office. It was not long, however, before his leadership was questioned, largely because of the conflict-of-interest scandal related to a large government contract that had been awarded to a construction company in which O’Neill was the sole stockholder at the time of the deal and because of widespread criticism of a much-maligned financial transaction by the government with the French oil company Total SA.

Over a period of several tumultuous months in 2019, O’Neill witnessed the desertion of a number of key members of his ruling coalition to the opposition. With O’Neill’s majority in Parliament compromised and a vote of confidence looming, the two principal political coalitions avoided each other and took up residence in two different hotels in Port Moresby to plot their next moves. After a bizarre series of events that eventually led to O’Neill’s formal resignation in May 2019, James Marape, a former minister in the O’Neill government who had crossed over to the opposition, returned to the PNC, along with a number of his comrades, and was elected prime minister.