Native Eyes On White Property

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 13

Native Eyes On White Property

Apart from the promises of cult leaders—including a pledge by a New Britain candidate to turn all skins white—there has been some, cult thinking surrounding the elections by the territory’s native voters. Along the southern gulf coast, Papuans have marked out plantations which they expect to inherit when the house of assembly comes into being and all the “whiceskins” leave.

In Kainantu, in New Guinea’s eastern highlands, cargo houses have been built by members of the Tairora tribe ready to receive the expected goods which will come to them when the elections are over. The Tairora people have long been known to the territory’s administration for their anti-European thinking and cult attitudes. Elsewhere in the territory, hear Wewak, along the Sepik river and near Maprik, according to administration officials, cult thinking is also widespread. Trouble-Shooter The administration has been seriously concerned over these cult manifestations, so much so that . a special lecture series was prepared by the administratin’s “trouble-shooter,” Mr D. Fenbury, secretary to the Department of the Administrator, to counteract this type of thinking. In his report Mr Fenbury refuted native beliefs that all whites would flee the terri--1 tory once. the elections were

over, with an effective native majority in the House of Assembly, and that natives would take over all whiteowned land.The Administration now believes that to some extent it has this type of thinking under control, and that most native people understanding the elections. Voting By Pictures The electoral office ' has flown 10,0001 b of ballot papers to the major centres throughout the territory, and arranged individual air drops to the more isolated centres. The air drops included portable polling booths, unbreakable, unsinkable ballot boxes, and election forms with photographs of all the candidates. The photographs are necessary in a country in which two-thirds of the people are illiterate. Voting is by recognition only. Weather a Worry One of the greatest worries for the chief electoral officer, Mr R. R. Bryant, over the next four and a half weeks, is the weather. A late monsoon has flooded most of the highland areas, bridges have been washed away, and rivers are uncrossable. “We’ve designated all but mobile polling places now,” Mr Bryant said. “We’ve just got to stick to them. “This coming period is going to be a great test of skill and ingenuity for the individual officer,” he added.