You can use it, you can abuse it, you can exploit it in whatever way you like. That is essentially a Western concept that goes back to the Roman law, the notion that there is no abuse possible. It is yours to do with as you please. That is a Western concept which has its roots in Roman jurisprudence. But certain Eastern legal systems which are fortified by indigenous traditions approach these problems from a totally different perspective. Land is something that you receive from God by way of trust.
It is yours to handle for the time being. But you are duty bound to utilise those resources in a manner that is beneficial to the community at large. It is a sacred trust that you are required to discharge. Now that is very much the ethos, the rationale of land tenure in Papua New Guinea.
Then let us take the attitude to justice Professor Gananath Obeysekere, in a recent work of his describes some of his experiences in the southern part of Sri Lanka. He says that when he went to Kataragama, he spoke to some of the devotees there and he asked them, "If you have a problem, what will you do? Would you seek the assistance of the courts? Will you take your problem to the judges of the established courts and will you ask them to hand down a judgment that will provide you with a solution to your problem?
He says the majority of the people he spoke to answered emphatically in the negative. They were horrified by the suggestion that they should invoke the assistance of the courts of law. They said ‘No, not at all. We would greatly prefer to seek the assistance of the Goddess Kali. It is from the Goddess Kali that we will expect relief because the Goddess will understand our problem and will give us the relief that we want.
The courts will not understand. That is a different world. Different values, different assumptions. There is nothing in common between them and us and it would be quite fanciful and unrealistic to expect the courts to understand our problems and sort them out in a pragmatic and satisfying manner.
So there is this deep cynicism which characterises the attitudes of ordinary people to the established courts of the Republic. There is a certain perceived sense of alienation from their experiences and from their priorities of what is important to them in life. So there is this process of alienation which I think one needs to be conscious of.
Then take again traditional attitudes to government and to political culture. Those who believe in the freedom of the individual and the need to preserve and to develop that sense of freedom generally endeavour to do that in keeping with Western political culture by evolving a system of checks and balances.
The assumption that we make so readily is that freedom is synonymous with checks and balances that are part and parcel of a political system. We believe with Lord Action that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So we believe that concentration of power in the hands of an individual or a tribunal would necessarily be inimical to the cause of freedom.
We therefore want to ensure that power is restricted, it is circumscribed, and it is curtailed. That is very much our approach to things. But that is not the approach of indigenous people. Indigenous people assume that power belongs to a king, a ruler.
That is something total; it is something absolute. It is not amenable to restriction or curtailment. Of course, there are restrictions. But these are not restrictions that are imposed externally. These are restrictions that come from within. The king or the ruler is bound by certain matters which are part of his conscience and that the restraints that accompany the exercise of power are restrains that arise from within They are part of the psyche of the ruler.
There is this story about the traditional Tamil King Elara who was always accessible to his people and the idea was that any person who had a complaint to make to the King could go to the King's chamber at any time, ring the bell and tell the king about his problem and redress would be personally given by the ruler