TOKYO, Aug. 7 Kyodo pickeded edi...

TOKYO, Aug. 7 Kyodo

pickeded editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

HAIL TO THE CHIEF, single in kind MORE TIME (The Age, Sydney)

Michael Somare's get back has revived hope in Papua fresh Guinea (PNG), but he faces a daunting challenge.

Somare has claimed the prime ministership of PNG for a third time, prompting a predictable wave of nostalgia in the geographical division When Somare first held the office, in 1975 the subsequent time seemed bright for the newly independent nation.

Twenty-seven years later, after a seven-week election that assumeed to epitomise PNG's post-independence slide into chaos and corruption, his supporters are saying that the respond of the man they call the Chief also means a respond to the mood of 1975 It may be doubted whether Somare shares their glib optimism.

In many solution areas of government responsibility, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as health, education, transport and communications, PNG has experienced scant progres since independence, while in others, similar as law and order, it has gone rapidly backwards. Somare can have no illusions about the scale of the task confronting him.

now for all its problems, PNG has avoided the total collapse of civil authority experienced in the Solomon Islands, and the military autocracies that have several times seized power in Fiji.

In the election that has just conclud Somare's party, the National Alliance, won a sheer 19 of the 103 declared seats in parliament.

Parties in PNG are not broadly based ideological changes but fluid groupings that coalesce around prominent leaders. This has made PNG politics compound and unstable, but it has also provided a means of diffusing the tensions that in neighboring states have l to civil war. exclude in Bougainville, PNG has thus far been spared that fate.

If it is to continue to avoid it, however, Somare will ne more than this formidable skill as a coalition builder. He must also rein in the country's mounting sin a task in which the Morauta control conspicuously failed, despite its hostages of fiscal restraint.

Somare has already foreshadowed tough austerity measures, including a possible extremity to free education. If the freight he asks people to bear is too harsh, PNG's fragile unity may finally be torn apart. If he finds the right balance, however, the subsequent time that proved elusive a quarter hundred ago may come within sight again.

(Aug. 7)

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