The Melanesian

“THE DEAL IS FLAWED”…. “NO, ITS OKAY”… ” IT WAS RUSHED”! Flawed, okay and rushed are the three kinds of adjectival phrases that captioned front-page news about a recent deal cut between companies and the Government of PNG to develop liquified natural gas (LNG) in the country. The development of LNG project is organised with a consortium of companies and the government. The original agreement underlying the terms of the cosortium was signed 3 months ago on the 23rd of May. The Government of PNG was represented by its Head of State, Sir Paulias Matane, the Minister for Petroleum, Hon. William Duma while the joint venture participants came from Exxon Mobil, Oil Search, Santos, Nippon Oil, MRDC and Eda Oil.

The original news article in May mentioned that the agreement was sealed with a K38 billion financial package to kick start the project which would run for the next 40-50 years. However, a recent article in the Post Courier subtracted K8 billion from the figure originally provided by The National. In May, The National reported that the project was expected to bring an expected revenue of K130 billion. [In current exchange rate PGK130 billion would be equivalent to €37.3 billion (Euros); A$63.7 billion (Australian); £29.8 billion (British Pound) and US$55.1 billion (American)] This is a very significant  commercial development that is expected to bring PNG about K2.76 billion per year.

Given that this project involves a huge amount of money, why should a leading company executive and the Deputy Prime Minister give conflicting legal interpretations about the deal? The recent article in the Post Courier throws suspicion over certain aspects of the deal and carries the general insinuation that the deal is flawed. By extension, the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement could either be seen as an innocuous lie, a misinformed deception or a decorative misrepresentation whose veracity is located somewhere between half-truth, half-lie and outright lie.

Legality aside, the controversy brings to light not just the moral and semantic distance between truth and falsity or the analytic method by which one could execute to separate truth from falsity but to put it simply, one cannot lie if truth never exist in the first instance. The controversy reveals that lying is indispensable and integral to the art of politics and that truth itself is not a universally cherised value, rather it is contingent, highly malleable and convenient. When circumstances demand the imposition of truth this sets into motion particular pathologies to come into play sometimes with a spirit of vengeance and at other times it induces psychological disabilities to come into force.

One of the ministers who was interviewed by the press was mindful of political retaliation that might ensue as a result of him talking about the deal in the open. When the notorious Sandline Affair was prosecuted in a comission of inquiry in 1998, one of the alleged brokers of the deal, Benias Sabumei, had a temporary loss of memory in the Court room while he was under scrutinty. This self-induced mental state of amnesia made him withhold more specific details about the Sandline deal.

Towards the end of last year, the Post Courier carried stories about how the Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, was implicated in a “deep sea fishing deal”. The Prime Minister flatly denied his involvement and explained that his role in that fishing company was that of a trustee acting  on behalf of the Independent State of PNG. His denials were made in a place no less than the National Parliament during an exchange that took place inside the Parliament. Subsequent investigations by the Post Courier revealed that the Prime Minister misled the Parliament and lied to the people of PNG about his involvement in that fishing company.

Rehearsing these news items is not an exercise to open a colosal can of worms or to simply sit back and let loose the cabinets of mendacious curiosities for the sake of rhetorical stimulation. If truth and lie exist, their existence are proportionate to the the weight and consequence they dispense. Truth and lie  operate in an elastic conceptual economy in which their magnitude expands and contracts depending upon the conditions and status of those who dispense it. If lie is as incestuous as a contagion that spreads its influence as an epidemic, imagine the contamination it will impose on public office? If the mendacity of those who have sworn to hold public trust and confidence parade itself as the public face of politics, will there still be room for integrity to show itself as a public virtue?

THE INDONESIAN AMBASSADOR TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA, Mr Bom Soerjanto, has praised the Papua New Guinea Government for the part it has played in blocking the issue of a free and independent West Papua to be raised in the recent meetings of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and the Pacific Islands Forum. Mr Soerjanto made these remarks recently at a reception held as part of Indonesia’s celebration of its 63 years of independence.

“Mr Soerjanto said the relations [between PNG and Indonesia] had been buoyed by mutually acceptable bilateral arrangements including the basic agreement on border arrangements, the treaty of mutual respect, friendship and co-operation and the recently established joint ministerial commision which serve as major pillars of the existing cooperative relations”. 

I do not know what to make of this particular statement. This Ambassador is simply placating the ears of Papua New Guinean and Australian officials who gathered during that reception. The message came out the same time as the reports of Indonesian military planes invading Papua New Guinea’s airspace came out in the press. Indonesian military changed its tactics of intimidation over night shifting from terrestrial to aerial incursions. A few weeks earlier in just this month we read about how Indonesian military have made unwarranted incursions into PNG and have been harassing Papua New Guineans who live in and around the border villages. Despite all these things, the Ambassador could still talk about border arrangements, mutual respect and friendship.

Shifting the attention away from the incursions and hostility waged against Papua New Guineans, the Ambassador praises PNG for supporting the way Indonesia is treating issues of West Papua away from the notice of the Melanesian Spearhead Group and the Pacific Island Forum. This is not the first time PNG has given its back to its Melanesian brothers and sisters who live on the other side of the border. In some fundamental way, the future of the West Papuan people and their campaign for a free and independent West Papua depends on PNG and Australia raising their hands to support this issue. The West Papuans are  innocent victims of an international conspiracy, ideological war and corporate capitalism. By listening to Indonesia, PNG has participated in the killings, rapes and the violent exploitation of our Melanesian brothers and sisters through complicity.

The people and government of Vanuatu have made a persistent effort to raise the issue of a free West Papua. In the last two MSG meetings (held in Goroka in PNG and Port Villa in Vanuatu), Vanuatu has pushed the agenda for West Papua to be granted an ”observer status” in the MSG meetings. These attempts were blocked by the PNG Government. In Vanuatu recently, a group of high ranking chiefs have condemned the decision of the MSG to not grant West Papua an observer status in the MSG meetings. These Vanuatu chiefs say that the decision to keep out West Papua in the MSG does not reflect the wishes and aspirations of the Melanesian peoples to see that West Papua is free from Indonesian occupation.

“Human Rights violations against West Papuans continue to happen everyday. How much longer are we going to tolerate these atrocities? When will we have leaders who can take charge adn do what many of us expect of them?”

VANUATU’s  DAILY POST carries an interesting article about an archaeological find that gives further credibility to the view that some people’s of the Pacific have a Taiwanese origin. The find was discovered by accident when a bulldozer unearthed a piece of lapita pottery in a placed called Teouma. The site at Teouma was cleared and dug up to enable the construction of a commercial prawns project. When the piece of lapita was discovered, a locally trained person attached to the Vanuatu Cultural Centre was called in both to document the find and to organise a more coordinated archaeological excavation.

This was where Professor Mathew Spriggs from the Australian National University became involved. Spriggs is an household name in Vanuatu’s archaeology and has worked there for more than three decades. Further archaeological excavation at Teouma unearthed 71 headless skeletons. Spriggs opines that the heads were probably taken away for ritual purposes, a religious practice found in several societies of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

Professor Spriggs told the Vanuatu Daily Post  that archaeological evidence indicate “that the first settlers to arrive and settle in Vanuatu arrived from Taiwan via the Bismark archipelago in New Guinean and Solomon Islands four or five thousand years ago before sailing further to Vanuatu where they settled in the islands three thousand years ago”. This archaeological theory is connected to linguistic theory about the origins of the Austronesian family of languages.

“Vanuatu’s language today originally grew out of the indigenous language of Taiwanan approximately 5,000 years ago. Linguistically all the languages of Vanuatu today belong to a big language family called the Australasian Family and the furthest we can trace is in Taiwan”.

Many archaeological finds of this kind often make their apperance as favourite news items in the media. It is heartening to see the prominence that the Vanuatu Daily Post gave in talking about the find and even to provide a picture of Spriggs in his cap and beard.

However interesting the find maybe to archaeologists, geneticists and those who value historical information, the important point for cultural heritage management here is that the find was discovered by accident rather than by design. Many Pacific Island countries do not have genuine archaeological heritage management policies which are supported by a budget that can allow archaeologists to carry out regular reconnaissance. As a result, they are left with responses to finds that are discovered by accident. If accidents make us discover our history, would we be justified to hold that history is, after all, an accident?

ISSUES RELATING TO LAND USE AND MANAGEMENT WILL never cease to employ the preoccupations of policy makers and legislators, academics and the numerous batallion of landowners scattered in and around the many countries of the Pacific where primodial links to land, spirits and ancestors continue to be guarded with a particular zeal.

Vanuatu’s Daily Post carries a story about a recent meeting amongst Vanuatu Chiefs at the Nakamal. The agenda that dominated the meeting centred around the challenging task of codifying kastom law relating to land. Two persistent and vexing questions were discussed at the meeting: (1) a sensitivity to historical contingency demands that we must seek to find appropriate responses to the incessant changes wrought by changing social, political and economic circumstances; (2) the nerving question of definition: how does one and who gets to define what is kastom? While acknowledging the strides they have taken to deal with issues of kastom value and land, reticence was expressed by the Vaturusi Council of Chiefs over the project of codifying kastom law relating to land.

“…there are those who caution us not to rush into writing custom because first of all, we all must agree on what custom is most suitable for us to record. The question therefore remains – are we ready yet?”

In Papua New Guinea, a former parliamentarian, observed that the procedure and process of alienating land from their ‘customary or traditional owners’ carry the enduring imprint of colonial legacies. Ben Micah, former MP for Kavieng, made the following observations during the Waigani Seminar hosted at the University of PNG.

“Taking land from customary landowners through trickery, bribery and divide and rule tactics for administration and business purposes without proper compensation by both German New Guinea and Britsh Papua is a legacy that continues today”.

Recently I took part as a discussant on a panel in the European Society for Oceanists (ESfO) Conference held at the University of Verona in Italy. This panel was organised by Tony Crook (University of St Andrews) and Sue Farran (University of Dundee) and focused on the issue of land reform in the Pacific. The papers came from anthropologists and lawyers working in Melanesia (PNG, Solomon Islands New Caledonia), Micronesia (Palau) and Polynesia (Samoa, American Samoa). Among other things that came out of these papers is a struggle Pacific Island countries have to  face as they seek to disentangle themselves from the shackles of colonial legacies that still retain their hold in the array of legislative provisions relating to land and customary law.

Customary law tends to be defined mainly in contrast to or in comparison with British common law. In the abstract it seems as though common law has become what natural law is to physics. That is physics tries to model and interpret itself according to its particular understanding of natural law and processes. By analogy, it seems that common law has provided a kind of “natural law” model to customary law so that customary law is defining itself only in response to or in some relation of similarity or difference to common law.

One evidence for this observation comes from the fact that most of the lexicons and specialised jargons used in talking about customary law is often borrowed from and is dependent on common law principles. In uninentionally receiving its languages from the dominant common law, customary law is slowly becoming like common law much like physics is modelling itself after natural law.

Maybe if customary law is to develop with a sense of its own jurisprudential integrity, it might be worthwhile to consider the power that analogy and comparison have played in maintaining its relation to common law. Maybe advocates of customary law might want to pursue a very fundamental question originally posed by the anthropologist, James Weiner, in his critique of anthropology: what is the law of obeying law? as opposed to how it is similar or different to common law? This is perhaps another way of recasting the conceptual conundrum expressed by the Vaturusi Council of Chiefs: what is kastom and how does kastom become what it is?

On August 18, the PNG’s Sunday Chronicle added more very revealing details to initial allegation of US$40.m Singapore account. According to this weekly newspaper, the total sum transferred to the Singapore bank account amounted to US$67 million, with US$ 27million having been transferred back to a “political syndicate” in PNG around the time of the national elections in 2007 via an Cairns based Australian Bank to the Bank of PNG where a business house collected and distributed it to beneficiaries. All of the money allegedly originating from log exports of logging concessions in the Gulf Province.

Again we the people of PNG deserve justice and demand some response from the authorities on all these allegations. If an Australian bank was used to transfer these funds, the Australian Government authorities now also qualify to investigate the trail of this illegal business and the ‘business house” in PNG must be named.

The other questions for people of PNG are, were these funds used to sponsor certain political parties or candidates thus under minding the rights of people of PNG to vote freely in 2007?. Has the logging industry infiltrated into our political system as they have into our forests, destroying everything with no consideration for what they are doing to the future of this country or our people?.

Again we the people of PNG demand answers and the onus is on the Prime Minister to tell us, the sooner the better.

A bill is now before the National Executive Council for four women nominated members for the PNG parliament to represent women till 2012. This was revealed by the President of the National Council of Women (NCW) Ms Schola Kakas last Friday during the Waigani Seminar held at University of PNG.

The NCW is pushing for four nominated women MPs to represent women at regional levels during this term of parliament. The involvement of women at this level has been a sad story for years where currently there is only one woman MP in this 109 member parliament.

PNG women have tried to contest PNG elections for these seats for the last 30 years with little success. In PNG women candidates have to be ‘virgin marys’ on one hand and be a ‘devil’ on the other hand to win as vote buying, bribery, corruption and threats are the order of PNG elections in many places. Most of us are just ordinary women with good hearts and thats not enough to secure votes. Most women who decide to contest are genuinely committed to people’s development issues and very honest. Until politics in PNG matures by recognising the great potential in women, we  women will always be marginalized during elections.

While we applaud the NCW for talking this initiatives, we are not optimistic that the Somare Government would run with the bill at the speed needed to ensure these MPs are in office before the issue of writs for the 2012 National Elections.

The bill being sponsored by only woman MP and Minister for Community Development Lady Carol Kidu will if it goes through, depend on Lady Carol’s own ability to master numbers for support within the male dominated and chauvinistic Government coalition. She will have to be up against the likes of Speaker Jeffery Nape who has spoken out against the idea when it was first brought up.

Some women political analysts believe the period being proposed for the nominated women MPs is too short and by the time it gets passed male chauvinism at cabinet level, the Speaker at the floor of parliament and gazzetted  there will not be enough time for these “role models” to show women are just as good  as men or better at servicing their people.

A better proposal would have been to push for the 20 regional seats to be “only women” seats for the a period of next 15 years or three terms of parliament. These 20 regional seats currently for provincial MPs or Governors are ‘becoming vacant’ at 2012 national elections. The idea is to have both men and women vote for women in these seats. This model is working at provincial level at Bougainville and excellent for duplication at national level.

For some of us, win or lose, we will contest elections on equal footings with men and give them the best run for their money. Some day some young woman will show PNG people to have a little faith in their women and give them that chance to prove we are just as good or better than what they have been getting through their male representatives.

Religion and the churches have played an important role in shaping the livescof many Papua New Guineans (PNG), giving amny of us the opportunities to education and development. Many of us were educated by nuns, lay missionaries, priests and brothers, sounds Catholic. Yes having been taught from prep to high school by Catholic education, I always value the work of the church.

Recently on a short holiday to my village Lido outside Vanimo on the northern tip of PNG, I was sad to see the little church in my community rotting away with little much the faithfuls can do. Being a rural community with little opportunities for making money, these people need outside help to rebuild the church.

I have decided to nominate myself to be a fundraiser for the restoration of this church and thought getting the information out to as many people as possible would be good. A blog has been developed for this purpose and you can see it here. An appeal is being made to anyone reading this to send this to as many friends and contacts as possible. God bless you.

THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA IS GEOGRAPHICALLY DISTANT AND DISCONTINUOUS FROM THE PACIFIC but the situation of some African economies and their dynamics of development have often inspired comparisons with Pacific Island countries irrespective of the elegance and relevance of those comparative projects. The countries of the two regions share a Western history of having been subjects of Euoprean colonialism, decolonisation and subsequent political independence (except for New Caledonia and West Papua). Comparisons have been drawn between the two regions from a host of variables ranging from disciplines such as archaeology (the theory of African origins); anthropology (such as the African models in New Guinea Highlands); epidemiology (where striking statistical similarities are detected in patterns of HIV and AIDS infection); and politics (endemic corruption, criminalisation of the State and the ubiquitous notion of failed states etc). 

Often the comparisons are made for the purposes of exogenous analyses and interests. However, recently a curious point of comparison was drawn within Papua New Guinea from the field of national politics where the focus is on the question of dictatorship. It is unclear whether the comparison is motivated by a desire to inspire innovation in matters of legal interpretation, or a critical comment intended to shape and direct policy development, or merely a swipe of rhetorical smartness that characterises the speeches of most politicians. The observation came from Sir Julius Chan, who is presently the Governor of the New Ireland Province, and who has served on two other occasions as the Prime Minister of PNG. Sir Julius was speaking at the recently revived Waigani Seminar hosted at the University of PNG. The seminar gave Sir Julius an auspicious occasion to take a swipe at the leadership of Sir Michael Somare, the current prime minister who was likened as a dictator comparable to the notoriously famous Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.

Sir Julius was speaking against some aspects of the current Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates which was intended to regulate the behaviour of politicians and the political parties with which they are associated. This law was engineered and came into force when Sir Mekere Morauta was at the helm as the Prime Minister of PNG. The need for the enactment and enforcement of this law stem evidently from the weak and fragmented political party system and the ’loose-canon syndrome’ of self-seeking politicians that contribute to the creation of a constant, fluid and unstable political climate that has subjected the management and governance of the country to persistent uncertainty and instability. Apart from seeking to cultivate a legal integrity of political parties and their candidates, the law was intended to institutionalise a solid and stable development of party politics. The fluid composition of parties and the constant realignment of politicians mean that stability was often compromised and, if it as desirable as a political value, it has to be purchased at the price of some philosophical cost.

One of the philosophical candidates that this law has had to compromise and suppress in its quest for a stable political climate is the freedom of conscience of individual party members. Freedom of conscience refers basically to the ability of individual citizens to make free and informed decisions. It is synonymous with freedom of thought which is an indispensable condition that underlies every other kinds of freedom guarnteed under the Constitution.  When the concept becomes applicable to parliamentarians, it refers to the absolute prerequisite for legitimacy, acceptability and efficacy of decision making that should ideally be free from any form coercion or constaint, bias or external imposition.

Conscience gives discretion to individual members of parliament to vote on issues on their own accord and integrity. By extension, conscience also gives them the freedom to move from one political party to another when it suits them. In this regard it seems as though conscience is accused of equiping and motivating individual leaders to seek out alternative pathways and connections as and when they find it necessary or expedient. Thus freedom of conscience, or the lack of it, appears to be a philosophical ghost that animates and lubricates the mechanics of PNGs political instability. And so it follows that if this philosophical ghost continues to reign freely, chaos and instability will continue to plauge and render PNGs politics vulnerable to perpetual fragmentation and fluidity.

Like putting ice and freezing a fluid reality, what the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates has done is to halt and prevent the flow of members jumping out of parties and realigning them elsewhere in the pursuit of greener pastures. By keeping them intact, they could behave as if they were one single individual thinking and acting with the conscience of the party itself. When a party undertakes a resolution, the party’s decision becomes the choice of their individual members….thus individual freedom of conscience has become suspended or even erased. But if conscience has become an unexamined casualty of its own undoing, it is because the interest of political stability was considered paramount and supercedes the freedom of conscience and political association of candidates once they are elected into parliament.

The papers (The National  and the Post Courier) which carry the story from the Waigani Seminar did not clarify if there were wider moral and constitutional implications spelt out in Sir Julius’s criticism. The issues that were highligted concern the freedom of conscience and the extension of the grace period in which a duly elected government could enjoy its powers of decision making before it succumbs to the possibility of an alternative government orchestrated through the force of a vote of no-confidence executed in parliament. Because it was the party’s resolution, individual members of parliament, who belong to the ruling party and their coalition partners, voted in favour of the desire to extend the grace period. Below is the brunt of Sir Julius’s observations:

“My view of the grace period, whether it is six or 18 months, is that any mandatory powers bestowed unchecked are extremely dangerous and overpowering the Prime Minister with unlimited authority to command at will…Our Constitution unintentionally provides protection for a specified period even for a dictator, terrorist or even a stupid insane person in office for such a period of time….[The situation with the current government is] typical of an almost untouchable Prime Minister…The difference between Robert Mugabe( President of Zimbabwe) and Papua New Guinea is that Mugabe assumed dictatorship powers wheres in PNG, they are legalised throughout the grace period”.

Sir Julius opines that his political opponent Sir Michael, has hijacked the provisions of the Organic Law and the Constitution to install himself unwittingly as a dictator hiding inside the cloak of democracy. It seems obvious Sir Julius and his team of politicians have been looking for an opportunity to topple and offer an alternative government to that of Sir Michael’s. However, Sir Michael has outwitted his opponents by welding an extension to the period where an elected government is exempted from political threats coming from within the parliament. Because Sir Julius is talking only about the freedom of conscience in relation to the extension of the grace period, his criticism is somewhat limited and might therefore be seen as self-seeking. That is, how could his criticism be taken further beyond the domain of politics and into the realm of ideology? Furthermore, it is plainly untenable to paint a broad comparison between Mugabe and Somare and likened them as distant partners in the crime of dictatorship because the effects of Somare’s constitutional dictatorship is implicit, less painful and less chaotic as the situation we find in Zimbabwe.

It is also fair to note that Sir Julius and his band of compatriots are not as oppressed as Robert Mugabe’s opponents can be. Rather people like Sir Julius, and those individuals or institutions that have the standing before Court, or locus standi, can raise this matter in Court and test out the constitutional validity of laws such as the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates. The Governor of Morobe Province, Luther Wenge, has been very exemplary in this regard. Instead of steaming out in a furty, why not institute a Court reference on this matter?

In the interim, there are some important and interesting questions that the criticism from Sir Julius Chan has brought to light. If the conscience of the individual parliamentarian has been transferred to the choice and decision of the political party, what kind of conscience can we expect a party to possess? If an individual is the locus of conscience, what kind of an individual is party? If this particular law has made political parties into an institutional thief that is searing the conscience of individual parliamentarians, what kind of democracy are we heading into when there is no conscience but the party and what kind of government had we when conscience was considered a constitutional freedom? If we are to resuscitate and restore the freedom of conscience as the property of a free and rational individual, how could we allow the same to offer us some guarantee for a stable political climate for purposes of governance?

$US40 mil warning - PC News 15 August 2008

THE Papua New Guinea Forest Owners Association (FOA) is calling for immediate establishment of a commission of inquiry into allegations of $US40million having been “parked’’ in a Singapore bank.

They are also calling on the leaders of Kikori and Ihu, Minister Mark Maipakai and Gulf Governor Havila Kavo to explain whether they knew anything of the allegations.

FOA president Dominic Evere yesterday warned that failing these requests all logging operations and other resource development would be halted in Gulf Province until the Government and their leaders responded.
Mr Evere said having spoken to very reliable sources since the reports of the money racket, it had been very disturbing for the people of Gulf, the province which accommodated seven of the country’s major logging operations.

“We are calling on the Prime Minister to establish a commission of inquiry immediately. The Government and its leaders have been silent on this issue. We are also calling strongly on our leaders, Mr Maipakai and Mr Kavo, to come out very clear’’ on this matter, Mr Evere said.

“Kikori has the largest or let’s say the highest and biggest logging operations in the country, then comes Western Province and Vanimo. Our area or Gulf for that matter is filthy rich and yet, for so many years there has been no development.

“Development for Gulf now is zero and people are already fed up. We rightly believe that money parked in Singapore is ours and we want it back but through justice.

“I warn that if the Government doesn’t do anything or our leaders do not come clear on us, we will have no choice but to mobilise all landowners and shut down all logging operations in that area. This will also include stopping other resource development in the area.

“Our people have suffered enough from all the mistreatments from the Government.

“Gulf has contributed so much and is still contributing to the national coffers and yet the State has given back nothing or very little towards the development of the province.”

THE NOTIONAL DIAGNOSIS OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA AS A FAILED STATE has been in the air for almost a decade now. Each time the alarm bells of this prognosis is enunciated by an eminent analyst or an institution of some academic credibility, its reverberations carry on a ring of moral ambivalance. In sympathetic terms it is seen as a confirmation of what is already going on or a projection of an imminent apocalpyse that demands immediate precautionary measures to be installed and executed. Often however, it becomes a dry piece of journalistic trivia that burns immediately in a verbal furnace that emits fiery and deafening criticisms from Papua New Guinea politicians and its army of nationalists. While the ears and eyes of the sympathetic are open and vigilant, their voices are either mute, inert or simply indifferent. Those who ferociously decry this categorisation deny themselves the opportunity to evaluate the kinds of evidence that yield such prognosis and allow no room for such commentaries to provide a moment of genuine introspection and perhaps even the chance of a therapeutic resolve.

With a slight of hand, the so-described academic prophets of doom and pessimism are dismissed solemnly with a politically charged admonition (as if they have a moral and cognitive duty) to mind their own business and to be aware of their self-designated roles as downright patronising and invasive. This arrogant dismissal of academic surveillance and scrutiny of State performance and political culture should not be taken lightly. It generates moral suspicion and carves out an area of ambiguity surrounding the role of academia in the business of securing and governing public rights and interests. How can we avoid the risk of academic credibility mutating into a convenient truth that weighs less than a piece of journalistic trivia? This issue demands that academics concerned with places such as the Pacific Island States must seek for the best opportune moments and methods to communicate, guide and embed their insights in ways that sustain enduring values, outcomes and objectives.

Some years have now lapsed since the notion of failed states gained currency amongst Pacific Island countries and we wonder whether those projections can sustain the credibility of their pronunciations? It is very important to ask about what kinds of motivations and of whose interests does labelling a country as a failed state serve to accomplish? Economic privation, civil strife and disorder, breakdown of government authority and internal security are often cited as some of the indicators of a failed state. In general, analysts look to social, political and economic indicators to describe the idea of a failed state. Wikipedia provides a general definition of what characterises a failed state.

While the World Bank may have a healthy reading of Papua New Guinea’s economic performance, this reading is not commensurate with present living standards and quality of life in general. While the government is generally stable, frustrations are evidently emanating from the ways in which it is unwittingly suffocating the rule of law to flourish and of the ways in which it manages the challenges of internal and external security. The kinds of events we have witnessed such as the Julian Moti saga, the recent stories about highly organised bank robberies and endemic corruption such as the reported US$40 million offshore account, the unending stories about passports given cheaply to non-citizens, the incursion of Indonesian military are amongst the many reasons that warrant us to revisit the question of a failed state. Is this decade a defining moment of descend where Papua New Guinea succumbs to the perils of a failed state? In what ways do the following words of Mike Manning, the Director of Transparency International, speak about the state of PNGs social upheaval and the general question of a failed state:

We don’t have any answers immediately as to how we fix a single part of the breakdown of the system of law and order and the breakdown of the systems which would control corruption….But we do know that we’re reading about them day after day after day and that they’re getting worse.