By PNG correspondent Steve Marshall
Posted Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:00pm AEST
A Papua New Guinea corruption watchdog has warned that civil discontent over alleged government corruption is growing.
The group say there could be a violent public backlash because of the ever increasing number of corrupt dealings in the Government.
Transparency International’s PNG boss Mike Manning says the breakdown of law and order is getting worse.
“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,” he said.
“But we do know that we’re reading about them day after day after day and that they’re getting worse.”
Transparency International PNG has also criticised government agencies like the Ombudsman Commission for not following through with investigations into leadership issues.
“IF THESE WHITE PEOPLE HAVE A CULTURE, THEY WILL UNDERSTAND OURS”. These are the words of a strong willed and deeply courageous Motuan girl called Gabi who hails (most likely) from Poreporena village which was once located at the base of the Tuoguba Hill that overlooks the city of Port Moresby and the Fairfax Harbour. Poreporena is now incorporated into the great Hanuabada village and is just a stone throw from the western foothills of Tuogoba and Port Moresby. It might be accurate to guess that Gabi uttered these words in the period immediately after the second world war in the 1940s when Papua and New Guinea was still under colonial rule.
Gabi was in her teens and only a few hours prior, she witnessed a bloody execution where a young Motuan boy from Kori village was hung on a rope at Ela, the beach front located on the eastern slope of Tuoguba Hill. The boy was charged of commiting a particular crime that might be labelled as visual rape. Allegedly, he was caught staring at a particular expatriate subject, namely Ms Collie Damont, who happened to have fixated herself in the direction of the boy’s gaze. In those days, staring at a white woman was tantamount to sexual harrassment or visual rape to be exact. Such an offence carried the penalty of an execution which was organised as a public spectacle that serves both to punish and deter such a form of harrassment as well as to intimidate and assert the power of colonial administration over the natives. More details about this particular story of Gabi and the execution is recounted in The National’s Writer’s Forum by Melinda Kanamon and is entitled as “The Freedom of Culture”.
After witnessing the execution Gabi returned home with her younger sister, Tama. They reported the day’s incident to their parents and cried out their hearts over what they have seen.The incident installed a stubborn spirit of resistance into the hearts of these two young Motuan women. While the village slept quietly in shock and bereavement that night, the two girls left the comfort of their homes and sought out their male relatives who have taken refuge in the mangroves located in a delta further afar from the village.
Their male relatives must have been avoiding captivity and ultimately execution for similar or other nuisances defined as criminal by the then colonial masters. Gabi and Tama had some food with them which they gave to their male relatives. But Gabi was not content to be a mother or a sister only that night. Her heart was burdened with the affliction of the day and she had to deliver this particular spirited message:
“How long are you going to keep on hiding? Ah? This is our land. We belong here. They don’t. And now you are still trying to flee your land. Where will you go? Where will your sons and daughters grow up and call home? Where will you go? Today a young boy was hanged at Ela. He was only 17. Tomorrow more will be hanged as they defy their laws. Take up your places and make a difference for your people. If these white people had a culture they would understand ours. You men sitting here are the only educated natives in Port who can one day run our government. Now is the time to make a difference, now”.
All was not lost. Gabi’s words penetrated the hearts and minds of her male relatives and some of them eventually teamed up with other Papua and New Guineans of the time to campaign for Papua New Guinea’s independence from colonial rule. Gabi might therefore be regarded as one of the women who laid the foundation stones that helped created Papua New Guinea.
What is equally attractive about Gabi is her particular deployment of analogical reasoning which assumed the view of culture as a universal similarity based on analogy. “If these white people had culture they would understand ours”. This is not a proposition framed to deliver the negative impression that “white people do not have culture and therefore they do not have the moral and cognitive capacity to understand us”. Gabi’s premise is that understanding is gained through an exchange of similarity and culture is the symbolic currency of this exchange. It therefore follows that if similarity is already assumed, what needs to be created is difference in itself because only difference and difference alone can make a difference. Gabi makes no hesitation to summon our attention to an imminent and an enduring call of all times : “Now is the time to make a difference, now“…….Thank you Gabi!
Published on
August 4, 2008 in
Politics.
TWO SYSTEMS OF LAW is a phrase that carries a familiar ring of echoes. This catch phrase points to the perception of a particular kind of negative discrimination that privileges some people over others when matters of law, justice and fairness are caught up in a trial of moral evaluation. For those with power and influence, it appears as though they could excuse themselves from the rule of law. For others who are less privileged, law is expensive to afford if they were to defend or protect themselves. Jerry Tendawai recently wrote an article in the Post Courier which is entitled “Where is PNG heading with two sets of laws?” Tendawai makes the following observations.
“In Papua New Guinea it seems the lawmakers and bureaucracts with their cronies are higher than the laws of this country but we ordinary citizens cannot resist but can face the full strength of the law when we happen to break it. This highlights the recent use of tough police tactics on the bank robbery suspects that were seen through the media that has now opened up many windows of the law enforcement sector, than had definitely alerted the corridors of power telling every citizen, where Papua New Guinea is heading to with its two sets of laws….”
Tendawai complaints that people who have been appointed to positions of trust and responsibility “have literally defrauded the state millions of kina. The law enforcing body is like a dog without being let of its leash barking orders to shoot to kill the monkeys stelling plantation bananas while the big fish escape the hook with large sums of money beloning to mor than six million population of Papua New Guinea. This defines the two sets of people here in Papua new Guinea and have dared to defy justice through deceitful actions and partner corruption at the highest level”.
Tendawai’s letter is cast against a particular background of fraud cases in Papua New Guinea where huge amounts of public money have been squandered by those who were charged with responsibilities of trust and authority. Often this involves the collusion of several lawyers and some accountants or other bureaucrats who come up with some fishy deals and then dress up the books after monies have been diverted. One of the ongoing cases involves monies belonging to the National Provident Fund which involved the collaboration of several lawyers and politicians. People who have been charged for these cases are still on trial and perhaps they may even evade prosecution at all largely because of the access they have to lawyers and their political sympathesisers.
In the recent cases of organised bank robberies, we see a commendable response from the Police to arrest and charge some of the main suspects of these crimes. While full details about these robberies are only beginning to emerge, anecdotal accounts from the streets of Moresby indicate that there could be some people of power and influence who are involved at some level somewhere in these spate of daring armed robberies. Some suspected accomplishes were caught while having high powered guns in their possessions.
Without overburdening this account, an immediate moral to this tale lies in the contrast between a lawyer’s briefcase and the robber’s gun. Armed with a briefcase, a lawyer can more readily defend and protect himself from the press of prosecution than an armed robber stealing from a bank. The recent cases of robberies illustrate this well. This tale however changes its depth and complexity once criminal elements and people of influence find ways to enrich themselves against the saftey and interest of the public at large. This raises anew the issue of two laws: one law looks after the sanity and wellbeing of commoners and the other is applied to the management of privileges and monopolies of the powerful. But if access to political and economic power becomes a measure of delineating the operations of these two systems of law, what is law if it were not an instrument of access and expediency?
INDONESIAN MILITARY PERSONNEL have been giving themselves an undeserved freedom and authority to walk through the border between PNG and West Papua over the last several months. Papua New Guinea villagers who live in the border areas have reported that there have been frequent incursions undertaken by Indonesian military personnel. This has gone on without any regard for the border between the two nations. In one of the many such incursions, the soldiers burnt down houses and physically abused Papua New Guinean citizens in the Papua New Guinea side of the border. These actions by the Indonesian military are in complete disregard for the territorial integrity of Papua New Guinea and much more for the human rights of its citizens. For their part, PNG soldiers and policemen have exhibited a remarkable and commendable restraint to not engage Indonesian soldiers when they encountered them in PNGs territory.
The recent incursion brought to light the fact that the Papua New Guinea Government has neglected the border and its people’s rights for some years now. In its management, the border issue has been postponed to the status of an afterthought which attracts government attention only if it appears as a disaster. The PNG Government should do more to step up the security and ability of the soldiers and policemen to keep up a vigilance over the border. Although it demanded an explanation and an apology from Indonesia, no apology has been forthcoming from Jakarta as yet. Instead what we are given is a pathetic reason that the incursions were perpetrated by recently trained soldiers who were ignorant of the border relations between Papua New Guineans and West Papuans who inhabit the border areas.
Reports of Indonesian military infiltration into PNG has been in circulation for atleast some two years now. I am beginning to wonder if the recent incursions is much more than a mistake by some ignorant Indonesian soldiers. Could it be that the soldiers are testing the waters, could it be that the incursions are more deliberate, based on a colonialist design then we are led to believe? Mightn’t it be that the incursions portend a more subtle yet gradual an expansionist agenda that Indonesia is pursuing in the region?
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