Archive for the 'Politics' Category

THREE MONTHS AGO IN AUGUST I published an article entitled Cabinets of mendacious Curiosities which offered a commentary on the pscyhology of lying and deceit that is so much part of politics. The article was inspired by prevailing disagreements over the legality of a deal brokered between the PNG Government and a consortium of companies to produce liquified natural gas (LNG) over the next 50 years. The deal promises to bring into PNG an anticipated annual revenue of about K2.76 billion.

The disagreements came to light when the State company, Petromin, was left out from participating in the deal. If Petromin wanted to participate, it must find its own money to purchase its share of equity.  The PNG Government was to be represented by another organisation called Independent Private Business Corporation (IPBC) that comes under the Ministry of Public Enterprises currently governed by Arthur Somare who is also the son of the Prime Minister, Michael Somare.

The decision to appoint IPBC as the representative of the State in the gas deal was made through an executive cabinet decision chaired by the prime minister and promoted by his son who is also a minister in the cabinet. At the time of that cabinet decision, no legislative instrument existed to legitimate the transfer and the management of the State’s equity participation from Petromin to IPBC. Arthur Somare cited economic feasibility as the deciding factor. Stories have emerged that a certain minister exerted political influence to get the billion dollar deal organised even to the extent of retaining state officers to work on in the curious hours of a night.

As a legally constituted entity, Petromin saw its exclusion as unconstitutional and after a series of media campaigns it instituted legal proceedings to force its entry into the gas deal. This caused politicians to go up in arms against Petromin. One minister in particular, Paul Tiensten, who is responsible for National Planning and Government Business, saw Petromin’s legal battle against IPBC as an assault on the prerogatives of the Cabinet. There was no reason for the minister’s outburst except to demonstrate his loyalty and affection for the Somare family.  A truce of sorts was established and Petromin was made to withdraw the case.

IPBC is headed by a Mr Glen Blakes whom we have now learnt that he also manages the private businesses of the Somare family. Undoubtedly the Somare-Blake combination have found favour in powerful places. A legislation is being developed to give legal mandate to IPBC to act as the State representative in the gas deal. The legislation is expected to be passed soon and this will secure the State equity through a bond arrangment financed by an Arab investment company. Arthur Somare and Glen Blake negotiated this bond arrangement.

While the Somare-Temu government is preparing the law to mandate IPBC to represent and execute the State interest in the gas deal, a group of concerned landowners are challenging the constitutional basis of the entire deal. Aside from whether or not the case is prosecuted successfuly, the process of litigation itself will demand that the gas deal is suspended until the legalities are sorted out. So the process must return to where it should have started.

It seem evident that the Somare Government subsribes to a philosophy of defeatism whose moral thrives on using ends to justify the means. An end may be good and virtuous but the means of securing such an end must be held in some measure of proportional alignment. If the LNG project is like building a house, we cannot build a good house under bad weather conditions and using bad materials.  I do not understand why the Somare Government has to overtake procedures by getting their objectives in place first before discovering that it needs to cover its tracks. One thing is clear is that the Somare family is already very rich, wealthy and very powerful. Recent reports of their acquisition of luxurious homes in Australia validates this. However, its style of politics has shown no respect for the rule of law and general good taste. This family has grown rich and powerful from the privileges of political offices it has enjoyed over time since the 1960s but sadly it is also arrogant and indifferent to the interests of common people.

The rule of law is threatened when an oligarchy raises its ugly head. I do not know if an organisation such as the Ombudsman Commission can use its powers to examine the administrative procedures of law-making in particular and the general spirit of democracy based on the separation of powers? The triumph of an oligarchy reveals that the sanctity of the Parliament-as the seat of people’s power-has dwindled into an institution that manufactures and radiates mistrust and suspicion amongst its people.

Constant legal cases that contest the moral and validity of executive decisions attest to the fact that the moral neutrality of Parliament cannot be stabilised because the values it has and should stand for have been overtaken by the executive arm of government that is driven on the whims of an oligarchy. If politics and vested interests accelerate the merging of the separate arms of government, especially the Parliament and the Executive, the ideal of democracy will dissolve into a political climate that glorifies the dictatorship of the rich and powerful.

“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 leadership tribunal 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?

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.

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.

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?