Posted By Staff Reporter
By Dr Joe Ketan Papua New Guinea has not lived up to expectations. Windfall revenue from natural resources, in billions of US dollars, have been squandered, or stolen by PNG leaders and their foreign business partners. Our people are living in grinding poverty. State systems are not working. Government Ministers and Public Servants are responsible for the sad state of affairs. Getting right people to important jobs will help solve some of our problems. We need to make things work again, by voting good men and women, a lot of them, to replace the bad and ugly. The bad and ugly have caused us much pain and sorrow. Our leaders have grown fat on the spoils of office, while our people struggle to make ends meet under extremely difficult conditions. Prime Minister James Marape had no idea what he was talking about when, in youthful excitement, promised to take back PNG, started cursing PNG leaders, and made some strategic politically sound, but poor governance, appointments to government cabinet, government departments, and SOEs. He now realises that he has no power over MPs.
We live in a beautiful country that is badly run by corrupt politicians and public servants. All social indicators point towards declining standards in health and education. Our people are dying from curable illnesses, due to lack of drugs. Our university graduates do not know how to write simple letters, commit plagiarism, lie, cheat, and are getting away with high GPAs that bellies personal abilities that do not stand up to aptitude tests. It is disgraceful. It is a frightening future for our country. We are not producing the right kind of men and women to run a country. Government organizations are riddled with corruption. The rot set in when the accountable provincial government system was replaced by the freewheeling monster under the governors and their appointed and/or ex-officio type clients. The 1995 Organic Law on Provincial and Local Level Governments was the legal instrument used to get rid of provincial members by the Wingti government, after a long running battle with the WH Premier Philip Kapal and his successor Lucas Roika of National Party. The public service stopped functioning effectively when cabinet ministers started appointing cronies to heads of departments, on non-meritorious grounds, after the marginalisation of the Public Service Commission, via the enactment of the DPM Act. Utility service providers have been corporatized, under structural programs by the Morauta Government, to make them more effective and profitable, but PNG Power and Air Niugini and numerous others consistently perform poorly, despite charging high prices, whilst delivering miserably poor services. The Executive Government lost control over the governance of the country when the Prime Minister started allocating electoral development funds (like DSIP) along partisan lines in attempting to placate disgruntled government backbenchers. Systems and processes must work - again. Yes, we all must make an attempt to make them work for our country. Lets get some god men and women into parliament in 2022. The PNG Chapter of the Transparency International (TIPNG), along with the Institute of National Affairs (INA) and the National Research Institute (NRI), will be implementing a nation-wide election awareness and civic education program aimed at restoring integrity to our electoral process. The Australian Government, via DFAT, will be funding TIPNG and probably INA and NRI. EU, IFES, and other international agencies might come in as well. Electoral fraud - cheating and the selling and purchasing of the ballot - has eroded the integrity of the electoral process at all stages, from voter registration to polling to counting and declaration. As a result, we continue to get corrupt, dishonest, crooks into parliament, who, in turn, plunder state resources to build up personal empires, at the expense of our people. You, my fellow citizens, have the ultimate power, via your vote, to replace the bad and ugly with decent men and women. Make your vote count - this time! Next : PNG Flag Needs Overhaul Note: Let Your Views be heard : Send all your Political Commentaries to us through our email : pngfacts@gmail.com Share this
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
PNG Politics WatchPNG Political analysis, Gossips ,Commentaries, news and ViewsPapua New Guinea Politics, news and commentaries . Send us your PNG Political view to us for publication on this page . Contact us |