PNG Parliament to pay K2 million for legal services

PNG Sunday Chronicles

THE NATIONAL Parliament will fork out K2 million annually to pay two private law firms when the house itself is rotting away, it has been alleged.

This will see in-house lawyers doing nothing when it comes to providing legal directions and advice for Members of Parliament.

Shadow Minister for Fisheries and Member for Bulolo, Sam Basil revealed this when commenting on the recent amendments to the Ombudsman Commission bill.

"We are not stupid here, but are being misled or deliberately denied legal services by the Speaker of Parliament and if we have less knowledge of the legal implications of bills then we can be easily fooled by the bill sponsors."

Mr Basil said the two law firms that have been engaged on retainer arrangement costing tax payers money is unnecessary and they only work for the interest of the government.

"I personally think the current system works to the best interest of the ruling party (National Alliance) to easily pass bills on the ignorance of MPs by not properly understanding the bills put before them. I think they love it that way; maybe now is a wakeup call for us all to find the loop holes and stop this nonsense."
 
He says as a result most times Members of Parliament are misled or being deliberately denied legal services by the Speaker of parliament when it comes to passing of certain bills on the floor of Parliament.

He therefore renewed calls for Speaker Jeffery Nape to step down.

"Sadly, this is the case and I still stand on my earlier call for the speaker of the national parliament to be replaced soon with a fair and a sound minded candidate from the Government or the Opposition. It doesn't matter anymore which side produces the new speaker, but for the sake of this country's Parliament operations, a change must happen soon. This controversial bill problem can be seen as one of the many problems this house has."

"I think Hon. Moses Maladina should recall his attempt to push for the bill.  The public has said their piece, the majority of the Opposition has admitted being misled and will not support it while some government MPs and political parties have indicated their intention to withdraw their support for the bill.
     
"The next thing we all do not want to happen is the public taking to the streets to protest and I can see it coming if the bill sponsor continues to push.
 
"I would also like to call on the current MPs in parliament who think they will lose out on their stock exchange trading to resign from parliament and become stock brokers because they will take up the voter's time trading on the New York and POM Stock Exchanges and forget their responsibilities as elected MPs.

"PNG is a struggling country, especially its rural population and needs full time MPs and not stock brokers. We may also ask where the millions they acquire to trade in stocks came from with due respect to those were already millionaires before entering parliament."