Government Recieving Poor Advice

Papua New Guineans woke up yesterday to read that Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal could no longer hold office as Acting Prime Minister because he was not a minister.

Constitutional lawyer Nemo Yalo pointed out that Section 3 (3) of the Prime Minister and National Executive Council Act, was specific…the Deputy Prime Minister ceases to hold office if he ceases to be a Minister.

We are told that the Prime Minister’s own staff were caught by surprise when we broke the story. Now we are told that Sam Abal is the Minister for Immigration. We are told that when he made the reshuffle recently, he gave away his Works portfolio and took over the Immigration portfolio but that was not announced.

Are these people working for the chief executive of this country in their right frame of mind? What do they take the people of this country for?

This is not the first time Papua New Guineans have seen the Office of the Prime Minister move into damage control mode to fix what appear to be serious blunders like the current situation, which could have led to a constitutional crisis.

There have been instances in the past where the Government has erred, in making important decisions that have backfired, causing many embarrassments for the Prime Minister and the National Executive Council.

For example, we are familiar with the decision by the Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare to step aside when he was referred to the Leadership Tribunal. It was later discovered that he could not step aside so his office quickly told Papua New Guineans that Sir Michael was on leave. Another example is the election of Sir Paulias Matane as Governor-General. The Supreme Court ruled the election unconstitutional.

There are matters now before the Supreme Court and these are on the appointment of Abal as Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Arnold Amet as Minister for Justice and Attorney General and National Planning Minister Paul Tienstein as Acting Governor-General in December last year.

In the last four years, there have been many cases where the quality of advice given to the Government have fallen short of expectations and were a cause for concern.

We have said this before and we will say this again. The Prime Minister, as the head of the Government, must get best advice he can get to perform his duties for the betterment of the people and the country.

We know that there are people who are employed by the Government who are highly paid to do just that, that is, to provide the best possible advice to the Prime Minister and in the present case, the Acting Prime Minister on any matters of national interest so that they take the best option available within the law.

Apart from the highly paid public servants, we have state ministers who, apart from carrying out their responsibilities in their respective portfolios, must also advice the Prime Minister on matters affecting the State and the people truthfully and honestly.

The ministers have their departmental advisers that must also provide quality and good advice to them so that they inform the cabinet and PM accordingly.

Then we have cases where private consultants have been hired at extravagant fees of up to K5000 per hour and who seem to be telling the Government what it wants to hear and justifying their advice by quoting sections in law to make it look good.

The area that is of big concern to many Papua new Guineans is in matters of law that we find the Prime Minister, the Acting Prime Minister and generally, the Government getting itself into very embarrassing situations too often.

In many of these cases, it is sad to see that the Government is treating these cases lightly and the sources of such advice allowed to go unpunished.

Advisers to the Government have a very important role to play and they must be held accountable when the advice they give is wrong.

-South Pacific Post