O’Neill Chooses the Lesser of Two Evils: Attacking the Judiciary over Postponement of Election
On Wednesday, the PNG parliament finally voted to suspend Chief
Justice Sir Salamo Injia and Justice Nicholas Kirriwom – following Sir
Salamo’s refusal to disqualify himself from overseeing the Supreme Court
hearings into the legitimacy of the current government.
Parliament’s suspension directly follows repeated assurances from Prime Minister Peter O’Neill that the Judicial Conduct Act 2012
would be deferred for nine months to allow the Constitutional Law
Reform Commission to consult with the people of Papua New Guinea.
Presumably, the deferment of the
implementation of the Act meant that this particular piece of
legislation would not be used or acted upon. Disappointingly, those
assurances have proven to be false within only a matter of days. Instead
we have now witnessed the latest move being played out on the
chessboard of what has become a fierce and unsavory battle between the
Executive and the Judiciary.
It is difficult to describe Peter
O’Neill’s usage of the Judicial Conduct Act on Wednesday in any other
manner, except quite simply, that he has misled the people of Papua New
Guinea.
It is quite likely that O’Neill will try
to rebut accusations of misleading the public by reaffirming his support
for the Act to still be reviewed, but as is obvious, the
actual utilization of the Act has now made his initial late commitment
morph into a hollow promise.
This new development will not be received
well by PNG’s increasingly influential NGO’s, growing community-based
organisations and tertiary students.
It is safe to assume that political expediency has played a role in O’Neill’s latest hand. With General Election 2012
only a matter of weeks away, the pressure on O’Neill to hold together a
battered and bruised government coalition has been immense.
His coalition partners’ key goal right
now is to maintain control of the government’s purse, its institutions
and resources, including man-power, to ensure that PNG Election 2012 is
safe, free and fair – and also, that the chessboard is set in their
favour.
This was the same motivating factor which
saw the remnants of Sir Michael Somare’s National Alliance Party fight
tooth and nail over who was the legitimate Prime Minister. As the impasse
progressed, those Somare supporters not on the Grand Chief’s front
bench realized that time was not on National Alliance’s side, and a
steady trickle of MPs decided to leave for greener pastures.
All of these MPs have since joined Peter
O’Neill and the former Opposition (Bart Philemon and Sir Mekere Morauta)
in Government, with two former National Alliance stalwarts, Dame Carol
Kidu and Sam Abal forming the current Opposition.
The risk of Chief Justice Sir Injia
Salamo and the Supreme Court bench ruling against O’Neill and in favour
of Somare, on the issue of the constitutional validity of
the retrospective removal of Somare as an MP and thus his eligibility to
be Prime Minister, particularly at this crucial moment in time leading
up to General Election 2012, was too great for Peter O’Neill to ignore.
Despite constant warnings
of postponement, O’Neill’s latest move reaffirms the fact that General
Election 2012 will go ahead as scheduled.
To some degree, it seems that Peter
O’Neill has chosen, in his mind, the lesser of the two evils: his
personal support for the suspension of the Chief Justice and other
members of the Judiciary; over his deputy’s public request for
the postponement of the election.
The suspension of the Chief Justice and
other members of the Judiciary was always O’Neill’s best move in what
has become a quagmire of court-orders and political bickering.
The furor from this latest decision will be significant, but more
importantly for O’Namah, it will chew up valuable time and allow the
government to crucially remain in control in the lead up to the
election.
It is important to note that the Supreme
Court has yet to make a ruling on the legitimacy of the current
government. Duty and function dictates that this decision must be made
prior to the results of General Election 2012 being announced, otherwise
the decision is void.
Logically though, how helpful will any
Supreme Court decision be to the national interest, when the election is
three weeks away, and a functioning central government must be in place
and prepared to direct and manage the nation through the most important
election in the history of PNG?
This time Tavurvur misfired. Not only Tavurvur but also Vulcan worked in O'Neill's house and brought out fully fletched arrogance and ego on all fours. Power hunger and power lust produce power abusers without an iota of conscience.
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