Can we trust Team Task Force Sweep?

By LUCAS KIAP
                      
My faith and hope about the Task Force Team to fight corruption has diminished after I saw the headline of the front page of Post Courier this morning (Friday, May 31, 2013), which read, “Wartoto nabbed”.

The Chairman of the Task Force Sweep Team, according to this paper (Post Courier), said and I quote, “As a matter of Law, Mr Wartoto remains innocent until proven otherwise by a court of law”. He also said and I quote again, “The intentions of the government may have been genuine but greed, lack of management and monitoring, parking funds in authorities/agencies that lacked capacity to managed them and political patronage had resulted in millions of Kina being stolen and wasted”.

We are forced to believe and have faith in our laws which had never been used successfully to prosecute and put behind bars white collar criminals.

If there are such laws exist to prosecute white-collar criminals, then the people of Papua New Guinea no longer have faith in them because they have been twisted, manipulated and distorted to the benefit a few powerful people who can go to the extreme of influencing the entire justice and legal system of a country to suit their purpose.

So here the Task Force Sweep team wants us to believe in our laws by saying that Mr Wartoto remains innocent until proven otherwise by a court of law. Maybe Mr Wartoto has been proven innocent by the laws already as he is not in prison.

If someone is to be blamed and responsible for the corruption endemic in this country, it is the government. The government has been the single factor by allowing corruption to be institutionalized and normalized in every government sector, agency and institution by not addressing it.

Here again we are forced to swallow that the intentions of the government have been genuine but the funds have been abused or stolen because of some deficiencies and malpractices in the systems  responsible for managing and monitoring of the funds. For god’s sake I am not going to buy into that excuse.

The government has a moral and constitutional obligation to make sure that funds embarked for developments projects in the country are used for the intended purpose but nothing more or less. How can the government not be blamed when it is not performing what it is required under the laws and constitution of this country?

It appears that the establishment of the Task Force Sweep Team by this Government to combat corruption in the country is in fact a plot by the government to divert the attention of the people away so that corruption still flourishes unnoticed.

However, if this Government is serious about addressing corruption in this country it has a long way to go as the intentions of the Task Force Sweep Team is now exposed and questionable.

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