Lost identity cannot be corrected by quick fix solutions
Election related violence has cost state millions of money to correct democratic exercise of ballot box vote. Election related violence has continued to drag the entire country. Violence continues to pressure our judiciary system; when politician continue to battle out and pressure the courts and the rule of law.
The abuse of progress and mechanism for political gain and the ability to use state resources for political gain is totally uncalled act of suppression and oppression by those who are given mandated powers.
I have come to a stage where I no longer believe in united Papua New Guinea, I have totally lost confidence in our united efforts to correct many wrongs that continue to divide and tore our country into ethnic divide.
Let’s wake up to the reality, money “DON’T BUY FREEDOM, ALLIANCE, UNITY or NATIONALISM”. It’s Leadership that inspires and drives nation together. We have lost that; the reflection of what is happening in our villages to semi-developed towns and one city is the very reflections of sickness of incompetent and visionary leadership in all sectors of society.
When things go wrong, we use excuse “oh but we are democratic” we wait other 5 years for our opportunity in thinking we can change the destiny of our country via ballot box.
Everyday decisions are made in private board rooms away from our Parliament. Once a decision is reached our politicians are unable to capture the very reason they stand to represent people, they instead resort to accept any offer put forward to them in the name of development, aid, investment and globalization.
I am not decrying opportunities for us to be part of globalized society; I am only concern about the manner in which we have arrived at this current trend in our short democratic history.
We have truly lost our bargaining power to negotiate, we have lost everything. The only thing keeping us is because of our recent entry into western civilization and because some of our people are illiterate on political governance, economics, trade and over all issue of nationhood. We can’t blame the past of how we arrived here, but we can only blame our decision makers for focusing on wrong areas that could not sustain us.
For example: Today, number of young male in prison is alarming, there is no form of rehabilitation to help them change their wrong doings; we have 60,000 to 80,000 young people pushed out of our dead end education system. Our hope is if you failed go to back to the village to work the land; that’s so irresponsible for any generation to deny future of any country’s youth.
Today, we realized our mistakes so we coming up with quick fix solution hoping we can create development schemes in economic and education sector to capture the lost decade of our human resource. The world has changed, many rural youth are moving into urban centres all over the world for education, science, technology advancement and medical opportunities to advance their life and career. We cannot stop the trend of rural urban migration but we can manage its weakness and its opportunities.
What can be done to unite Papua New Guinea; it’s not rugby league, don’t be disappointed because as I started off I said leadership was the problem. Nearly all our national leaders mostly politicians have lost people’s confidence with their own actions and the way they manage our country to this day.
Our Religious leadership as much have tried to ignore political development of our country focusing on social and spiritual growth. At times only few speak up when things go wrong, but the church has separated itself from political field in Papua New Guinea. I don’t blame them as they practice what their Christian beliefs demand of them. But we have seen politicians who capitalize on church weakness in this area for political gain.
If it’s not rugby league and what is it? Well I think Autonomous forms of provincial administrations could help us; We can award well performing provinces with such autonomous governance process; while those who abuse the process should be under special national government established mechanism of a military civic emergency administration to strengthen those poor performing provinces to become stable and depending on progress made could be considered for Autonomous forms of governance.
What the National government can do is to maintain Defence, Foreign Affairs, Border Security and other areas as vital to role of national government. The exercise maybe expensive but it’s worth our national unity and future. When continues failed elections in parts of Highlands are costing state and dragging the entire country we seriously need to look at means to mitigate any growing difference.
Nelson Mandela’s success in his politically well calculated move to use Rugby in spite of divide between blacks and whites; he was well versed and focused and visionary; He was a leader who was prepared to die for South Africa.
Our issues are not corruption, crime, or any weakness within our governance system rather our issues are Leadership and people; people who are mandated or given the opportunity to manage the affairs of our country but fail to stand up for what is best for our people.
When leaders are not visionary, our people become blinded by the system that those in power use to capitalize on our weakness. While’s we lost of hope, we tend not to care about our own country men and women; our society is subjected to rule of evil’s; greed, lies, murder, sexual exploitation of all sorts, the worse of all is to be so ignorant and complaining.
We are tribal people and our hope could be a form of governance that gives us tribal responsibility by way of Autonomy might work to keep us as a nation but we can never be like Australians or Americans. Multiculturalism is only possible in a more developed society.
I am surprise our legislators continue to explore those developed countries social and economic policies while we still third world country.
Therefore, we have to come to realize that our doing has cost us our future; but one must remember lost identity cannot be fixed by quick fix solutions. We need long-term approach that can work.
