Corruption + leadership shirking + public apathy = Continued decline for PNG


I am a PNG national raised and living overseas.  Nearly everything I know about PNG current events comes from what I read on the internet.  I can see that blogs are the future to learn the truth about any controversy.  Unlike traditional newspapers, a blog allows both sides to have their say and debate until their faces are blue and all the positives and negatives of the controversy comes out.  If one side won’t say anything, that is good evidence too.  Overall, blogs give those of us who are not directly involved the best opportunity to judge who is on the right or wrong side of an issue.  

I am disturbed by how my PNG looks to people overseas.  There are so many good things about my country that would shine if not for 3 problem areas that dominate the news. These areas are (1) primitive and backwards behaviour by a very small minority (example-witch hunts and witch burning), (2) PNG government corruption, and (3) poor, laid back attitude of average Papua New Guineans in trying to make the country better.

We can blame the media for publishing these stories, but the media is not the problem.  The three problems listed above are the problems.  No country ever gets ahead by hiding its problems.  In this day and age, public relations efforts by governments and their agencies to present only the good side of their country always fail.    The truth always comes out anyway so the best thing is to put the problems out in the open and deal with them seriously. 

The Peter O’Neill government in general seem to be no less corrupt than the Somare government which was the most corrupt PNG government.   Recently PNG’s ranking for media freedom compared to other countries took a big drop because of government interference with the media and freedom of speech.   The international group Reporters Without Borders has expressed alarm at government clamp down on press freedom in recent months, including the deportation of a long time resident who was the media officers for the Sustainable Development Program.  On the side of corruption, PNG’s ranking has declined for years.  Today Transparency International rates PNG 150 as out of 176 countries.   Today PNG is considered more corrupt than Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Nigeria which is shocking.  

The government cannot be blamed enough for this sad state of affairs. However I will tell those of you who live in PNG that people overseas are confused about us.   Here is one of the things they ask:  If PNG is a democracy, why don’t its people do more about these problems? Why do they seem to always elect bad leaders?

In any democracy bad governance is always a result of what citizens as a whole do or don’t do.  When young and old alike will not stand up for good governance, they are in a sense saying “it’s ok government, do whatever you want, we will complain but we won’t stop you”.

Corruption + public apathy + leadership shirking = Continued decline for PNG. 

Many PNG issues are now spilling over onto the internet. This must be because many nationals are feeling suppressed and disempowered with what was going on in PNG.  They must be very frustrated they cannot solve the corruption problem and become more motivated to speak out and spill the beans on different scandals. 

I say all this is good!

Hopefully someday I can come back to PNG and participate in more direct activities to save my country.  The story of a rich country becoming poor while the people look the other way is a tragic story, one of the saddest imaginable.   It is similar to stories of people who fall into the water but make no attempt to save themselves from drowning. 

Such tragic stories, whether in a movie or in real life, make observers scratch their heads, wonder, and even shed tears.  How could anyone let this happen to themselves, they will ask?   What was going on in their minds?  

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