NOW IS THE TIME, PNG BUSINESS COMMUNITY. END YOUR SILENCE ON PETER O'NEILL!

By PNG Special Correspondent


Actually, now is not the time.   It was the time more than 2 years ago.   Now it’s way past time for PNG’s business community to step up to the plate.  We don’t mean the businesses who are part and parcel of the kickbacks and bribes that have spoiled PNG and threaten now to impoverish our people.  We also aren’t talking about businesses who try to cheat our country of every last toea in taxes that they should be paying to relieve the backs of the common worker.  

No, we talking about businesses who do things ethically in PNG and provide essential services for us all.  It is past time for you to stop mumbling and instead to stand up and be counted.

For a group who prides yourselves in being entrepreneurial and proactive when the general public is not, it is amazing how reactive and petty your performance has always been in regard to corrupt business practices and corrupt governments.     Dear business community,  it is time to stand up and be counted.   Stop spending your time worrying about the civil unrest that national strikes have the potential to cause, how much money you’ll lose if your workers walk off the job or your stores have to close.  Instead, for once look at the big picture of creating a healthy, stable environment for ethical businesses to prosper in this country.  It is time for PNG businesses, large and small, national or foreign owned to start making statement to the media about where you stand on the Peter O’Neill issue.

Businesses missed the boat when they allowed the Peter O’Neill issue to become a people’s issue out of their control.    Now this issue is here to stay.  It is not going away. The people’s fury is in place and growing as we are coming to understand, bit by bit, the full extent of “O’Neill’s development,” where every major road has a hidden kickback, and every “wise decision” by government seems to have a sinister ulterior motive.   Where unethical businesses, often owned by the politicians themselves, get contracts without tender.    Where corruption costs every one of us such high prices an yet PNG business quietly considers corruption to be business as usual.

This issue is not going away.   Things are going viral.  The anger is growing.  

People of all kinds, from NGOs to churches, to students, to the public itself, are coming together in outrage over the antics of Peter O'Neill.   Recognise that now, PNG business community.   Stop worrying about strikes.   Instead, get out in the front and make clear and strong statements to the media that it is in the best interest of PNG for the Prime Minister to step down,  that Sam Koim and the task force, plus all the police O’Neill sacked (obviously for political reasons) be reinstated.   Where the infrastructure being built looks impressive for a year, then falls apart.

This issue is no longer only about Parakagate.  We want a full investigation, empowered by InterPol assistance to investigate fully the UBS scandal and who made money in the transaction in all its possible angles.  We want to know the truth about the K6 billion Chinese loan, where that money has been going to, and why everything being built with that loan money seems to cost outrageous sums of money.  We want to know exactly how so many MPs get so rich in so short a time, and what businesses they own be made public.  Most of all, we want to know why an obviously corrupt PM to this day is still supported by well over 100 MPs out of 111.   Only investigations that are kept completely away from parliament and the PM of the day have any chance of learning the truth.   We want the truth now.   No more foot dragging!

Chamber commerce in all PNG towns and cities, it is time to come forward and show the people of PNG whether you stand on the side of truth justice or on the side of Peter O’Neill.   Your silence is deafening, your wishy-washy statements that mean nothing sound no better that what comes out of the mouths of our corrupt politicians.


PNG businesses, stand up and be counted!

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