DEPOSED YUPI ESCAPES DISCUSSION BY USING ADVERT TO DEFEND HIMSELF: DESTROYING A 40 YEAR UPNG LEGACY OF ACTIVISM

By A Renegade Against Corruption

UPNG’s students have been thrown into a state of confusion over last Friday’s full page advertisement in The National, in which the supposedly “deposed” UPNG SRC President Bobby Yupi defended his actions during UPNG saga 2014.   That advert cost a mountain of kina coins, which begs the questions:   

Who paid for it?     Did Bobby Yupi pay for this advert out of SRC funds, or was the advert bought by some unnamed donor?
If from SRC funds, who approved it?   Wasn’t there an SRC officer’s vote of no confidence against Bobby Yupi?  Hasn’t he been kicked out as SRC president for his despicable stone age tribal attack behaviour last week?  Are there no SRC checks and balances in place to stop SRC money from being spent so wastefully?   Is the UPNG SRC Presidency a dictatorship where the occupant can do whatever he or she wants?  And what happened to interim SRC president Diddley Aheng?  Is Diddley proving to be an ineffective whimp and another bad UPNG SRC leader? 

So many questions with no answers being provided to UPNG students.  They’re in the dark and so are we.   Bobby Yupi has avoided engaging in any deep and lengthy debate over his actions for weeks now.  Before the big brawl, he even escaped to Goroka during a critical time in UPNG student activism so that he wouldn’t have to answer embarrassing questions, like why was his strategy falling apart and achieving nothing?

All the evidence is that Bobby Yupi has DESTROYED the UPNG student legacy.  That legacy was UPNG SRC’s long standing reputation of students standing out in the forefront in speaking out on the wrongs of the nation, then making whatever personal sacrifice was needed in order to get the truth out and FORCE the corrupt to back down.   UPNG students were once known for strong and effective activism, that is, until July 2014, when SRC president Bobby Yupi let the UPNG movement degenerate into an animalistic tribal battle.

At least on Friday we finally got a coherent explanation from Bobby Yupi on why he did what he did.   But interestingly, he chose the 1-way communication of a newspaper advert rather than the 2-way communication typically present in the social media.   Not surprising.  Yupi tried one lengthy debate in the social media, but using fellow student Kenneth Yamu, to argue for him.  Yamu published an article that argued Yupi should remain SRC president (see http://www.pngblogs.com/2014/07/let-upng-src-president-mrbobby-yupi.html).   Unfortunately for Yupi, Yamu’s poorly written, rhetoric-filled defence brought dozens of angry replies and demands for more information.  Yamu ran away from the debate.   After that disaster, Yupi made his own try at explaining himself, but decided not to risk possible humiliation by opening the floor to discussion.  Hence, the newspaper advert.
Let’s get to what Bobby Yupi said in this costly advertisement:

He argues that he took a “tact[ful] and diplomatic approach” to national issues  in formulating the UPNG student protest.  Unfortunately, tact and diplomacy only work when you have a substantial power backup.  Bobby Yupi had none.  Thus, the government never took him seriously.  Also, Yupi gave all appearances of being a compromiser, not someone who would stubbornly stand on principle. 

He states that it was important to him that students continued their studies uninterrupted rather than inspiring them to sacrifice for the good of the nation.   This is a personal admission that Yupi doesn’t believe that working for the common good is more important than the short sighted, self centred attitude of worrying about one’s grades and being able to get a job.  How Nelson Mandela would cry and roll over in his grave!

Yupi proudly points to ‘actions’ he did carry out:
1) Petitions and more petitions (well demonstrated in PNG to be ineffective because government can reply but not change a thing in their actions).
2) Open dialogue sessions that gave government reps an opportunity to spread their biased propaganda to students.  
3)  A demonstration in front of parliament building, even though demonstrations are usually ineffective when not backed up by some kind of backup threat.  Again, the power of an ongoing boycott would have given the demonstration the power it needed to be effective.   Yupi did not put that in place.  

All in all, the big message Bobby Yupi managed to get across last Friday Bobby Yupi was that he was a poor leader who did not get into this battle to win, nor even knew how to win. He obviously was way over his head in meeting the challenge of this critical period in PNG’s history.  
Bobby Yupi used lots of space in his advert complaining about the “renegades” who didn’t listen to his authority.   He accused them of “infiltrating, hence persuading the entire student body to go against the SRC’s stance.”   Huh??????   Weren’t the renegades simply exercising their democratic right to speak out and to influence?  How could such statements come from a law student?   Do UPNG’s law classes no longer teach basic concepts and history of law? 

Successful revolutionaries for change and society’s most effective game-changers tend to act exactly like Bobby Yupi’s hated renegade students.  They challenge authority .  They go against ineffective ways of creating change.  They don’t respect the status quo that conservative, plodding, uninspirational leaders like Bobby Yupi promote.   During the years that Gandhi, Mandela, and ML King were rising and establishing their leadership, they perfectly fit Bobby Yupi’s definition of “renegades”.   Yupi could have also described Gandhi, Mandela , ML King and his own detractors by other well worn labels:  rebels, troublemakers, revolutionaries,  and worse.   Call them what you will, but in the end, they’re fighting on the side of justice.  Where does that put Bobby Yupi?   At best, he is a passive protector of evil.  He was so busy fighting and complaining those who wanted stronger action against the truly evil in our society that he forgot what side he was supposed to be on!   Yupi hates rebels and renegades because he aspires to promote the tired old strategies of ineffectiveness.    

Bobby Yupi should have embraced and assisted his renegades, not opposed them.  Renegades change systems that have become rusted and paralysed through corruption or disinterest.  The ‘self serving agendas’ (Yupi’s words) of the student renegades can be interpreted instead as attempts to change an ineffective Yupi strategy into an effective movement that could wrest PNG from the stranglehold of corrupt deals and legal paralysis that the O’Neill government now spends its energies on.    If there was any ‘self serving agenda’ in the sad picture of the 2014 UPNG failed activism, the evidence is here for all to see:   1) Bobby Yupi’s role as a cooperative lapdog to UPNG administration and the government, followed by 2) last Friday’s attempt to restore his thoroughly spoilt reputation with his fellow students.   Who looks to be the biggest self server of them all?

Bobby Yupi did immense damage to the generations long UPNG student legacy of forcing the government to stop doing evil, no matter what personal sacrifice might be involved to achieve that outcome.   In his advert, Yupi himself admits that he went against this legacy purposely, replacing what had been a largely effective strategy with actions that flopped.   He learnt absolutely nothing from the failed Unitech protest of 2013, but then again, he probably neve bothered to find out what happened over there and why their 2013 boycott was such a spectacular failure. 

By his own admission, Yupi embraces the general philosophy of the do nothing UPNG administration and self serving O’Neill government .   Because of Bobby Yupi’s yawn yawn actions to force government to deal with the most important corruption allegations and obstruction of justice attempts in PNG’s history, Peter O’Neill can now add a much needed victory against his opponents that will free him to continue holding PNG and the court system hostage to his monkey games for months to come.  O’Neill never follows any law or any ruling that goes against him.  He either ignores the law or tries to find a sneaky way to get around the law or defeat it.  O’Neill only stops his game playing when he sees virtually everyone lined up against him in anger, as he did when the Unitech students rose up.  Now it was the UPNG students turn to take the torch and lead the movement against injustice forward and stop O’Neill’s monkey business.   Bobby Yupi wasted a lot of student time with nothing to show for it except what Peter O’Neill gave to the SRC.   How shameful! 

The nation expected nothing less from UPNG than what Unitech’s students achieved last April when they gave Peter O’Neill’s scheming and scamming a major defeat.   The expectation was that UPNG’s students would further push down the corrupt self interests of O’Neill, Paraka and associates.  Instead under the leadership of SRC president Yupi, UPNG students gave an impression of being mostly ineffective whimps who run in fear at the first government or administrative threat, and above all else are more concerned with themselves and their schooling than the longer term state of the nation.   Why is attending classes more important than pushing evil out of government processes?   After all, it is the state of the nation, not whether the students missed or attended classes during a single semester, that ultimately will most determine whether they’ll get and be able to keep a job after graduation.  

The outcry has been building for Bobby Yupi to explain how his yawn yawn tactics were going to produce pressure on the government.   He took the easy way out, avoiding debate by staying away from the social media, and running his expensive newspaper advert instead.   In doing this, Bobby Yupi is demonstrating that he’s hoping to defeat his detractors by jumping over them.   His opponents may know the truth and have the facts, but they don’t have thousands of spare kina to run rebuttal newspaper adverts to make sure the truth comes out.   Yupi knows this and like a corrupt pollie, he’s using big bucks to trump his opponents, communicating in a way that makes rebuttal difficult if not impossible.   Just like the dictator that his personality naturally aspires to, Yupi is performing like Peter O’Neill, ignoring the vote of no confidence within his SRC and simply forcing his way to remain the SRC UPNG president.  It doesn’t matter if he was a success or a failure.  Like Peter O’Neill, Bobby Yupi has simply decided that he will remain president and has intimidated or stared down those opposing him.   Just like Peter O’Neill.  Bobby Yupi is just like Peter O’Neill! 

The way make sure Bobby Yupi faces justice is the same strategy we’ll have to use if we want Peter O’Neill to face justice.   The key is spreading the facts and educating many many people about what really is going on.   In the case of Yupi, this means spreading all the pngblogs articles that covered the UPNG student issue and Bobby Yupi’s role.  Here are the links:

http://www.pngblogs.com/2014/07/unitech-students-propose-48-hour.html
http://www.pngblogs.com/2014/07/a-personal-account-of-upng-tensions.html
http://www.pngblogs.com/2014/07/will-new-interim-src-president-aheng.html
http://www.pngblogs.com/2014/07/let-upng-src-president-mrbobby-yupi.html

Either copy and post (or distribute) the articles or email their URLs to your friends, especially if they’re at UPNG.   Let others read the ongoing debates that follow these articles.  Let those who want to add evidence and share viewpoints, so that the truth becomes clearer.   Encourage vibrant debate and let each reader draw their conclusions.  That is the spirit of real democracy that Bobby Yupi and Peter O’Neill are both so desperate to avoid.