NEVER EVER GIVE UP
We faced similar problems during uni-tech saga and won only because of stubborness. Most of us believed we were doing the right thing for God and country so we should not give up under any circumstances.
As writer Maya Angelo once said: “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” That’s good advice for UPNG students who believe in using student power to speak out for justice and honesty in our country. Find new ways to keep fighting for what you believe in no matter how many Bobby Yupi obstacles are thrown your way.
During early Uni-tech saga we had our own Bobby Yupi by the name of 2013 SRC President Livingstone Hosea. He started out like Yupi with inspirational talk and saying we should boycott because it was the right thing to do for the good of uni-tech and PNG. Then only a week into the boycott he goes 180 degrees opposite and says we should return to class because it was most important for us to worry about our studies and let politicians decide everything else.
He then tried to stop debate on the issue and get students to forget such a man existed. His spies looked for what students still supported Schram and the boycott. Radical students responded by continually bringing Schram’s name back to center stage.
Inventor of the light bulb and movies Thomas Edison once said: “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
That’s why our brothers and sisters at UPNG must understand that to win you must continue your struggle even when things look darkest.
After Livingstone Hosea graduated and left, student radicals made sure that the new SRC president Eddie Nagual wouldn’t go corrupt like the last one. He was strongly advised to follow the will of the students and not cross over to the side of evil like Livingstone. No SRC officer would be allowed to meet in secret with government people, there would always have to be witnesses.
When Eddie Nagual launched the 2014 boycott and did not sell out, we had to face government and administration intimidation just like UPNG students. Kelly Naru lead the way for most governers to threaten to take away our scholarships. OHE Minister Gore threatened to kick all boycotting students out of school and close down the school year. ONeill government threatened to send in the task force to force us back to class.
These threats frightened many students into having doubts about carrying on the boycott.
However Sir Winston Churchill once said: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” That is excellent advise for any UPNG students who believe in their hearts that we must set an example for the whole country and fight hard for Christian principals of truth and justice. UPNG students don’t ever give in to the Yupis, Mellams, Kavanamurs, and ONeills of the world. If you let the evil side win, all the good people will later pay the high price of suffering under more corruption, worse education etc.
Our last 2 weeks of boycott at uni-tech were worse yet. Government knew that if they stopped our boycott before we won our objectives they would win. Four ministers tried to force the SRC and Eddie Nagual to give up. Richard Maru and Ben Micah were strongest in threatening Eddie.
American president Abraham Lincoln once said: “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” Eddie Nagual followed that advice. After the ministers finished giving there threats, Eddie replied with No Shram, No School. He did not surrender despite the threats.
Stubborn conviction of Eddie and many other students won the day. Government finally figured out that they could not defeat a united force who were fighting for the highest Christian principles of fairness and justice to stamp out corruption at uni-tech.
The story is not finished. Towards the end of the boycott, forces of evil at the local level tried their luck:
* Around 30 boys including SRC Treasurer Samuel Simon were brought to Lae Inter Hotel one night by Morobe Provincial government staff. They were given cash, beer and food at the Hotel. The command was for the students to go back and destroy student support for the boycott. The boys with Samuel Simon came back to campus bringing alcohol and secretly went in the early hour of the morning to first year and second year dorms to urge them back to class. They threatened there would be consequences if the boycott continued.
* Towards the end of the week, head of National Staff Association Mr Justin Kehatsin met with SRC leaders. He used a trick to try to get SRC leaders to agree that the new Schram wasn’t like the old Schram and we students were fighting to bring back a kind of Schram that no longer existed.
* The academic board of teachers tried to convince our female SRC Vice President to push students to vote for ending the boycott prematurely. She was shocked that our own teachers seemed to be turning against us and losing their sense of right and wrong.
These last minute tricks and deceptions coming from the side of evil fit into a famous statement by one Mr Dale Carnegie: “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
In other words, the side of evil started to copy the good people’s strategy of never giving up. Maybe if they had kept this up government would have won but by then we were getting more support from people outside uni and even newspapers were supporting. Everyone could see that government was wrong to oppose peaceful students who were righteously pushing for application of Christian truth and justice principals in letting Schram come back to his job. We still would have lost if we had ever started compromising or negotiating.
We also won saga because enough student radicals, including Eddie, were dedicating themselves day and night to get out facts and information to staff and students while most students did nothing. All the awareness made us knowledgeable about the issue and ready to defeat the tricks that the government tried against us.
During saga most students knew that we were David fighting Goliath but we didn’t realise til near the end just how big this Goliath was. We had no idea that our main opponent was the Prime Minister himself trying to protect his corrupt friends (Saulep, Stagg). We didn’t know at first that Minister Gore’s strong threats originally came from the mouth of the OHE head, Dr David Kavanamur, good friend of Misty Baloiloi, the VC who nearly destroyed uni-tech. We didnt know that it was Acting VC himself Prof John Pumwa who proposed the Sevua report as a sneaky way to finish Schram so that Pumwa could become permanent VC. It seems the admin’s talk about being on the students side were all lies.
Even if we had known these scary truths in the beginning I think we would have carried on. Roosevelt once said “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”
Five weeks of threats after threats during the boycott took away our strength but not our conviction to keep going. We had developed courage from our challenging experience.
As former PM Margaret Thatcher of UK once said, “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it”. God bless the UPNG student radicals. Stay on the Christian side and continue to find ways to speak out against evil corruption, mismanagement, cover up and other lies that you see going on at UPNG and PNG.
Respectfully,
Uni-tech Student Rebel
