Action Without Planning Is Like Running Backwards: Powes Parkop’s Growing Buai Ban Fiasco
I wanted to get the title of this article right first before I wrote the rest of this article. That’s because I want the story of Powes Parkop’s buai ban disaster to go down into internet archives in a way that it can be retrieved many years from now and people of the future will learn from the mistakes of today. The Port Moresby buai ban is almost like a clown show, hilarious in the level of ineptness that its implementers have displayed. It would all be worth a few loud and long laughs if there were not so many tragic elements.
I personally believe that our governor should have stuck to paying huge amounts of money to local rental car companies and equally outrageous sums to shady road construction supply companies as was revealed before the 2012 election when NCDC audit records came to light, the findings of which, incidentally, the governor tried at first to escape from, then defended with vague generalities hoping that no one would catch his trick. Be that as it may, the Governor’s earlier sins are fairly well established. However if Governor Parkop had stuck to kickbacks, he probably would have kept his shiny reputation. After all, it is common knowledge that kickbacks are one of the easiest corruptions to master and one of the hardest to catch. Payments can be paid into politician pockets in ways that make it very difficult for our police investigators and fraud squad to trace. Our governor could have continued to get rich off the kickbacks and no one would have been any wiser.
Instead, the gorilla from Manus decided to turn the furniture of Port Moresby upside down with an attack on one of PNG’s most fundamental lowland customs, now extended throughout the country: the chewing of betel nut.
What a disaster the Port Moresby buai ban has been! Even Poor Powes can’t run away from the harsh facts. He admits that not just one old woman’s life was lost in imposing this buai ban as if he were Idi Amin. Many lives have been lost as a direct result of the buai ban and probably more to come. Powes has been crying fake tears over all the last few days because he has little choice. He can see himself the level of fury at him after the grandmother was killed in front of her grandson trying to escape the NCDC’s official Buai Thugs.
Our governor shows his personal contempt at the deaths caused by the buai ban saying that if the ban succeeds, the lives lost will not have been in vain. Powes, you nitwit, these people didn’t die fighting for the buai ban. They were not on your side. They died trying to escape the economic noose you’ve tried to put around their necks. You are using their names and their memories in vain to say such an ignoramus statement. That’s like saying the Australian’s had to win the WWII battles in the Pacific so that the Japanese soldier lives lost would not be in vain. What an nitwit!
The buai ban has cost a huge amount of money, caused the tragic and unnecessary loss of lives, and has achieved little else. Only this week has our incompetent governor finally admitted that the buai ban was never planned thoroughly enough to ensure that there would be proper and lasting enforcement. As a result, enforcement of the buai ban ended up being under the control of a Thug Force whose apparent purpose was to terrorise buai vendors. Even this approach was so poorly planned that the the Thugs failed. Buai sellers have once again sprung up all around the city because the buai ban was destined to failure from the start.
The ban has been an effort to make water run uphill and that’s why any fool could see it was going to fail. The lame brained Parkop now is begging the public to support him being able to continue flushing more money down the same toilet that all the cash already spent on this ridiculous ban has brought. That is the Parkop argument: I’ve already wasted millions of taxpayers money and achieved nothing, being that the ban is starting to collapse all around me. So please let me continue burning the cash since even though we’ll lose this battle anyway, we’ll lose it at lower cost in money and lives if we give up the whole thing down.
Powes Parkop is determined to stay the course and go down with the good ship HMS Buai Ban Disaster like the stubborn man that he is.
We may take some sympathy on poor Powes Parkop at the end and paint our faces in black in memory of his career suicide. But our mouths will still shine red in honour of our basic right to chew betelnut so long as we don’t put the health of others in harm’s way through our chewing. Parkop almost got away with blaming all Port Moresby residents who chew buai for the buai rubbish around the city. That would be very inaccurate and very deceiving.
If this buai ban had really been about better health and fewer deaths from TB and cancer, the whole campaign would have centred around awareness education, not around banning the substance. Banning addictive substances that are widely available and bring pleasure to the people who imbibe has never worked for long, anywhere in the world. All it does is drive the activity underground where it continues under the nose of the government. Thus the failure of the Buai Ban was preordained. Powes Parkop and his Buai Banning Gang never saw it coming because they were so overconfident and full of shit that they didn’t bother to consider the lessons of history, much less work out all the details of how exactly they were going to implement this ban. The result we now see is the outcome of their ineptness. It doesn’t matter if you’re for or against the Buai Ban, the fact is that it was a project destined to fail, made even more certain by the lack of planning.
This Buai Ban should most certainly be considered a project of the O’Neill government, because Powes Parkop has shown himself time and time again to be a buddy of the Prime Minister. The O’Neill government, of course, is the government full of promises for change. The people have jumped on these promises and assume that the change will actually come and that they will be for the better. Let’s hope the O’Neill government’s other promises turn out a lot better than the Buai Ban.
