MARCH TOWARDS DICTATORSHIP: THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING GOVERNOR GENERAL AND OTHER TALES
by JASON WAUGLE
This is a story of the latest attempt by Peter O’Neill to dismantle PNG’s democracy and establish himself as a ‘Guided Democracy’ style ‘benevolent dictator’ and ‘ruler for life’ in the style of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. We describe here his successful neutralization of Parliament and of MPs as an effective body to exercise check and balance oversight over the Office of the Prime Minister. The ongoing obstructions of Parliamentary proceedings has turned out to be a classic example illustrating a repeated pattern of Peter O’Neill amassing personal wealth and power that is now frightening people throughout Papua New Guinea.
THE PM’s ONE FATAL FLAW: CREATING TOO MUCH CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE THAT CAN BE USED TO ESTABLISH PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR
The following information would have never been discovered if Peter O’Neill had not made himself an easy target for a particular logic used to solve problems. It is popularly called ‘connecting the dots,’ which means putting together a story based only on scattered pieces of information and often indirect (circumstantial) evidence.
When only a small amount of information is available, it is impossible to figure out patterns of personal behavior that are accurate. With lots of information, trends nearly always emerge and the truth becomes apparent.
In some ways, there was little Peter O’Neill could have done to avoid leaving bits and pieces of evidence all over the place. Before he became Prime Minister, he had already established a track record of actions. Added to that was Peter O’Neill’s psychopath personality and his compulsive gambling addiction. This led to a repetitious series of events that made connecting the dots easier, resulting in an increasingly defined image of Peter O’Neill that now frightens many PNG citizens.
Peter O’Neill gambles by trying to creatively steal money from the public purse. He also gambles in trying to accumulate power far beyond that of leaders in democratic governments. He plays for high stakes. The bigger the challenge, the better.
One of the best examples of his compulsive gambling nature came the night in George’s Bar at the Airways Hotel where a drunken O’Neill impulsively signed the letter authorizing the K70 million payment to Paul Paraka, despite warnings by advisors present not to. O’Neill couldn’t turn down the chance to gamble. In fact the high risk made the prize even more desirable.
Four years after his ascendency to the Prime Minister’s chair, all of Peter O’Neill’s gambling has presented us with an impressive collection of words and actions. That makes the challenge of connecting the dots to form an overall picture of the Prime Minister’s behavior exceptionally fruitful.
PETER O’NEILL’S PATTERN OF PUZZLING ACTIONS
If he had only attempted one or two scams (e.g., the NPF scandal), the average educated city person in PNG would have likely dismissed it as a one off character failure. An educated man in the streets might have even attributed the slip to Peter O’Neill accidentally getting involved with the wrong company (such as Jimmy Maladina). But the Prime Minister was not content with one scheme or one con job. Thus we have the long list of scams of Peter O’Neill, most of them very well documented (http://www.pngblogs.com/2015/10/a-comprehensive-analysis-of-peter-paire_26.html).
As one action followed another, there was no possibility of considering any one of them in isolation. No longer could any action deemed to be sinister be dismissed as “misinterpretation of intent” or “accidentally fell in with bad people”. It slowly began to dawn on more people that there was a pattern, an ugly one. We had in the Prime Minister’s seat a habitual criminal and thief.
As the concern grew, a movement began to grow amongst intellectuals in PNG which has now materialized as the ‘Rausim O’Neill’ or ‘O’Neill Saga 2016’ movement.
The “Master of Deception” label arose mostly because of a growing number of incidents where first the Prime Minister said one thing for public consumption, this being followed by opposition MPs, investigators, whistleblowers and reports on the social media, giving an intriguing ‘rest of the story’, which O’Neill only weakly refuted if at all.
Probably the best known example of an obvious deception by the Prime Minister is the purchase of the 2 GE generators, using the shadowly Israeli middleman LR Group. O’Neill defended his involvement in the purchase, saying that it was an emergency measure to address Port Moresby and Lae’s chronic power shortages. But then it became clear that the PM could have had the PNG government buy the generators directly from GE (which is what LR Group did) for less money, and once the generators arrived, they weren’t installed for more than a year. The transaction began to smell like kickback.
A second often cited deception was when the Prime Minister declared that pokies gambling was a social scourge on PNG and needed to be restricted. In return he received enthusiastic blessing of church leaders throughout PNG. O’Neill proceeded to declare himself Games Minister, and then took action to restrict Gaming Licenses so that Peter O’Neill himself, together with cronies Luciano Cragnolini (his wife Yumei Ni is sexually shared with Peter O’Neill) and former Australian thug Greg Melides, gained a near monopoly over PNG’s Gaming Licenses.
The third example of deception which most people still overlook, was Peter O’Neill’s establishment of Sam Koim’s Task Force. This was done as a mask to hide top level stealing. The original idea was that Sam Koim would go after those public servant thieves who were not very smart and left an easy to follow paper trail. This would result in immediate, impressive numbers of prosecutions and recovery of stolen money (it did), which would give the public an impression of a government that was serious against corruption. When Sam Koim went after the Prime Minister himself, this trick of deception backfired.
PETER O’NEILLS PATTERN OF MISLEADING WORDS
Since becoming Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill started establishing a second pattern, based not on actions but words. When public figures are quotes rarely in the media, it is hard to detect patterns in how they express themselves. But being PM, Peter O’Neill is forced to be quoted in the press a lot. Ironically, Issac Lupari and Chris Hawkin’s behind the scenes management of news releases and the PM’s speeches have added to the volume of what we read or hear coming from the PM or his office. Lots of scattered pieces of evidence begin to accumulate and again, patterns begin to emerge.
For example, sometimes you could take the newspaper one day and see the PM quoted as saying one thing, then a week or two later read an article where he was clearly saying the opposite. It slowly became apparent that Peter O’Neill either didn’t care what others were writing on his behalf, or was a chronic liar himself. The label “Father of Lies” appeared in the social media and took hold. With more words, it became more apparent that other propaganda tricks were used too, such as twisting a story or telling only that part of the story which made Peter O’Neill look good.
More and more words filled in the puzzle further, creating a strong overall impression that Peter O’Neill was either a brilliant propagandist, or hired skilled advisors to create propaganda messages which he then delivered. Masterful propaganda spreading is a characteristic of all the most durable dictators of the world, including Adolf Hitler. The intellectuals amongst us began picking up this pattern of messages that had nothing to do with the truth, and became concerned.
PETER O’NEILL’S PATTERN OF DISMANTLING DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS
A dictator can only become so if he dismantles the restrictions on his power. Democracies are what they are because of a complex series and levels of checks and balances on all institutions and individuals in the public service. This prevents any one person or institution from getting out of control and dominating the rest.
Step by step since 2012, Peter O’Neill has dismantled the judiciary branch of government. He has done this with 2 separate attacks. His attack on the courts has many dimensions and serves to paralyse the court system as it applies to the state prosecuting him or his cronies for crimes or ethical violations of the Leadership Code. His second line of attack has been to dismantle or render toothless the various investigative units, namely Sam Koim’s Task Force, the Royal Constabularly Fraud Squad, the Public Prosecutors Office and the Ombudsman.
He has also dismantled government bodies, specifically the Auditor General’s office, that provide for financial accountability.
The main techniques that Peter O’Neill has used to destroy the court system is endless court challenges and clarification requests, followed by behind the scenes intimidation, bribery, and negotiation to have the judge compromise on a lesser decision that they originally intended to make.
The main techniques he has used to destroy the investigative and accountability bodies in the government have been budget cuts, creating manpower shortage to carry out investigations. In the case of the Task Force, the unit was closed down completely and so was the Fraud Squad for awhile.
DISMANTLING THE INSTITUTION OF PARLIAMENT AS A CHECK AND BALANCE ON THE PRIME MINISTER’S POWER: OCTOBER 2015 VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE
Since assuming power, the Prime Minister has engaged in a series of efforts to institute new rules in parliamentary proceedings that make it harder to successfully mount a Vote of No Confidence Challenge. The propaganda message used by O’Neill as well as past PM Michael Somare was that of ‘government stability’. Government stability can be advantageous but in PNG, it seems most productive in growing large scale corruption and theft within the leadership, as well as allowing authoritarianism to take hold and flourish.
Over the past year, the growing public disenchantment with the O’Neill government has resulted in a slight growth in numbers of the Opposition. This public support gave the Opposition the incentive to push harder for a Vote of No Confidence.
This, plus the planned peaceful protest march from Jack Pidik Park to Parliament led by Noah Anjo’s group, began to concern Peter O’Neill’s advisors. They sought a fool proof way to prevent any likely challenge, or even embarrassing setback for the Prime Minister.
THE WEIRD SOLUTION: A PLANNED MUSICAL CHAIR ROTATION
Foremost was the need to have a Speaker of Parliament with absolute loyalty to Peter O’Neill.
The Prime Minister decided that Speaker Theo Zurenuoc was inherently illogical and an unpredictable loose cannon ever since the famed evil carvings removal from Parliament. He wanted someone in the Speaker’s chair he could trust fully.
Getting Zurenuoc out of the Speaker’s chair in a way that smoothed over any bruised feelings was achieved by moving him into the Governor General’s seat while Parliament was in session.
While O’Neill didn’t completely trust Zurenuoc, he trusted Governor General Michael Ogio even less, as Ogio took bribes during the struggle between O’Neill and Somare in 2011. Before that, Ogio had a history of taking bribes from Rimbunan Hijau (RH) and other foreign logging companies as Forests Minister. O’Neill considered it a distinct possibility that Ogio could be bribed by Opposition Leader Don Polye, a corrupted soul like O’Neill, to exercise the power given to the GG to remove the Prime Minister from office.
This concern, however, became moot when the GG apparently suffered a legitimate medical emergency, vacated his GG position for 5 months, and underwent a heart bypass operation in Singapore. This unexpected event allowed the money grubbing, somewhat trustworthy Ogio to be out of the country.
The door was now open to move Speaker Zurenuoc into the Governor General’s Chair as Acting.
Filling the Speaker’s role was left to Deputy Speaker Aidi Ganas, in time for Parliament’s convening in October 2015.
WHO IS AIDI GANASI?
Aidi Ganasi is a loyal PNC member and MP for South Fly, Western Province. He was first elected during the 2012 election. For some strange reason Ganasi was quickly nominated to be Deputy Speaker by James Marape in the first sitting of Parliament. We say this is strange because Ganasi has no apparent experience in presiding over a group like this. His experience is the military. He served for 22 years in the defence post, with his last job being a border administration officer at Daru.
In 2012 Ganasi apparently received a little help to win the election. In February 2013 he was convicted of bribery by the Court of Disputed Returns in Waigani in allegations filed by the previous MP, T.H.E. member Sali Sumbam. The bribery involved a speech Ganasi made telling people to vote for him, followed by the payout of cash at K150 per person. Two specific incidents of the money handover were sufficiently documented by Sumbam for the judge to rule in Sumbam’s favour.
THE GANASI ELECTION AS A WARNING OF THINGS TO COME IN 2017
A by election was held in 2013. PNC member Ganasi won again, with only 3,489 votes. This means that a change of relatively few votes could easily swing the election. This kind of outcome can and does occur in rural highlands districts especially. The electorate of Aide Ganasi illustrates the environment that many say is where Peter O’Neill will concentrate his attention during the 2017 election.
There are 4 facts that are indisputable regarding the 2017 election: First, whatever political party wins the rural areas, will win PNG and elect the Prime Minister, since a big majority of our population (at least 80%) lives in rural areas. It’s not the people in the cities that are most important to becoming Prime Minister, it’s those in the villages.
Secondly, rural voting is fairly easy to corrupt, being that rural areas have high illiteracy, villagers tend to be more easily bullied to vote for a particular candidate compared to urban residents, and nonresidents can be quietly and illegally moved into rural districts area for voting. This and other voting frauds were seen in 2012 in Mao Zeming’s (PNC) electorate as an illustration.
Thirdly, rural areas present the perfect environment to ballot boxes with counterfeit ballots (Ben Micah used to produce them at his print shop in Moresby) or destroy boxes with ballot papers marked for opposing candidates. All this best takes place when the ballot boxes are transported to a town centre for counting. In rural areas where candidates are favoured along ethnic lines, voter rolls can be manipulated to delete names of voters in areas with candidates of opposing political parties.
Fourthly, when many candidates contest a seat, relatively few votes will separate the winner from the runner up. This means that a relatively light touch of voter fraud can swing an election in favour of the chosen one, whoever that might be.
In any democracy, elections are perhaps the most important check and balance on leaders getting out of control and abusing power. Once free and fair elections break down, so too does any semblance of a vibrant democracy.
AN INTERESTING ASIDE
while researching the above on the internet, we encountered something odd. We found only 1 article on the internet that extensively described the 2013 bribery trial and conviction of Aidi Ganasi. When we tried to access it, we found it had disappeared:
It appears that Aidi Ganasi had his reputation restored by the simple deletion of one online page!
Fortunately for us, Google maintains copies of past versions of pages. We thus went to Google cache and found the article intact, as it stood only about 2 months ago:
Thus, an article that only in recent months has become politically sensitive, but was more than 3 years old, was deleted only 2 months ago, for reasons we can only imagine!
YET ANOTHER ATTACK ON GOVERNMENT CHECKS AND BALANCES:
DENIAL OF VOTES OF NO CONFIDENCE
To have an MP convicted of bribery from an easily vote rigged rural district serve as the Acting Speaker of Parliament during times of possible motions of no confidence is suspicious indeed. Aidi Ganasi is a convicted bribe giver and bribe givers support their habit by taking bribes from political sugar daddies. Many believe that Aidi Ganasi is in the pocket of Peter O’Neill. It is also suspected that like former Speaker Jefferey Nape, Ganasi is receiving handsome backroom payments to toe the line, follow the orders of O’Neill’s advisors, and stop each vote of no confidence.
The last 3 votes of no confidence were stopped by the ‘Honourable’ convicted bribe giver, Deputy Speaker Aidi Ganasi. Each time a different procedural technique was used to obstruct justice:
In October 2015, a motion for a vote of no confidence was denied by Convicted Bribe Giving Deputy Speaker Ganasi first by rejecting the paperwork, followed by short circuiting the parliamentary process to pass the budget, followed by quickly adjourning parliament until March of this year, thus ivolating the constitutional requirement of 63 required sitting days of parliament during the year. The final touch was the PNC-dominated Permanent Parliament Committee (on which the Deputy Speaker sits) nullifying the Motion of No Confidence (see http://www.pngblogs.com/2015/11/parliamentary-process-constitution-and.html?m=0
)
In March of this year, Convicted Bribe Giver Deputy Speaker Ganasi and the Permanent Parliament Committee again obstructed Opposition’s Motion of No Confidence under multiple grounds (http://www.onepng.com/2016/03/motion-to-oust-prime-minister-peter.html) that the Committee said they wanted time to carry out due diligence checkups. Points of order by the Opposition were summarily rejected by the Deputy Speaker, and Parliament was adjourned without the matter resolved.
In the Opposition’s 4th total attempt at moving a Motion of No Confidence in June, paperwork was again submitted and received, initially by Zurenuoc (who had not yet moved to the GG’s position) and Convicted Bribe Giving Deputy Speaker Ganasi. PNC then filed for a ruling on the validity of the Motion of No Confidence in court. However, before a decision could be rendered, Deputy Speaker Ganasi adjourned Parliament.
All 4 Motions of No Confidence have now been roadblocked by the Speaker or Acting Speaker, assisted by the Permanent Parliamentary Committee.
THE FATAL ERROR: REPETITION OF THE SAME OBSTRUCTION MECHANISMS
Osama Bin Laden ultimately was captured because his driver made a fatal mistake. He had been methodically using a SIM card only once then discarding it every time he called as he suspected American intelligence was tracking all his calls. He was right. Then he made one fatal error. He used the same SIM card once when he was in a remote tribal area, where American intelligence knew that Bin Laden was unlikely to be, then a second time in the city where Bin Laden was hiding.
Peter O’Neill’s fatal errors have been to allow his briefcase carriers to repeat same or similar strategies 4 different times to deny a Vote of No Confidence to take place in Parliament. This is no different than his repetitive court motions through his lawyers.
Obstructing justice is against the law in PNG. Ironically, the Prime Minister has not been charged even once with this crime, despite the clear pattern of obstruction in the courts, in the investigative bodies, and now in the Parliament. All has the purpose of protecting the power he has been given and abused as Prime Minister. The repeated moving of Speaker Theo Zurenuoc out of his chair in each of the 3 sessions of Parliament at a time when the Motion of No Confidence was poised to be heard, is like Bin Laden’s driver using the same SIM card twice.
In this case, the people of PNG, including the university students, are the only possible entity to fill in for the American intelligence who ultimately held Bin Laden accountable for his actions.
[Niugini Outlook on Facebook is an educational website for all who love Papua New Guinea. It contains news and views on hot topics affecting us today in PNG. We offer the sharpest talk on the social media, because education does not work unless people are motivated, and Sharp Talk is a way to get you motivated enough to become a participating citizen of our country. On Niugini Outlook, you'll find unusual and varied viewpoints that are aimed at getting you to stretch your mind and think in new ways about what is occurring today in our country. Our special focus is on the accelerating injustice, corruption and inequality that threatens to destroy our nation and its healthy development. We attempt to achieve our education mission through our colourful posters and associated commentary, over a thousand of which you can access from our main web page at www.facebook.com/niuginioutlook Please browse and when you see information you especially like, consider helping us fight the high level of public ignorance concerning issues that can affect our everyday lives. Help us by Facebook sharing, emailing, photocopying and distributing to your friends, relatives and colleagues and posting in public places. Only by spreading information can we attack the high level of ignorance the general public today has on current issues affecting our nation and even our everyday lives. If you think we're performing a useful service on the PNG social media, please give our page a like and accept our thanks!]
