New Cybersecurity Act: Cunning Strategy By Papua New Guinea’s Growing Dictatorship To Silence Effective Political Dissent and People Power Organising

By Ngaliwaliopa Suritomatengiman and others

One of the most important components of a democracy is people’s right to organize and pressure their point of view to the government to accommodate.   The process of people unifying and organizing to speak out and pressure the government to do things differently is a constitutional right in real democracies.   This is because in a real democracy, a government is of the people, by the people and for the people.  The people are the real bosses in a democracy.  MPs and PM are only there to carry out the will of the people.  

Overall stability is encouraged by the fact that most organizing and speaking out occurs around election time.  However real democracies don’t impose time slots on the right to organize and protest, it can be done any time, election or not, in real democracies.  

An ocean of citizens brought down corrupt government leaders in the nation of Guatemala last year, proving that Guatemala, despite its problems, remains a democracy where nonviolent free speech continues effectively.  Papua New Guinea today is far from achieving such standards of democracy (Reuters).

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill Wants To Use The New Cybersecurity Law To See Who His Most Effective Faceless Political Opponents Are

With the passing of the PNG Cybersecurity Law in the 9th Parliament, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill opened up and revealed why the new law is most important to him.  As Bryan Krammer in a recent article notes  (http://www.pngblogs.com/2016/08/so-oneill-welcomes-new-cyber-crime-act.html), the stopping of child pornography or similar outrageous criminal activities that the law was originally conceived to deal with, wasn’t even mentioned by the Prime Minister.   Those things are not important to him.  This is what Peter O’Neill is concerned about (his words):  

“I dismiss the claims raised by individuals who hide behind fake online names by night, but by day pretend to be neutral in their jobs…… There are even a few individuals at some mainstream media who fit into this category and it is in their own interest to show courage and declare their political allegiances.  Indeed I call on all people who hide behind fake names and hidden profiles to come forward and present your views under your real names."

Our Prime Minister has let the rabbit out of the hat.  In his own words, he reveals a secret intent behind the law.   Only a dictator would voice such concerns not the leader of any real democracy.    Peter O’Neill hopes to use this law to help silence any opposition to his regime that he views as being potentially threatening to his dictatorial powers.    

Castrating the Visible Opposition to the Peter O’Neill Regime

The strongest voices that oppose governments in any democratic society are usually nongovernmental organisations (NGOs and including churches), and politicians who are members of political parties not in power.   Since he came to power, Peter O’Neill has been working to silence these voices of dissent using strategies that have castrated their ability to be effective protestors.     

Unconstitutional Castration of Opposition NGOs -  PNG opposition NGOs which consist mostly of corruption fighting groups and those seeking justice, have no ability to pressure the Prime Minister sufficiently on much of anything anymore.  Like NGOs anywhere, they become influential only when they are able to gain a very large public backing.  The NGOs utilize that people power backing.   It gives the NGO itself great power, and that power is used to pressure the government to respond in certain ways.   

The O’Neill regime has castrated the power of the NGO activists.  He did this most notably by sending the police out in October 2015 to Jack Pidik Park in Port Moresby beat up members of the audience who attended a Noah Anjo presentation of speakers (they had already abandoned marching to Parliament).    That incident effectively frightened away the NGOs from demanding their constitutional rights to march peacefully in political protest, apart from a couple of minor and failed attempts, once in which Bryan Krammer was a prominent participant.   Peaceful marches by NGOs have been allowed by police before and since that day of violence in October 2015, but the allowed marches were all apolitical.   If PNG were a real democracy, it wouldn’t matter.  Political or apolitical is irrelevant to one’s constitutional right to protest using the peaceful march technique.     

A citizen listening to awareness presentations at Jack Pidik Park organized by Noah Anjo’s group was beaten up by police because he had a camera and was taking photographs of the event.   There was no violence whatsoever until the police attacked members of the crowd, and upon whose instructions?    

The corruption fighting NGOs still oppose the O’Neill government and its policies but they no longer  have enough power to pressure the government at all.   Briefly they were able to join hands with UPNG students to rebuild their power base but that seems to be at an end.  The NGOs apparently have no money to launch a legal challenge to the government regarding their constitutional rights to peacefully protest.  Even if they did, Peter O’Neill could outspend and outlawyer them easily.  PNG’s justice system favours the rich and powerful.  It usually turns a blind eye to those promoting justice, when that justice would result in the rich and powerful becoming less so.  

The NGOs are now effectively silenced as effective Voices of Opposition.   One victory for Peter O’Neill.  

Unconstitutional Castration of Parliamentary Opposition:   Part of the reason why the Parliamentary Opposition has been so ineffective in speaking powerfully enough against the policies and actions of Peter O’Neill and his government is of their own making.  Right now the Parliamentary Opposition consists of highly corrupt and not too corrupt MPs mixed together.   For more educated urban citizens, this hardly looks like a genuine alternative to the current corrupt regime.  It looks more like business as usual, no matter if Peter O’Neill or the Opposition are in power.  Not surprisingly, a half hearted earlier effort by Don Polye to lead a people power movement against corruption and the O’Neill government flopped badly.

Opposition Leader Don Polye has sufficient corruption and poor ethics skeletons in his closet, including suspicious road building contracts, election irregularities in his Kandep electorate, and the infamous K500 supplementary budget that allowed him and Peter O’Neill to use public funds in 2012 to support the campaigns of T.H.E. and PNC candidates.  It was little surprise that educated, intellectual Moresby residents didn’t leap to accept his invitation to hep him stop corruption.  

Yet even much more credible corruption fighter MPs such as Sam Basil and Garry Juffa have flopped in becoming sufficiently effective Voices of Opposition to the O’Neill government that the government actually has felt pressure to change.   Any politician in a real democracy knows that they alone have little power to pressure change.  When thousands of citizens back them up, however, it is a different story.   

MPs Basil and Juffa always seemed too frightened to call on the people to protest and march against the government.   One puzzles why.  So long as the demands they make are within the constitution (calling on the PM to step down is even constitutional so long as the PM makes the final decision), the Parliamentary Opposition has the constitutional right to organize the people and carry out such protests.  Whether the protests are for political or nonpolitical purposes is irrelevant in a real democracy.  

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad strongly promoted and participated in the huge people power protests against the current PM last year.  A few of the more than 100,000 yellow shirted protestors surround him in this photo.  Why did corruption fighting PNG politicians such as Sam Basil and Garry Juffa run away from trying to mobilise the citizens of PNG in this way?    

But Basil and Juffa have never harnessed the people and Opposition Member Alan Marat hardly even speaks out.  It would appear that our Opposition MPs are mostly ignorant of how power works in a democracy (power works to pressure change) as well as being too frightened of Peter O’Neill to dare try to develop a people power movement that pressures the O’Neill regime to change its ways.  MPs Basil and Juffa speak out now and again but their voices are whimper compared to the roar we would hear if they had ever been able to develop a supportive people power coalition.   

The Parliamentary Opposition has never been able to increase the power they started out with.  Meanwhile Peter O’Neill has taken action to destroy much of that Opposition power.   He has accomplished this by establishing overwhelming PNC dominance by bribing away as many members of the Opposition as he could over the past 4 years, dangling DSIP/PSIP monies and other perks and favours as bait.   He has deviously used his Acting Speaker (Deputy Speaker) Aide Ganasi to avoid most of the Opposition’s attempts to carry out a Vote of No Confidence.  He has placated his own MPs into becoming blind rubber stamps of whatever the Prime Minister wants to do.

Peter O’Neill has attempted to further castrate Parliamentary Opposition power by convincing the nation that it is a crime and wrong for opposition politicians to speak to and organize university students.   In fact, in real democracies, politicians speak to university students and try to influence them often and quite legally.  Opposition politicians are within their rights to support student boycotts that follow university and SRC regulations precisely.    Peter O’Neill’s warnings, threats, and investigations into political interference in this year’s university student boycotts is good evidence that he has no intent of PNG following normal principles of democracies.  

With help from the Opposition’s own slackness in failing to organize a people power movement, Peter O’Neill has effectively castrated the Parliamentary Opposition’s voice.   Opposition Parliamentarians have too little power to pressure the O’Neill regime to do anything.    

The Last Effective Opposition Voices Peter O’Neill Has Not Yet Silenced

The last effective Opposition Voices that Peter O’Neill has not been able to silence are those who use the social media to get out their messages.  

Most social media voices show little potential to threaten the power base of the O’Neill regime but some must, otherwise the Prime Minister would not be so intent in using the new Cybersecurity Act to silence those voices.   It is very clear why Peter O’Neill is focused on the Anonymous (nameless and faceless) commentators, internet sites (PNG Exposed, PNG Blogs), and Facebook pages (Niugini Outlook).  Scan through the blogs and Facebook pages where political opponents reign and it is obvious that those who use their real names to comment are far less inflammatory in the way they present their information compared to those who post anonymously.   

This is an important point.  In general, the more inflammatory the speech, the higher potential it has to influence people to join hands, organize, and develop a people power movement that becomes influential.   All the great social activists in history were powerful and charismatic speakers and were successful at agitating and motivating citizens in great numbers.  Today the same can be achieved through charismatic writing.  

Gandhi’s legacy in India is a lingering activism based on agitation that occurs at many levels of Indian society.   Without the agitators, it is almost certain that India, whose corruption level is high (though considerably lower than PNG’s) would today have out of control corruption and destruction of its democracy.  

Google the three words India Activism Agitation and you will see yourself how widespread and effective these mechanisms are in promoting people power and democracy against injustice and authoritarian in India.   

People power movements created through charisma and agitation are completely legal in real democracies so long as they do not advocate violence.   But Peter O’Neill wants to keep all this from taking hold in Papua New Guinea, which is ironic since in 2011 he was doing the opposite and organizing people to protest against Michael Somare.

Peter O’Neill was organizing people to protest and help him depose of Prime Minister Michael Somare in 2011.  Now he makes every effort to prevent any people power movements that might oppose him.

What we see is that the Prime Minister is most incensed by Anonymous commenters because he sees their inflammatory, agitating postings as potentially causing the greatest threat to his power in the medium and long term.   Time and time again, firestorms have raced through the social media started by anonymous voices.  One example was the social media rush that revealed the identity of one of the police shooters of the UPNG students.   The potential of social media to develop people power movements in PNG are high even though it hasn’t happened yet.   But the anger level against the O’Neill regime seems to be increasing and spreading beyond that of core social media users.   

The reason why anonymous commenters incenses the Prime Minister the most is that they are out of reach of his abilities to silence, as he has effectively silenced the Opposition NGOs and Opposition Parliamentarians.   Essentially he wants them to come forward so he can chop off their heads.   

Peter O’Neill calls them cowards.  They might reply that they are indeed cowards to come forward and be silenced that way dictators usually silence their opponents.  

The Most Effective Opponents of PNG’s Dictatorial Governments Went Underground Long Ago

Apparently those Effective Opposition Voices who have become anonymous realized that a long ways back, which is why they had become faceless and nameless long before the Cybersecurity Act had been passed.   

During the Somare rule and even before, when more of PNG’s leaders became incredibly rich and powerful through corruption, anonymous voices started appearing on the old discussion forums and blogs on the internet.     Mainstream media journalists expanded to the internet and began to speak out anonymously on the social media, as the Prime Minister rightly suspects.    

Is this a problem?   All journalists on earth have their personal views.   The most professional ones try to push aside their personal bias as much as possible whenever they write under their real names for media outlets that are known for relative objectivity in their reporting.   Writing anonymously prevents a journalists personal views from contaminating their public ones.   So what is the problem?   

It is none of the Prime Minister’s business whether people want to say one thing in public and the opposite in private.  He may call it hypocrisy but let us not forget that our Prime Minister is the ultimate hypocrite when he switches from one statement to an opposite statement on single issues in the space of a few weeks.  More like it is a sign of professionalism.   

If the Prime Minister cares to counterargue that the mainstream journalists could be writing their true feelings in the form of an editorial, we should not ignore that PNG’s newspapers often refuse to publish any effective Opposition views and information that goes against government messages, most recently in the case of former PM Mekere Morauta (http://www.mekeremorauta.net/#!Sir-Mekere-condemns-PostCourier-and-National-reporting-and-lack-of-transparency-and-accountability/c1sbz/57a94b570cf26bd009f4e736).    If the Prime Minister wants to know what has created this situation where PNG’s mainstream media will not always publish opposition viewpoints, even from former Prime Ministers, he only has to look at himself in the mirror and smile.