Role Of PNG Social Media Gossip and Rumour Mills In Revealing Hidden Truths. Alleged Involvement of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill In the Murder of Former Defence Minister Peter Waieng

by SOLOMON KEPAS

The mystery of who murdered former MP Peter Waieng illustrates how badly the formal justice system of both courts and police has failed the people of Papua New Guinea.   An informal replacing system of seeing justice done has started to appear as a result, just like it has in so many places overseas.   Indications are that Peter Waieng’s murder investigation was quietly abandoned in the hopes that the people of PNG would forget.  This strategy probably would have succeeded if not for the rise of the PNG social media and internet access by hundreds of thousands of Papua New Guineans.  Just as social media outside of PNG has created Courts of Public Opinion that ultimately have convicted and punished well known personalities from their countries, PNG’s social media is producing sites and activities for citizen involvement.  The Peter O’Neill government complains about defamatory, slanderous speech and unfounded rumours.  Looking at the overall picture, it only has itself to blame for creating the conditions under which rumour mills and courts of Public Opinion appear.  The O’Neill government may try to suppress what is said on PNG social media, but history predicts that it will either fail or become an international joke for its efforts.


Dysfunctional Democracies, Low Transparency and Public Gossip

Skilled police investigators learn that the final truth is always more complex than first meets the eye when they carry out an investigation.   Trying to figure out the truth from a few scattered initial pieces of evidence carries a big risk of guessing wrong, compared to later, when many more pieces of evidence are available to puzzle over.   

The average citizen isn’t a skilled police investigator, but citizens are just as curious to learn the truth, especially when it involves matters of national interest or some well known personality.    They want to learn what’s been found out and hear the whole story, sometimes faster than it is being discovered by investigators!   If investigations are too slow or what is being discovered isn’t being revealed fast enough, the public responds by jumping the gun.   People will take whatever little information is known, and puzzle over it in an attempt to figure out for themselves what the whole truth might be.
  

This process of puzzling over and discussing scattered pieces of information to come up with a full story is achieved by what we call gossiping and rumour mongering.   Both are common, natural ways of how people try to learn more about stories they are keen to find out the whole truth about.   

People gossip everywhere and not only on the internet.   However, there is less need for gossip in better functioning democracies where there is reasonable transparency.   Not only that, but when police investigation and judicial prosecution spokesmen come forth and report to the citizens the latest findings of the high profile crime or incident, the public gossip becomes much more fact based.   

Gossip explodes in countries that don’t have genuinely vibrant democracies.  Low transparency governments, including all dictatorships, create an environment whereby any core seed of truth about an incident of public interest will have a high probability of growing around it a large crystal consisting of gossipy interpretations that may have little to do with the truth.   

However, even in functioning democracies, gossip grows worse when police bungle investigations, governments mess up prosecutions, then there is an attempt to cover up this  incompetency.   Tabloid gossip newspapers and gossip websites have appeared in the western world when people feel that they aren’t getting enough facts from those who know and could be freely sharing that information.     

Each and every government decides through its actions whether it wants to create a nation of gossip that surrounds every public issue.  The more a government hides information, the bigger the vacuum of information becomes.  Rest assured however, that this vacuum will be filled.  It will be filled not only by informal gossip, but also more structured coconut wireless and gossip gathering and promoting media, such as tabloid newspapers and Facebook sites.
 
The last few years, PNG social media has exploded with stories on government corruption, MP adultery and other scandals, and almost any other criminal or unethical story under the sun.  Why so much gossip is present in PNG about our leaders and our government has a simple answer.  It is because our government keeps too much information secret from the people!


Effectiveness of Rumour Mills In Discovering Truths That Government Will Not Reveal

Light thinkers quickly dismiss rumour mongering blogs, Facebook pages, and newspapers as being useless because they publish nothing but false stories.   It is true that many gossip media stories are way off base.   However, there are many specific examples in the western world where gossipy tabloid media have been surprisingly accurate in some major stories they uncovered (http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-shocking/10-most-outrageous-tabloid-stories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/).   Most famous was the gossip appearing first on the internet that US President Bill Clinton was committing adultery with his secretary  (http://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/10-biggest-lies-in-history8.htm).   It turned out to all be true.     

In other words the gossip tabloids on and off the internet do get the story right sometimes, or they create public demand for the truth that results in the actual truth coming out.    

Intellectuals like to look down on gossip media generally.  Yet if these gossip tabloids and social media gossip columnists did not exist, some very large corruptions would never be uncovered, and those committing them would have forever escaped justice.   Rumour mills have a strong annoying side but when they get things right, they can blow the doors right off a government.   

Gossip Media As Creators Of Courts of Public Opinion

Once gossip and rumours about an issue of public interest begin to explode, the number of citizens discussing what they think about it also expands.  Today’s Courts of Public Opinions (https://law.duke.edu/conference/2007/publicopinion/)  in the western world are modern day extensions of gossip media and can involve millions of people.   They represent a type of informal judicial system that pop up when formal Systems of Justice are either too sluggish or too corrupt at reliably achieving justice.   Citizens get frustrated and start taking matters into their own hand.  Courts of Public Opinion appear just like Gossip Media, when the arms of government fail to do their job at achieving justice and sharing information as it is discovered with the general public.

Courts of public opinion are dismissed by some people as being nothing more than unconstitutional mob justice.  They’re right.   However informal mob justice is filling a gap that appears whenever formal justice systems are nonexistent or stop working.   It is true that mob justice has a higher failure rate than a formal justice system that is properly executed.  On the other hand, mob justice can stabilise societies whose alternative is having no justice system at all.  

Social media sites and tabloid newspapers can cover any and all of the following components of achieving justice in society:

  1. Investigation phase:  Courts of public opinion investigate those of public importance who are alleged to have done wrong.  This can be a person, an organisation, a company, or a government.   More information comes out as a result of public outcry, as witnesses slowly but surely come forward.   In this way, the public at large learns more about the issue or incident and comes closer to learning the full truth.  

  1. Prosecution phase:  Are more information is divulged to the public, people develop more learned opinions on what direction the evidence seems to point.  Guilt or innocence?   People are commenting in both directions, but Courts of Public Opinion are decided by what the majority of commentors say, and how convincing their arguments are.  

  1. Punishment phase:   Courts of public opinion usually punish through public shame and humiliation.   

Courts of public opinion are important and beneficial enough  (http://www.wired.com/2013/02/court-of-public-opinion/) they they’re being “used more deliberately, more often, by more and more powerful entities as a redress mechanism.  

Some people today turn to Courts of Public Opinion instead of filing lawsuits and compensation claims.   In the past, a Court of Public Opinion was a sideshow to formal legal proceedings, which had the final say.   Now they have become an alternative system of dispute resolution and justice.   Many citizens use courts of public opinion to fight powerful companies or powerful governments.    Companies as well turn their public relations weapons to creating Courts of Public Opinion that they hope will find in their favour.  

Courts of public opinion have no legal power.  Any Judge in a formal court system must on principle ignore them in reaching their own judgment.   However in today’s world very few cases of alleged wrongdoing ever reach a formal court, much less go through trial.   When a Court of Public Opinion pronounced judgment in such instances, it is the final decision, and the usual punishment is shame and humiliation of whoever is found guilty.  The unfairness of Courts of Public Opinion are indisputable but at the same time are here to stay in situations where formal government systems of justice do not function to the level of public demands.  


Two Overseas Examples of Successful Court of Public Opinion

Two recent examples of intensive Courts of Public Opinion follow:  

The first started involved American TV star Bill Cosby.   For many years there was suspicion that he had drugged and raped many women in their sleep.  However, the women either weren’t believed or they didn’t report the rapes. At least one accuser was bought off by Bill Cosby.  Others could not produce enough evidence for police to prosecute.   As more women came forward, the police did not move as fast as an exploding Court of Public Opinion, which grew into an outrage and ended up destroying Bill Cosby’s career (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3161302/The-information-points-guilt-Whoopi-Goldberg-changes-stance-Bill-Cosby-rape-allegations-calling-disgraced-actor-speak-up.html).  The police finally caught up with the Court of Public Opinion and have now charged him with sexual assault (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/24/bill-cosby-trial-sexual-assault-charges-pennsylvania-temple).   However, the formal justice system might have never stepped in had the informal Court of Public Opinion not forced it to.     

The second Court of Public Opinion worth mentioning involved Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak (http://english.astroawani.com/malaysia-news/najib-convicted-trial-media-salleh-100768).    He was accused in a newspaper article of depositing of hundreds of millions of kina into his private bank accounts, that were initially said to be stolen money, but more recently confirmed to be “donations”.    The former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad joined the public outcry last year against the accused Prime Minister Najib.  The Malaysian Court of Public Opinion ended up with tens of thousands of Malaysians going to the streets and demanding that Najib step down.   He didn’t do so but a task force investigation has been set up for further investigation.  Whatever they find, the reputation of Prime Minister Najib is essentially destroyed.   His ability to govern Malaysia has been seriously hurt.  It is doubtful he will win the next election.      




PNG Examples of Courts of Public Opinions

Courts of Public Opinion abound in the PNG social media over many matters and politicians.   The Peter O’Neill government wants the internet Courts of Opinions suppressed, calling it ‘slanderous’ and ‘defamatory’ speech.  Under Communications Minister Jimmy Miringtoro, laws have been tightened up to restrict what Papua New Guineans residing in PNG can legally say on the social media without being charged and suffering severe penalties.  

Courts of public opinion have swirled around certain PNG politicians, particularly the Prime Minister, but also Ben Micah, Patrick Pruaitch, and other prominent leaders.   The PNG Courts of Public Opinion nearly always emphasise what was already known by insiders regarding these individuals.   A recent example was the former Speaker Jeffrey Nape, who memory was slammed so hard and so negatively by the social media Court of Public Opinion that virtually no organisations or individuals followed modern PNG custom of spending money for large condolence message advertisements in the PNG dailies.  This silence in response to the death of a well known public official seems unprecedented in PNG history.   When considering how reluctant the PNG print media is to critically take on almost any politician, this particular reaction seems traceable to Court of Public Opinion pressure on the PNG social media.  

Another example of an influential PNG Court of Public Opinion occurred more than 10 years ago.  The Post Courier (at that time a completely different beast from what it is today) mounted a high publicity “Jimmy Come Home” campaign to pressure Jimmy Maladina to end his exile in Australia and face court charges in the NPF fraud scandal that also prominently involved Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.   The Post Courier’s launching of this Court of Public Opinion came after the PNG government refused to go through the process of legally extraditing Maladina.   In the end, the campaign was successful in convincing Jimmy to come back home.   


It didn’t really matter that 10 years later, Maladina was found “innocent” of all charges (despite clear paper evidence against him that was discussed in detail in the Commission of Inquiry on the National Provident Fund).   The people of PNG had already decided he was guilty and most people maintain that belief even now.   Maladina’s reputation in PNG and abroad is rock bottom and almost certainly this is deserved, based on the same evidence that a PNG Court of Public Opinion used to find lawyer Greg Sheppard guilty of unethical professional practices even though he has never been charged with any wrongdoing (see http://www.pngblogs.com/2015/07/the-sheppard-maladina-complete.html).    The information on these cases that the public has access to cuts straight to the guts of an issue, free of legal manipulations and side shows.    

In today’s PNG where public trust in the police and the courts is at an all time low, the traditional media is largely considered incompetent at digging out the truth by PNG intellectuals.  PNG public perceptions of corruption as measured by Transparency International is at all time high, and the constant articles about Peter O’Neill’s legal manipulations in court create a strong perception that he is obstructing justice so much that there is no justice to be served by the PNG judicial system.   In this kind of environment, it was almost inevitable that the coconut wireless would expand onto the internet, and public figures would find their reputations trashed through informal Courts of Public Opinion.


The Case of the Murder of Former Defence Minister Peter Waieng Now Belongs To PNG’s Social Media  

The most serious, high profile allegations that have left the formal media and are now on the PNG social media and creating a Court of Public Opinion is the case of murdered MP Peter Waieng, which Prime Minister Peter O’Neill is alleged to have played a role in.     


Was Peter Waieng murdered as a result of stepping on high level feet, including that of the Prime Minister?    Our PNG traditional print media, which could probably provide the most indepth information to a wider segment of the PNG population compared to the internet, has failed miserably in investigating and following up on this story.  

The government has long been suspected by the public as complicit in encouraging The National of Post Courier to do as little investigation and followup as possible on stories of possible embarrassment to the government, publishing only the government’s version of what happened.   All this creates a vacuum of injustice or no justice.   Something has to fill that vacuum.  The social media has done it, not only in PNG but abroad and it has taken over the case of Peter Waieng, starting with the investigation phase that the police have proven so unsuccessful in.  

The second and final article in this series is an example of using the PNG social media to reveal the latest revelations in what could end up being the most shocking story in PNG history.   The police and the traditional media have fallen short.  The social media, including PNG Blogs, now fills the gap.  

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