MANIPULATIVE COMMUNICATION GAMES BY PNG MEDIA

NIUGINI OUTLOOK

Yesterday the Post Courier ran the 2 big news stories side by side on the front page, giving the impression of Michael Somare being the shamed sinner and Peter O'Neill being the proclaimed victor. The National did it quite differently. They barely put the Somare Singapore kickback story on page 1, instead printing the Somare denial on Page 3 and calling him "Ex PM" in the title of the article (presumably as to not draw too much attention to the Somare name). On Page 1 they dutifully ran the "from hero to zero" story of Peter O'Neill getting off the hook on one of his long standing court cases.

Both newspapers, as usual, rubbed themselves admiringly against the government, making sure the PM got all the press he needed. The Post Courier, putting the O'Neill and Somare story side by side, delivered an especially harsh and embarrassing slap to the Father of Our Country, which may or may not have been exactly what Peter O'Neill wanted to push the knife even deeper into killing Somare's legacy forever.

The National did no such thing and why not? Why, it's because The National is owned by RH, otherwise known as Rimbunan Hijau, the Chinese Malaysian family owned logging company that has made undoubtedly billions of kina in profits over the past 30 years in its various logging operations in PNG, earned an outstanding reputation for human rights abuses in its remote logging camps, including paying off police to beat up local villagers who finally wake up to the fact that they're going to get no lasting development at all out of the RH logging operation.

It really doesn't matter how exploitative or abusive RH activities have been to the PNG people. All that matters is that RH and Michael Somare have been tight for many years. RH is the one that saved Michael Somare to cement his 'guided democracy' dictatorship for another 5 years in 2007. RH was the one that deposited K40 million into a bank account here in PNG controlled by Somare, who then distributed the money in K1 million packets to buy the loyalty of 40 MPs to remain in power after the 2007 elections.

Somare has been good to RH in return. Somare has been in the logging business himself as a family operation cutting down all the trees on other peoples land, starting more than 30 years ago. Somare made sure that RH got lots of juicy logging concessions until they controlled fully 80% of all PNG's logging operation areas. Michael Somare has been very, very, very good to RH.

The least RH could do, in return, was to make sure their newspaper didn't treat him so harshly.

What a corrupt nation we are! Systemically and systematically, as Mekere Morauta said, and let us add thoroughly and with impunity. Let's see if we climb the Transparency International ladder leading up to next year's TI Corruption Perception rankings, getting closer to the big prize - being known as the most corrupt country in the world.

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