PNGBLOGS

Open Letter to Sir Michael Somare    by JAMES PARAKISAN     Grand Chief, before you bow out of the picture, we need you.  We realize you are 80 years old and you will be retiring from PNG politics in June 2017.  At the same time your influence, stature and leadership is essential during this time of unparalleled corruption.       The current administration is knee-deep in pekpek of its own making.  They’ve done a masterful job of sidelining and silencing Sam Koim, leader of the Task Force Sweep.  Koim was hand-picked by the O’Neill government to spearhead the drive against the corruption pervasive in all levels of government.  Then, ironically, when Koim starts making some headway in addressing government fraud, O’Neill neutralizes him.       Sir Michael, please address two or three of the major corruption issues of the last several years.  Shout out from the rooftops about the abuse of power of the current administration.  It’s been reported once before, but the people o

by PNGBLOGS The recent front-page stories on Prime Minister Peter O’Neill “confronting” facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg do more than highlight the ethical failings of the Post-Courier and the National. They also highlight the hypocrisy and dishonesty of Mr O’Neill himself. The Prime Minister complains about Facebook as being “disruptive”, and its content “misleading and incorrect”, “misinformation and malicious lies.” The problem for Mr O’Neill is that he himself is one of the worst offenders on Facebook. He has been caught lying on Facebook innumerable times. Worse, he actually pays Facebook to propagate his lies. The Prime Minister’s Office is so distrusted by the public and social media that it has now been forced to use “sponsored” posts – a type of post where Facebook is paid to propagate the post much more widely than would otherwise be the case. These posts (see the accompanying sample) are advertising, not genuine posts. In any case most of the people who read Mr O

by PNGBLOGS Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s greed and corruption is on show again in the 2017 Budget, with K40 million allocated for his personal use. The slush fund is a new allocation, under the Treasury and Finance Miscellaneous category, entitled Prime Minister’s Commitments. Also in this category is K3 million for “PM’s Official Staff Determination Payouts”. Treasury and Finance Miscellaneous can be viewed on Page 187 of Volume 2a, 2017 Budget Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for National Government Departments http://www.treasury.gov.pg/html/national_budget/files/2017/Vol2a-Revenue%20and%20Expenditure%20National%20Govt%20Depts.pdf No details of the new slush fund have been given. No reference was made to it in the Treasurer’s speech. No details are available of who or what the K40 million is to be spent on. There is no evidence of any acquittal requirements. This is a slush fund pure and simple and the Prime Minister and his Treasurer are trying to keep it secret

by PNGBLOGS The 2017 Budget handed down yesterday confirms fears that the cost of APEC is far more than the K3 billion estimated by a recent International Monetary Fund report on PNG. The allocation for this year is K250 million, taking the total cost to at least K3.8 billion over the four years 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. The current cost of K3.8 billion will rise even more when the Budget allocation for 2018 is announced at this time next year. The IMF report stated that “the government plans to spend K3 billion over 2015-18 on the preparations for APEC 2018”. Prime Minister O’Neill told Parliament last week that “the amount mention by IMF is utterly rubbish, inaccurate and not true.” But the IMF estimate is based on figures provided by Treasury officials during meetings in 2015 and earlier this year, and is likely to be very conservative. Further increases in expenditure are possible as the Prime Minister and the APEC Coordinating Auth

by PAUL FLANAGAN   PNG’s 2017 budget was a key opportunity to demonstrate the credibility of the government’s economic management before next year’s election.  It fails. Foolish games with numbers and unrealistic assumptions severely undermine the budget’s credibility (detailed examples on the revenue and expenditure side are provided below). Indeed, the level of deception arguably approaches fraud. This preliminary assessment of the budget documents will be updated over the next few days.  Hopefully more good will be found in the detail. A major winner from the budget are overseas petroleum shareholders with proposed cuts in the company tax rate from 45 or 50% down to 30%. This will be of particular joy to Oil Search and others that will gain from a new possible Papua LNG project – but they are possibly accessing the lower rate for condensate already. PNG’s tax regime for the petroleum sector was already considered generous relative to world standards – it now will be even

by PNGBLOGS The Prime Minister has been up to his second favourite trick recently after stealing – telling lies. And once again he’s been caught out big-time, this time over the cost of holding APEC. The Prime Minister doesn’t know whether he’s telling lies or telling the truth any more – he can’t tell the difference. So PNG Blogs is going to help the Pacific’s most corrupt and useless leader with some facts about APEC costs. First of all an official IMF report stated that “the government plans to spend K3 billion over 2015-18 on the preparations for APEC 2018” Mr O’Neill told Parliament last week that “the amount mention by IMF is utterly rubbish, inaccurate and not true. How can you spend K3 billion, when the country has only K12 billion budget every year?” Note the big lie: the IMF did not say PNG was going to spend K3 billion on APEC in one year, as O’Steal claims. It said the spending was over four years – 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Furthermore, the K3 billi

Congratulations, Mr Polye, on winning the re-count for Kandep district!  We realise sinister political forces were at work to bring about the re-count.  Thankfully you won. PNG needs your leadership now like never before.  As you know we are currently saddled with a limping-along economy that is likely due to corrupt government.  The eyes of all Papua New Guineans are on you to take the lead in challenging the O’Neill administration.       One year ago in the October 8, 2015 edition of the Post Courier you were spot on in your claim that the PNG LNG funds were being parked in an account in Singapore, and not in the Bank of PNG as claimed by the O’Neill administration.  Thank you for bringing that to the light of day. You can’t rest now.  You need to continue to hammer away and demand transparency of  government finances.  In particular you need to focus on the UBS loan, now rolled into a Credit Suisse loan.  Secondly you need to demand full disclosure of the PNG LNG income.

by MICHAEL PASSINGAN The wonderful thing about the social media is that at least some people involved in it try to dig deeper to uncover hidden truths.   Many were shocked when Mr Do Gooder, Kelly Naru, doing something kind of bad, like strongly endorsing the most corrupt PM in PNG's history during the recent Vote of No Confidence.  If you ask educated people living in or around Lae what they think of Naru, you hear several issues of concern: -he follows a strategy of putting his face in public places next to a face of Jesus Christ.  He puts these 2 images onto billboards, Kelly Naru with Jesus Christ in the background or above Naru's face. -before he was elected, for several years he was conspicuous in Morobe Province, giving money to this, that, and the other persons or groups.  Almost always  there happened to be a camera ready to record the event, so that both a photo and a happy story about Naru's gift giving would be published in one of the newspapers. 

by MICHAEL J PASSINGAN SECURITY DETAIL The Security of the Prime Minister of any country should be concern for the citizens of that country and PNG should not be an exception. Prime Ministers do have a security detail. To my knowledge, prior to August 2011, all the Prime Ministers that PNG had had their security detail. At the most, there would be 5 members of the National Security Unit (NSU) of the Police who would provide security to the Prime Minister. At other times (usually), around two or three officers who would be accompanying the Prime Minister. Since the issuance of the arrest warrant against Peter O’Neill, his personal security detail had been boosted to five (5) unmarked Toyota land cruisers on average for the last two years. I am reliably told by one of those persons that this around-the-clock protection to Prime Minister O’Neill is offered, not only by the members of the NSU, but other police officers and PNG Defence members. For the last four seeks since the d

by Retired Educator, UPNG It is an open secret that the current government has been destructive of the PNG education system from top to bottom.      New planned institutions are using money that should be used to prevent the collapse of existing institutions.    PNG university graduates are suffering because government not only doesn’t seem to care about them, but is undermining their future without the students realizing it.   This article provides facts to back up these statements.   Community and High School Education Today in PNG The Free Education policy of Prime Minister O’Neill has been excellent in providing contracts to his friends and allies to build overpriced classrooms and make other, often noncritical school infrastructural improvements.   However, you will not find one library in the country that has received any significant funding to purchase books under the O’Neill government.   Today classrooms around the country are stuffed with students, but never