PNGBLOGS

Professor John Nonggorr The right thing for Sir Michael Somare to do to promote and uphold good and ethical government, protect the good name of the Office of Prime Minister and set a better example for leadership in PNG, is to step aside as Prime Minister now; and allow investigations to be conducted by relevant law enforcement agencies into serious allegations that he broke a number of laws in the Moti Affair. The Moti Affair The Ombudsman Commission submitted to the Parliament its report on the Moti Affair. The Parliament rejected the Report on 10th March 2010. In the recent sitting of the Parliament, no mention was made of the Report or of the Moti Affair generally. Should PNG just forget about this episode, just like other similar issues in the past, as it if it never happened? This one should not be forgotten. The Moti Affair should not be forgotten because it involved allegations of unlawful conduct on the part of the person holding the Office of Prime Minister. The person occup

Professor John Nonggorr The right thing for Sir Michael Somare to do to promote and uphold good and ethical government, protect the good name of the Office of Prime Minister and set a better example for leadership in PNG, is to step aside as Prime Minister now; and allow investigations to be conducted by relevant law enforcement agencies into serious allegations that he broke a number of laws in the Moti Affair. The Moti Affair The Ombudsman Commission submitted to the Parliament its report on the Moti Affair. The Parliament rejected the Report on 10th March 2010. In the recent sitting of the Parliament, no mention was made of the Report or of the Moti Affair generally. Should PNG just forget about this episode, just like other similar issues in the past, as it if it never happened? This one should not be forgotten. The Moti Affair should not be forgotten because it involved allegations of unlawful conduct on the part of the person holding the Office of Prime Minister. The person

John Greenwell It is sometimes said that Australia granted independence too soon and should have deferred it until Papua New Guinea was ready. This is quite wrong — and is so at various levels. First, it assumes that independence could be delayed until the rate of all the various strands necessary for Papua New Guinea to be ‘ready’ — political, economic, administrative and social  could be controlled and determined by Australia. What this overlooks is that the ‘political’ strand in the evolution of the colonial state necessarily has a life of its own. Being ‘ready’ means there are political leaders sufficiently experienced by involvement in government to be able to assume leadership. But that very process naturally leads those indigenous leaders to make increasing demands for further involvement in the leadership of the country and hence for it to be granted self-government and independence. There would be a number of consequences if Australia had sought to stifle these demands. First