UN wants PNG to uphold rule of law
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has raised concern about threats to the rule of law in Papua New Guinea, which has been locked in a leadership battle. The nation's politics have been in turmoil since August 2011, when parliament elected Peter O'Neill as prime minister while then-leader Sir Michael Somare was recovering from illness in Singapore. Somare contests the legitimacy of the vote - a view upheld by the Supreme Court, which ruled in December that O'Neill's rise to power was illegal. Pillay accused O'Neill's government and parliament of interfering with judicial independence with a new law on judicial conduct. "One after another, the executive and parliament have taken very worrying steps to interfere with judicial independence," she said in a statement. "It appears that the Judicial Conduct Act is being used to interfere in particular with the legal proceedings to determine the legality of the current administration,"