Rainbo Paita Stepping Down Not Hero Act

by NICKSON PIAKAL

Paita with a single badly written, self aggrandising press statement has once again underscored that PNG is truly a banana republic steeped in violence whose political leaders are under constant threat of assassination! 

Please do not come at me with your lame hero worshiping! Just hear me out first.

Seeing Rainbo Paita offering to step down after the viral video of him discharging an automatic firearm, I chanced a guess that Papua New Guineans on social media would no doubt heap praises on him for this “noble” gesture. Sure enough they lapped it up hook, line and sinker! 

That is a sad day for PNG, where we have actually reached the point where we are praising MPs and bureaucrats for doing what is actually expected of them. That’s like saying to a carpenter, “oh how marvellous. What a carpenter. You have nailed that nail so well.”

People who hold public office are duty bound in the first place to step aside when they are under investigation. The integrity of the office they occupy requires that. But time and time again after seeing previous leaders flout this (I’m looking at you O’Neil), we are finally relieved to see someone actually do the right thing, even if they APPEAR to do so.

Rainbow Paita knows this full well and is playing into our feels. 

Let’s pause for a minute and consider a few questions. Maybe some of these are pertinent to this so-called investigation, but as a legislator, this should have been a no-brainer to Paita. 

Does his firearm license allow for him to carry and fire a sidearm (pistol) or an AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLE? 

Remember these are two very different types of weapons with markedly different rates of fire and calibre of firepower (bikla gun bikla bagarap).

Was he training under an approved firing range? The gun laws of PNG requires that the person who breaks this law face criminal charges (or is it a fine?). Remember, “private property” does not equate “approved firing range”.

What is the institution of the PNG Police Constabulary there for, if not to protect the citizens of PNG, parliamentarians included? 

I mean check this. In his justification, Paita says

“This is so that in the event that we are attacked and my CPO is critically wounded, I would be able to use my CPO’s rifle in self-defence”! 

Is this Comedy Central or an actual press statement? Is this seriously a contingency plan if one comes under gunfire attack? There are so many holes with this statement I do not know where to begin. That scenario, if plausible, is like the very last resort. 

But park that thought for a minute, and let’s pretend that we are still in some Denzel Washington movie. 

Are we in flippin Iraq? Paita with a single badly written, self aggrandising press statement has once again underscored that PNG is truly a banana republic whose political leaders are under constant threat of assassination! 

What in the bloody world! 

Has he thought to instigate an investigation into that so called attack on him first? Don’t we have laws for things like that? 

Or is this an admission of how defunct our state has become that the police and legal processes don’t work anymore? 

The video shows him being in possession of a fully automatic firearm. Unless you are a member of the disciplinary forces, this is downright ILLEGAL, and no license under the law can clear you from meeting the full penalty prescribed by that law.

But let’s face it. Paita is like the de facto son of Marape. There’s no chance any investigation today will find him guilty. His place within the inner circle is secure, even if he’s not heading a key ministerial portfolio. He has nothing to lose but everything to gain by taking one for the team! This is in stark contrast to O’Neil who fought tooth and nail to hold on to office while under investigation because he knew if he let go, he was done for!

And that is exactly why folks are praising Paita. Their standard is O’Neil, and NOT the letter of the law by which we are all under! 

At the end of the day, this is all just for show. Visuals! 

Yup. Visuals is  everything, but remember! Not all that glitters is gold. Especially if the elections are just around the corner, and you know that your government’s rating ain’t faring too well, after all those promises of becoming a “rich black Christian nation”, when all that act of pompous piety starts to come undone at the seams, then we can always make sure a good  crisis does not go to waste!