PNGBLOGS

by DILU GOMA Peter O’Neill’s argument against stepping down or resigning as Prime Minister in order to allow law enforcement authorities to do their job of investigating allegations of crimes or misconduct in office is that there is no ‘evidence’ of any wrongdoing on his part. Based on this, he has fought tooth and nail, both in court and out of court, to stay on in the office of Prime Minister of PNG. The out of court tactics he has used (killing the Task Force Sweep, changing justice minister, removing police commissioner, trying to remove the chief magistrate, etc) are clear signs of a power-hungry individual. The in-court battles he has fought will not come out in his favor in the end, because lawful processes of the Police, Prosecution, Leadership Tribunal, etc are all guaranteed under the Constitution, and the Supreme Court is likely to uphold this clear principle of good governance. Two fallacies of O’Neill’s argument concerning ‘lack of evidence’ are as follows. One,

by SAM KOIM Is Political stability the main driver of investor confidence? I have been led, and I believe many are, to believe that political stability is needed to give investor confidence and growing the economy. This misconception of synonymising political stability to economic stability has it’s seldom appearances in public grandstanding and political discourses. This is what I've discovered in debunking this illusion. Political stability talks about the length of time a government is in power. In terms of investor confidence, it means the investors can count on the current (negotiating) government for durability and certainty of the current position. Yes, in countries and time periods with a high propensity of government collapse (political instability), growth is significantly lower than otherwise but is it really political instability that really caused decline in growth? Economists may articulate it more clearly than I, but I gather that economic s