But test of leadership still lingers


On April 9, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare will celebrate his 72nd birthday.

It will be a double celebration for him. This year, Somare also celebrates 40 years of continuous active participation in Papua New Guinea politics since 1968.

His National Alliance Party is leading the government in Port Moresby for the second five-year term with him as prime minister.

The economy is in good shape and Somare has been keen to boast about his government’s achievements at every opportunity. But behind the celebrations, a test of his leadership lingers.

Speaker of the national parliament, Jeffrey Nape, is embroiled in a major controversy with allegations of misuse of public funds allocated to the National Parliament. Insiders allege millions of kina are involved but this is yet to be proven.

Members of Somare’s cabinet want the speaker sidelined pending proper investigations.

The speaker says cabinet has no powers to sideline him. Only parliament which elected him has the authority to remove him, he says.

The National Alliance Party met recently at a night time meeting to discuss the future of the speaker. But the discussions led to no action.

One well-placed source said Somare was given all the evidence about the missing funds but did not reveal this to the meeting. Some ministers said without the evidence they could not move further on the discussions.

Parliament has been adjourned to April after less than two weeks of sitting and little achieved.

But the leadership issue remains very much alive and waiting for government to return to the floor. It is an issue that will not simply disappear overnight.

In fact, it is an issue that will test the unity and solidarity of the biggest party in parliament.

The Highlands regional branch of which Nape is a member has publicly declared its support and loyalty to Somare.

The issue of parliament spending public funds has been known to the government for a long time.

In 2006, a government committee strongly recommended that funding for the national parliament should be reduced and closely scrutinised.

The committee, known as the “Rightsizing the Public Sector Working Group”, gave its report to the Somare Government in the same year but to-date no action has been taken.

The report was critical of the lack of transparency in the way parliament spent public funds. It stated: “The national parliament is using a large share of public resources given the limited resources available.”

Lack of transparency: “For example, under the 2005 budget, the national parliament received a single line appropriation of K56 million with limited information on the purpose of these funds.

“With limited budgetary oversight and poor accountability it is often difficult to support the notion that these funds—for example those allocated to the national parliament—are going to core priorities and are being used efficiently,” the report stated.

The report stated that a 10 percent reduction in the national parliamentary budget would save the government around K4 million annually.

“In accordance with the government’s desire to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government spending, expenditure undertaken by the national parliament should be made more transparent,” the report stated.

It stated the national parliament should provide detailed information regarding expenditures like other agencies during the budget process, and it should be subject to the same financial monitoring as other institutions.

In addition, practices such as the payment of allowances to members of parliament for membership of committees at the start of the year should cease.

“Payment of such allowances should be made only after the committees have met and the member has attended.”

The Somare Government came into office in 2002 promising to clean-up the mess involving reckless spending of public funds. Now into its second term, this issue still remains outstanding.

Its attempt to set up a commission of inquiry into the misappropriation of public funds at the department of finance has become a laughing stock as the commission starts and stops because of conflicting and frequent changes to its composition and staffing.

Senior civil servants are alleged to be involved in trying to stop the inquiry from digging up the truth because they have conflicts of interest in the matter.

Already a senior finance department officer has been charged for allegedly receiving K122,000 from landowners of the Koiari region in the Central Province which is home to Port Moresby’s water supply system.

The civil servant is alleged to have demanded the payment in order to fast-track payment for the landowners.

Somare’s successor: As Somare prepares to celebrate his 72nd birthday, the big question that faces the National Alliance is a successor for him.

National Alliance has four deputy regional leaders: Don Polye (Highlands), Patrick Pruaitch (Momase), Paul Tiensten (Islands) and Dr Puka Temu (Southern).

Polye was the deputy prime minister in the lead-up to the 2007 general elections but was replaced when Somare announced his new cabinet lineup.

He lost the deputy’s post to Dr Temu who is highly regarded as a potential prime minister.

Temu was a former health secretary and a man well regarded by many as being stable, intelligent and yet humble enough to lead a government.

His problem is that the Southern region or Papua has not given the National Alliance enough members in the 2007 elections. So it will be a struggle for him to claim the top post after the departure of Somare if he ever goes at all.

Pruaitch is an ambitious young politician and a member of what is regarded as Somare’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ which also includes Somare’s own son, Arthur. He is from the same region as Somare and comes from West Sepik. Somare is from East Sepik.

He wants to be the leader of the National Alliance after Somare departs from the political scene. But whether he can get the support of the minor parties still remains a big question.

Polye from the Highlands block is also eyeing the top post. He wants the job of prime minister to go to the Highlands region and his members are known to be hard bargainers who will always fight to the bitter end for it.

Again, the issue is the support of the other coalition partners. Should Somare go, parliament will be looking for the next best man for the job and smaller parties may even have to seriously reconsider their support for the National Alliance Party (NA).

They joined the NA only because of Somare. But if he goes, then they will be looking at who the next best person might be in terms of holding the nation together and steering it forward.

Opposition Leader Sir Mekere Morauta stands out as one of the best candidates should parliament vote for a new prime minister.

Whether Morauta can make it will depend on whether the government coalition remains intact or breaks apart after the retirement of Somare.

Now, nearing the end of his long and distinguished political career which started in 1968, The Chief or Father of the Nation as he is affectionately known, must now be thinking about who he should hand over the reins of the National Alliance Party to before retiring from politics—predicted to be sometime this year—although Somare is always known for changing his mind each time he says he will retire from politics.

Following the 2002 general elections, the subject of a successor was discussed within the party membership, but no firm commitment was made. It was thought the last NA national convention before the elections would elect a successor who would take the party to the elections.

It was informally planned that The Chief would be given the mother of all farewell parties by the nation before he slips into retirement in his hometown of Wewak where golf and fishing will form his daily routine.

It was planned he would be farewelled in a way fitting for the man who brought his country to self-government and then independence and fondly admired by all Papua New Guineans.

But things have worked out differently. The issue of a successor turned out to be a huge fight resulting in the leading contender, then Treasurer and  Lae MP Bart Philemon, leaving NA.

Philemon was one of the deputy party leaders of NA representing the Momase region—the region where Somare also comes from in East Sepik Province.

Philemon accused Somare of having hated him from the day the Lae MP was appointed treasurer and always worked against him ever since.

So NA has regrouped after the leadership fight and Somare loyalist, Pruaitch, was elected by the Momase regional branch as their new deputy leader.

It was a foregone conclusion that this would be done as Pruaitch has always been close to the prime minister and has a strong bond with the prime minister’s own son, Angoram MP Arthur.

Pruaitch entered politics as an Independent MP winning the Aitape-Lumi seat in West Sepik.

The National Alliance Party became the first party to lead a government that enjoyed the full five years in parliament, thanks to the former government led by Morauta for the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates which has now made it difficult for Members of Parliament to jump from one party to another as they have done in the past, thus destabilising PNG politics.

Its future stability now hangs on who will succeed Somare as he ponders on a date for his official exit into retirement from PNG politics.

We should have done better: Dr Temu Reflecting on the performance of the National Alliance-led government over the five years from 2002 to 2007, Dr Puka Temu said: “On  hindsight we should have done much better. As a party, we should have consciously avoided distrusting each other, protected each other better, communicated better and should have been more consistent with our original intentions. “We should have moved on with our public private partnership policy on our state-owned enterprises, which I believe was one of the best policies for our government. We should have pursued the right-sizing exercise of the public service early in the piece. We should have established the Electoral Boundaries Commission and pushed for new provincial boundaries and more electoral in 2003 and should have got rid of the Constitutional provision for regional seats, which outlived its original purpose. This would have given us the chance to join those nations who have allowed more women participation in national politics.” Temu said the government should have amended section 145 of the Constitution (to prevent no confidence votes in the Prime Minister) and cleaned up the Organic Law on the Integrity on Political Parties and Candidates. For example, the winning party should be invited to form the government, making its party leader the prime minister, rather than him being elected by parliament. This amendment, he said, would remove political manoeuvring, instead allow the winning party to invite others to join it without any conditions. “We should have amended the Organic Law of Provincial Government’s and Local Level Governments towards a two-tier legislature, for example national government and district governments and establish a provincial level coordinating authority and develop a long-term plan for moving the public service machinery to the districts.  This would have been spearheaded with our government’s current district service improvement programme. “We should have been more vigorous with our green revolution programme, by determining economic zones and pushed coffee rehabilitation, oil palm expansion, cassava and cashew nut development for bio-diesel, rubber rehabilitation and expansion and vegetable produce market access. “We should have stopped talking about our tourism potential and created incentives early for grass-root level tourism infrastructure and invited three more developers to build international standard hotels to lure tourists and hosted more international conferences, given the terrorism risk in major tourism destination countries, such as Bali. “We should have in 2004, reviewed our school subsidy policy towards 100% subsidy for elementary to grade 8 to at least come closer to our commitment to the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education. We should have removed the user pay policy for primary health care and focused on expanding maternal and childhood services to our rural masses, striving towards our MDG commitment. “We failed to give attention to the national population policy, given our acknowledgement that high population growth rate is one of the identified key threats to growth and development. The high population growth rate adds pressure on our overstressed health and education budgets, reduces the saving capacity of families and is no doubt contributing to land pressures and placing the traditional subsistence agriculture safety-net under stress. “We should have moved on with the Enhanced Cooperation Programme (ECP funded by Australia) and accept the fact that we need support at key areas such as police, prosecution and finance. I have chosen some of these programmes to demonstrate the difficulties we in PNG face at all levels. These include lack of political will and agreement and pressure from varying factions, institutional apathy and lack of capacity. “If NA and PNG are to go forward, we have to immediately look at these and other issues which contribute to the non-realisation of outcomes we all want to achieve.” Dr Temu’s statement sums up how the party sees itself from within. It has performed well in improving the economy, thanks to the untiring efforts of former treasurer Bart Philemon. But in other areas as outlined by Temu, NA has missed many opportunities.