'Was the dark side of his life as dark as his critics made it out to be? Whatever shade it was, his poor background and his campaigning for people trapped by the poverty he came from earned him a big following.'


William Jack Skate, the former Papua New Guinea prime minister who died in January at the age of 52, was honoured by a costly state funeral and mourned genuinely by thousands of people. He had an interesting character with facets to it that were sinister.

He went to his grave as Sir William Skate, having been routinely knighted in 2005 for political services to a country where knighthoods, as in Britain, the source of them, are used as a handy but sought-after reward for services rendered not necessarily entirely in the national interest.

He was a scallywag and more than that in a society in which scallywags are more prevalent than in most other Pacific Islands societies and where blatant, successful scallywags become admired in certain sections of the society they operate in.

However, even Skate's many critics credit him with an important contribution to Papua New Guinea. He had a vital role in initiating moves that led to the end of the long and bloody secessionist civil war in Bougainville. Other than that, the value of his other contributions to Papua New Guinea's attempts to become a stable modern state are debatable.

Economically, his single tenure as prime minister was a disaster. His mismanagement drove the country deeply into debt and to the brink of the exhaustion of its foreign currency reserves.

Since he qualified as an accountant, he should have known better than to have adopted policies that caused that predicament.

Mr Skate was of mixed European and local ancestry and born at Kaugere, a Port Moresby squatter settlement. He had a tough life as a youngster, scavenging for food from garbage cans and caught in teenage gang tussles. Those hard times made him a passionate speaker about the plight of Port Moresby's poverty-stricken people

After running a savings and loan society and later becoming general manager of the Port Moresby National Capital District (NCD)-the town clerk-he was elected to parliament in 1992 and was soon elected Speaker.

He resigned the chair in 1994 to form the People's National Congress and became deputy opposition leader. He easily won re-election in 1997 and became deputy prime minister.

He had a spell as governor of the NCD (mayor) and became prime minister in July 1997 at the height of the Sandline crisis.

Former Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, had hired foreign mercenaries to win the secession war in Bougainville.

Mr Skate had to deal with cleaning up the Sandline mess and refused to pay fees due to the mercenary company.

His economic policies were a disaster, driving the government nearly broke and draining foreign reserves to rock bottom.

He resigned in 1999 to avoid the embarrassment of being voted out of office.

At the time police were investigating him for alleged insurance fraud.

There was a murky side to his life, although he always denied having been a crime chief.

In 1997, he sued the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for showing a tape that purported to show him approving bribes.

A few days later, the ABC showed another tape recorded secretly in which PNG's then prime minister was heard saying that he headed a gang and that “If I tell my gang members to kill, they kill. There's no other godfather. I'm the godfather.”

He described a murder but later claimed that everything recorded on tape was “bullshit” because he'd been drunk.

Mr Skate was loyal to his friends and a good family man. He left behind a long-suffering wife (suffering on account of his crime reputation), 12 children and two grandchildren.

He was outspoken and tended to act impetuously. Was the dark side of his life as dark as his critics made it out to be? Whatever shade it was, his poor background and his campaigning for people trapped by the poverty he came from earned him a big following.

The great crowd at his funeral and the tears wept there openly by his political colleagues were tributes not to be denied to a man of the people, however flawed.