THE quest for a solution to the unrest that is evident within Papua New Guinea today has predictably drawn a popular solution.
Those who are disgusted at our murder and rape statistics clamour for “tougher” laws.
Those who want an end to incest and the sexual abuse of children demand “far more effective” laws.
Papua New Guineans alarmed at the rise of tribal confrontations and ethnic group clashes insist on “new laws” to control these scourges.
In most cases those behind the demands, while they are invariably well-meaning, have made few attempts to familiarise themselves with the laws we already have.
And that’s one part of our problem. In many cases, the existing laws of PNG are more than adequate to meet the demands of the public and the decisions of our courts.
Wilful murder has for nearly two decades been punishable by the death penalty and a small number of condemned Papua New Guineans continue to languish in PNG cells awaiting execution.
Theoretically, the only obstacle barring their death at the behest of the State is the ongoing lack of a decision about the appropriate form of execution and the provision of equipment to carry out the sentences.
Crimes seen by the public as marginally less serious can still result in life sentences or many years behind bars.
Theft, armed assault, kidnapping and abduction and a host of other crimes have for many years, attracted severe sentences.
PNG’s laws are an amalgam of borrowed and home-grown legislation drawn from British common law; and, the laws of various Australian states, notably those of Queensland and the increasing body of laws drafted and approved by our own Parliament.
While they may have a variety of backgrounds, the provisions of our laws relating to serious crime rarely lack severity.
Yesterday we carried a statement by the mayor of Kimbe concerning the current ethnic and tribal violence in the West New Britain province.
Making a plea for peace, Leo Kalasi said that the ethnic problem had existed for more than 20 years “and past leaders had failed to enact laws that would have allowed settlers to abide by them when clashes broke out”.
We find it hard to subscribe to that belief.
The laws of any country can only be effective if first, the people both believe in them and try to observe them and second, if those laws are enforced without distinction by properly empowered groups such as the RPNG Constabulary.
Laws cannot effectively be superimposed upon a society against the wishes of the majority of the people.
If a majority of citizens regard the laws as an irrelevant to daily life, then those laws will be consistently flouted and over time will become part of the huge backlog that are still on the books but are never used.
In PNG we have become the victim of our own social security, the wantok system.
Policeman, village court magistrates and even judges can find it gravely troubling to pursue the arrest, charging, prosecution or sentencing of a relative or clansmen.
In too many cases, it is simply an impossibility.
It seems to us that this inability or unwillingness to enforce the existing law lies at the root of the perceived “weakness” of court decisions and the penalties that flow from them.
Many, perhaps the majority of those who are most vocal about the need for “stronger” penalties, would quail at the prospect of a son or brother being handed down the death penalty under existing laws, no matter how just that decision might seem to others in the community.
If we want to have a society that lives within the framework of the law, then we must respect those laws.
We must support those who try to enforce them.
And we must recognise that the strength of those laws is only as great as the extent of our willingness to see them enforced.
The strongest possible body of laws is meaningless unless all involved in the judicial and legal chain can honestly support their implementation – and the public can acknowledge the justice and value of the penalties imposed.
The strength to shape PNG society lies in our own hands.