| Sports |
by Frank Senge Kolma
Plan your death at your own cost
IF YOU are away from home and you are
planning to die shortly and you wish to be buried at your family
cemetery, now is as good a time as any to die.
You actually have a little more time to do your will and the last
farewells. You have until May.
Chances are that your corpse will attract enough empathetic
responses from any number of the hundreds of candidates lining up
from elections. And there is always the sitting MP as a fallback
position.
You ought to get a decent box to decay in peacefully and assurance
of transportation home.
Tell you what. You could actually negotiate the deal yourself
before you kick the bucket.
Here is the way to do it. Tell as many candidates as possible the
number of voters in your village that you have influence and
control over. Do not forget the domestic pigs and dogs with names.
Add some wild animals and even some plants for good measure.
There now. Your passage home is arranged; you can begin your
journey to the other side.
Sounds like fun but believe you me; the pressures upon the poor
candidate are enormous.
From coffins to church buildings, now is open season for all and
sundry. Whosoever had a need is using the opportunity presented by
the election climate to ask for it. And the chances are that they
are more likely to get a positive response because the ordinary
person today controls the almighty V-O-T-E.
From the brazen request to the reluctant giving, there has
developed an ugly culture in PNG electoral politics over the years
that is difficult to cauterise.
There has developed certain sub-cultures that are equally ugly. In
the voter has developed a competition to attract the most from a
candidate for consumption purposes only. Yes, he wants his
Government services, but he also wants cash and whatever he can
get for himself here and now.
In the candidate has developed a desire to himself add the names
of so many more voters, human or not, on the common roll. In the
candidate also has developed festering anger, which eventually
spills over into violence if he finds he does not get his
anticipated votes from areas he has spent resources in.
Should he go on to win elections, the inclination is to get back
what he has spent and that spawns corruptive manipulation of
systems and processes.
This entire tradition in elections is corruptive. Unless it can be
arrested at this level on the social ladder, we can debate the
pros and cons of corruption until Armageddon and we would never be
able to get rid of it.
Sitting MPs, candidates, State agencies responsible for fighting
corruption and even concerned civic societies have a duty to turn
the tide.
It can be done. The message is to discourage handouts and to
refuse requests for such. Yes, it is easier said then done but it
has got to be done.
Politics is about law and policy making. Politicians must immerse
themselves in these two areas and let their people know that this
is what their duty statement is.
The job of implementing those laws and translating the policies
into programmes and projects and delivering them to the people is
the sole domain of the civil service.
That is why there are only 109 seats in the legislature —
Parliament — to make laws and only 28 ministries — the Executive
Government — to make policies but there are over 70,000 public
servants to carry out the work.
It is only because over time there has been a blurring of these
responsibilities that has given rise to all the expectations from
the electorates and the mounting pressures upon candidates.
The other side of this is that the public service machinery has
been inept in its task, leading to politicians feeling the need to
take the responsibility themselves.
This does not need earth-shaking policy decisions or even laws. It
merely is about ensuring that we all follow the very basic tenants
of the system of government that PNG has adopted, by respecting
the laws and the systems and processes that are in place and by
following them to the letter.
It really is as simple as that.
So if you plan on dying, do it at your own cost.
 
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