Moti-gate a good lesson for all
THE first State visit by new Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd is without doubt a roaring success.
That he singled out the two small neighbours with which Australia has had the thorniest relationship is a testament to the new brand of leadership we can expect from down under from here on.
As Mr Rudd himself says the visit ushers in a new era in which it is hoped much can be ironed out and much can be harnessed to the mutual benefit of both nations.
The visit will no doubt now settle the implications of the events of the evening of Oct 9 and the early hours of Oct 10, 2005, which have hovered nightmare-like over our Prime Minister Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare and the Government for many months now.
While the matter dissipates, the lessons learnt from them must never be forgotten and as much as possible, positives steps must be taken to prevent similar embarrassing episodes in future.
Principle among the lessons to be learnt are the calibre of staff chosen to work for our leaders.
The chief executive of the land must have the most loyal, the best trained and most experienced people drawn from the public sector or the civil society at his disposal.
There must be no question about their conduct.
There must no question about their loyalty.
There must be absolutely no question about their intellectual and operational capacity.
Even more than that they must know exactly what is expected of them.
They are there at the beck and call of the leader when and where he wants them.
Their conduct, whether private or public, falls under the same scrutiny as the prime minister himself because they are extensions of his office.
They become an intricate part of the delicate and sensitive Office of the Prime Minister.
This applies all the way down to the ministries and even heads of departments.
When improper conduct is insinuated or suggested, then the staff responsible must go quickly and quietly, and fade into obscurity, thereby protecting the good name of the prime minister, his office and his ministry.
This is how it is done everywhere else.
It is not a question of the staff member being right or wrong.
He or she cannot defend his/her name but only the good name of the “boss”.
That understanding should be established with all prime ministerial and indeed, all ministerial staff from day one.
In the case which is now mercifully at rest, there is the question of the former chief of staff, his direction to the former security adviser, and the defence and the police hierarchy’s part in all of this – all of whom have gone to a tribunal and a couple to court to give
an account of their role in the entire complex charade.
They were in a position to be constantly privy to the secret and sensitive information going to the Prime Minister and the National Executive Council.
They had access and contact with the Prime Minister always.
Because the staff and advisers to the prime minister carry out the commands of the prime minister, when they do get involved in something as dramatic as the Moti incident, even if it was of their own volition, the public can be forgiven for thinking automatically that the action was condoned and sanctioned by the prime minister.
The event is gone. Individuals who have been involved have had their day in court and before the inquiry.
Nothing will be forgotten and nothing can be reversed.
The best things that
can happen today is to learn from this and move on.
If there are any lessons to be learnt in Moti-gate, then principle among those lessons must be the calibre of staff and advisers the prime minister chooses to surround himself with at the office, at the NEC, his National Security Advisers and his legal team.
This includes all department heads who in their individual capacities are advisers to the prime minister through their ministers.
In Moti-gate, laws of PNG were obviously broken.
What was the legal advice going to the prime minister at that time, before or after the event?
Who was responsible for that legal advice?
Questions of a national security nature were raised when a PNG Defence Force aircraft crossed the borders of another country without permission with armed men on board and landed on a disused airfield.
The action was tantamount to armed aggression or even an invasion.
What was the security advice to the prime minister on that?
Diplomatic relations between two nations – Australia and Solomon Islands – were affected when the incident occurred.
What was the advice from our army of diplomats?
If there were such advice, were they heeded at all?
These are the questions of systems and process of governance that we constantly hear being preached about in the context of good governance and transparency.
This is the crux of the matter.
To avoid any repetition of something that is embarrassing the process of selecting the staff of government at any level must be done above board and not on the basis of political patronage or cronyism.
Any leader is only as good as the staff he surrounds himself with and those staff must understand first and foremost that they are there at the beck and call of their leader.
If any direction from the leader is wrong, they can do the decent thing and resign.
If they chose to carry out the task, then they must do so in the knowledge that they cannot separate themselves from the deed, regardless of who gave the order.
Columns