K600million plan to buy East Sepik votes: O’Neill

THE Opposition has described the cabinet’s approval of K600 million for five projects in East Sepik province as nothing more than election ploy to shore up political support for Sir Michael Somare and his National Alliance party (NA).
Opposition leader Peter O’Neill said this K600 million gift package was a desperate attempt by the ruling NA party in luring the people of East Sepik into believing that the Government was doing something for them when, in fact, it had failed to deliver any tangible projects during the last five years.
“The truth is, Sir Michael has forgotten East Sepik completely for the last 40 years,” Mr O’Neill stressed
“The people of the two Sepik provinces must not be fooled by this election gimmick.
“This is the only Government that has had five years in office.
“If this gift was genuine, it should have been offered at the start of the term of the Somare Government five years ago and this Government should have overseen the implementation of these projects.
“As it is, there is no guarantee that the Sepik people will see these gifts become reality because it comes on the eve of election.”
Mr O’Neill said the Somare Government came in and introduced the mini-budget in 2002 because the previous Morauta government had a blown out expenditure as a result of unbudgeted spending during election, “and now we have the Somare Government doing exactly the same thing”.
“We can safely predict a huge budget deficit in 2008 as a result of this,” he said.
Mr O’Neil said the people of East Sepik deserve well-planned impact projects and development just like all other provinces’ projects that are going to improve their livelihood, improve the education and health sector as well as overall infrastructure facilities.
He said all other 18 provinces also deserve equal allocations of K600 million for impact project and questioned why they had not been considered.
“This whole thing does not look good at all, it is one-sided … the rational is totally wrong and it sets bad precedent for future governments and prime ministers.”

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