by BRIAN GOMEZ
A reflection on Parliament and corruption

One of Papua New Guinea’s notable political scientists, Dr Alphonse Gelu, was quoted in The National yesterday as urging the implementation of a law to ensure that Members of Parliament attend all Parliamentary sittings.
This is a reflection of the sad state of affairs in the nation’s premier lawmaking body.
For the third time since Parliament began its final sessions in the past week, prior to the coming elections, this august body has been adjourned because of a lack of a quorum.
After the bells rang to summon everyone, there were only 28 MPs in the House.
Dr Gelu, from the National Research Institute, said non-attendance of MPs for Parliamentary sittings was “non-acceptable”.
Part of the reason for PNG’s dismal economic performance in the three decades since independence is the attitude, application and lack of a sense of national duty among the people’’ representatives.
While Dr Gelu is undoubtedly right about the duty of MPs to attend Parliamentary meetings, Bottom Line would suggest this could be a sign that many people filling the 109 Parliamentary seats should really not be there.
But this raises a dilemma because they have a right to these important political positions since their electorate have voted them in.
It would be too much to expect, given the history of PNG’s unicameral chamber, that there will be much change after the coming national election, raising many questions about what many political commentators see as the persevering nature of PNG’s democracy.
It would seem that many MPs over the years have been voted into Parliament not because of their strengths and abilities, but because they are able to garner enough tribal and clan support to win their elections.
From this perspective, it would be interesting to see if the overall quality of MPs would improve because of the use for the first time of limited preferential voting so that candidates win office on the basis of at least 50% of all remaining votes being counted.
Over the years less and less people have come to office even with simple majorities and an increasing proportion have only 10% or more of eligible votes.
It seems that major changes in political attitudes are needed among the public, which now generally hang on to a view that MPs can only play a valuable role if they become cabinet ministers.
This is linked to expectations that government ministers will be able to ensure a greater flow of government resources into their respective constituencies.
But this really should not be the case because every MP has an important and abiding role, whether they occupy the government front benches, the back benches or fall within the ranks of the opposition.
In fact, every MP that is not in the executive arm of government has a critical role to play in keeping the government of the day honest, transparent and answerable to the people.
This is why the position of leader of the Opposition is always a highly respected in any Westminster-style Parliament.
It is a mockery of the system when Parliamentary quorums are frequently not met when much important legislation needs to be debated and passed and when affairs of the nation have to be continually addressed.
Turning aside from this issue, Bottom Line would like to make some observations on an unrelated subject.
Regular readers of this column will be aware that corruption has rarely been discussed and Bottom Line would like to state some reasons for this and to explain possibly why organisations such as Transparency International and the Ombudsman Commission are making little headway.
I am not going at this stage to discuss corruption per se but to suggest that the real root of related problems encountered in PNG lies in the fact that, much of the time, what has to be dealt with is more in line with the plain and simple issue of theft or stealing.
Sure corruption exists at almost every level of society, but Bottom Line sees outright theft as a bigger problem.
This category would include instances of MPs who manipulate the system to ensure that so-called ‘slush funds’ go into their private bank accounts, prior to their use for whatever purpose.
Because of an attitudinal problem, almost every company has to deal with this problem from time to time and this does not always involve cash.
And in government, as the recent inquiries into the Department of Finance show, there have been many people who have managed to put in false claims against the government to gain huge payouts, often by sharing part of the loot with members of the hierarchy.
The latter act certainly involves corruption but really what is involved is akin to daylight robbery by white collar criminals.
In this sense, what is happening in PNG is somewhat different to the bribery-related corruption issues in most other countries.