| Business |
The emptying hourglass
WHILE Papua New Guinea’s leaders
fiddle over the telecommunications issue, the nation moves
closer to the very real prospect of burning.
Prof Nonggorr is one of a tiny handful of Papua New Guinean
leaders prepared to stand up and paint a realistic picture of
the state of the nation.
The ease with which corruption is hidden from the public is
matched only by an alarming leadership trend towards flouting
our laws.
We’re not referring solely to the corrupt acts themselves but
also to the devious attempts, often involving many senior public
servants, to blatantly deny that corrupt acts have taken place.
In the past, Papua New Guineans have displayed what might be
called the “slow burn syndrome” towards these criminal actions.
They were unwilling to believe that their leaders were indeed
capable of hoodwinking the nation and manipulating the laws to
suit their own agendas.
But little by little perceptions are changing.
It’s happened once too often.
Leaders who have held the highest esteem in the public eye are
now becoming the objects of suspicion and of cynicism, and the
decline of support for our system of government.
Much of the rhetoric about nation-building is nothing but an
attempt to convince the increasingly disaffected public that at
root, everything is fine with PNG.
Everything is not fine with PNG and it is time that our people
and our leaders established a working relationship that might,
just might help PNG to claw its way out of the abyss.
How can we trumpet our economic progress of the past five years
when our youths are poised on the very brink of rebellion?
When was the last time most of our politicians visited a
squatter settlement?
As for those who can honestly answer that they did so recently,
we wonder what images they took away with them and whether their
comfortable evening slumbers were disturbed by what they saw and
heard.
The situation in Mt Hagen will not simply evaporate because 108
Members of Parliament wish it would.
And the epic finger-pointing between police, provincial and
national and local government members, tribal leaders and the
faceless hordes of youths without hope may soon be engulfed by a
level of violence that will shake the nation.
The tragedy is that corruption is now recognised and its
perpetrators identified by the bulk of the population.
When corruption is blatantly concealed by those who have been
elected as leaders, people in whom the public has placed trust,
it is inevitable that they will turn against the system in which
this disease thrives.
Is that what we want for PNG?
Do we want to see a blood-soaked revolution spring up in our
urban centres, decimate our rural population, destroy our
economy and trash our future?
We suggest that it is not the system that should be overthrown,
but the number of parasites that are attached to that system.
Many leaders have been puzzled by the less than dramatic impact
of the HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns.
Could it be that for many youths, young people with nothing to
do but chase the latest hash supplier, get drunk on homebrew and
plot and thieve their way through another day, the prospect of
that day and all the days thereafter is unbearable?
Against that background, many youths no longer care whether they
become infected or not.
In a travesty of Russian roulette, they continue with
unprotected sex, compare their scores for the day and night –
and if the result is the death sentence of HIV/AIDS, well, the
ride was worth the fall.
We are breeding and raising an uncaring generation of youths
that could finally burst out of their apathy and destroy the
fragile PNG framework.
It is a classic Third World scenario, one that has held
virtually every nation in Africa to ransom over the past 50
years.
The rich get obscenely richer and more powerful and the voice of
the poor is no longer heard within the land.
Can any intelligent Papua New Guinean doubt the warning that has
come from Prof Nonggorr?
Corruption is eating away at the fabric of our country and it
will take a mammoth effort on behalf of us all to halt.
 
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