IN the past week, we have witnessed the tabling of a petition in Parliament protesting against violence inflicted upon women.
And we have witnessed the total lack of a meaningful response from the newly elected Government.
That can hardly be surprising – the parties that have formed the loose coalition that now leads Papua New Guinea nominated less than a dozen women to contest 80-plus seats in Parliament.
Why would such people have any interest in the plight of nearly half our population?
The issue of violence against women in PNG will not evaporate because any government chooses to turn its back on the matter.
This government and any other that sits in power in Parliament can rest assured that responsible journalists will continue to fight the battle against violence for as long as it takes to win the victory.
That issue would be bad enough.
But there are others.
For example, last week we heard from the Coalition Against Gun Violence in PNG demanding that the new Somare Government take quick action to implement the recommendations of the Guns Control Committee.
It’s about time the government tells the people that elected it, precisely why recommendations made in 2005, two years ago, have produced no noticeable response from Parliament.
The gun committee toured PNG to gauge the reactions of our people and was the brainchild of the former minister for internal security Bire Kimisopa.
The subsequent recommendations to Parliament were intended to devise a set of policies relating to gun ownership and use, based upon the opinions of the people expressed at a comprehensive series of meetings.
The work of the committee was fully reported by the media and gained widespread and often outspoken public support.
There’s one obvious question to ask the present Government – why the delay in acting?
And why the apathy displayed in Parliament last week towards the outcry of the people against domestic and associated violence?
What are the Government’s intentions towards these two crucial issues?
As for the gun saga, any government that has failed to act on this issue should be deeply ashamed that one Papua New Guinean who stood helpless as her mother was gunned down and murdered in front of her will represent us all at a United Nations first meeting in New York this month.
The meeting will bring together a worldwide representation of gun violence survivors.
It’s of no little significance that this sole PNG representative is a woman, for it is her gender in our country that has suffered most terribly at the hands of gun-toting criminals.
To the best of our knowledge, support for this one Papua New Guinean has come from the previously mentioned Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Oxfam PNG, Control Arms Partners and the International Network on Small Arms.
Our female delegate to the UNF meeting in New York said last week that the only form of counselling after her nightmare experience came from her local church.
These are some of the major issues the present Government must recognise as top priority.
In summary: Deal with the recommendations of the Guns Control Committee – they were not the pipe dreams of some bunch of distanced idealists but the pleas of the people of this nation.
Two years is too long to wait for action by our elected representatives in response to the will of the people.
Second, recognise that the petition to Parliament was not a low-key bleat from some group of do-gooders.
It was a demand by the community for action to stop our women being raped, shot and stabbed to death, assaulted and vilified and treated like pack animals by certain sections of the PNG community.
And finally – last week we read a letter from an alleged “academic” at the University of Goroka saying in essence that the Moti affair is of no interest to the average Papua New Guinean and should be forgotten about by all in the name of addressing other issues.
We believe that the Moti fracas falls into the same category of unfinished government business and far from being ignored, should be at the forefront of the national agenda.
Deal publicly with the publicly-funded findings of the Moti inquiry.