By SIONI RUMA
The National Research Institute yesterday marked another milestone when it launched two new books – Consolidating Democracy, a strategy for peaceful development and The Bougainville Autonomy, implications for governance and decentralisations.
Speaking at the launching ceremony, former Kokopo MP Sir Rabbie Namaliu stressed that Papua New Guinea was among the 40 or so oldest uninterrupted democracies in the world.
Like many other countries, PNG now has a system of government in which arrangements are uniform in all parts of the country.
Sir Rabbie also challenged fellow dignitaries to encourage further informed debate in order to ensure that the system of government continues to accommodate and respond to changes in the wider society which the government exists to serve.
Also speaking at the launching, deputy director of the National Co-ordination Office for Bougainville, Ellison Towallom, said he was concerned about the capability of the bureaucracy of getting the fundamentals right.
He stressed that the public service do not respond to policy initiatives because public servants have the mindset tailored to their cooperate plans that bear little to the ministerial devices.
He said that the autonomy needed to be analysed, studied and processed in a systematic way and cannot be universally applied to the PNG masses. Anything less than this would be simply disastrous .
s was the case in the previous organic law on provincial governments as well as the current operation.