Don’t mess with COI, a safety valve

SCANDALS in Government generally are about bad governance and this is not unique in PNG. Scandals happen all over the world.
The difference is that some countries are better at arresting scandals than others and those countries which succeed, are controlled by regimes who believe in the rule of law for everyone.
They support and allow the independence of the law agencies to perform their roles without fear and favour.
They ultimately believe that if you exercise strong administration and governance, you can improve meaningful and participative development by all stakeholders in the country and internationally.
Looking within Papua New Guinea before independence, the first commission of inquiry (COI) took place in 1966. Since then, we have had about 30 COIs. The success rate of all those COIs requires an extensive analysis.
To judge and speak off the cuff, any of us who is concerned about good governance and fighting corruption in PNG would conclude that as a country, we deserve better outcome because so far, PNG has gained and learnt nothing about good governance.
Calling of COI by the PM is a safety valve for crisis control and confidence building between policy makers and others.
COI is a temporary government investigation which must receive huge resources allocation to start and finish its business in time. What many people do not know in PNG is that whilst periodical government scandals are investigated by COI, we also have in PNG a full time COI.
From the legal perspective, I believe that the Ombudsman Commission of PNG is a permanent COI or a rolling COI which makes inquiry on wrong conduct and misconduct of leaders and government agents 365 days a year. The conduct investigated by the OC is also scandalous and corruptive in nature.
Political manipulation, bare resource support and some very peculiar pulls and pushes are now affecting some of the recent COIs and sad to say, I suspect the same is happening at the offices of the Ombudsman – an issue that I would like the appropriate body to look into.
If PNG, through its executive government and the Parliament controls and remove the independence and the effectiveness of the temporary COI and permanent COI, you meddle with the safety valve of the people’s lawful expression as required by the Constitution. Let this be a warning to those in authority.

Peter Masi
Former Ombudsman