Academic: 2002-07 elections will go down in history

THE 2002 and 2007 elections and their respective governing periods will probably be recorded as the most consistent in Papua New Guinea’s political life, Professor Philip Siaguru says.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Natural Resources and Environment made the observation in the university’s newsletter as he reflected on the 2012 elections.
However, he says, the current numbers game between the main forces and the currents of the final eight months of the last parliament life, where O’Neill-Namah defied various Supreme Court decisions and controlled parliament numbers to remain in government, has left a deep scar within the influential National Alliance (NA) party.
However, he says with the political “marriage” swings, Sir Michael Somare’s NA seems to have depleted its political credit and will not have the numbers to muster sufficient force to cause the Supreme Court to be righted.
This year the signals are clear on the political wall, it appears to be a battle of the old guards against the new.
While the old guards believe in maintaining the compliance and respect for the law, the young generation pushes to adjust to the new and modern pressures and often forget that the “basic and simple things in life remain the foundation of steadfastness and prosperity”.
“As long as the nation is not held to ransom over individual political interest, I think the resilience of its citizens will see it through to 2017,” he says.