Acting PM is minister for all ministers

A commentary By FRANK SENGE KOLMA
THE National Gazette G174, dated July 4, announces that Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal has a ministerial portfolio –  that as minister for immigration.
The announcement came too late because the world had been informed by Gazette G163 of June 22 that immigration was part of the portfolio Abal had given to Ano Pala in a cabinet reshuffle.
The world has also been told by lawyer and former acting judge Nemo Yalo, through the Post-Courier newspaper on the same day (July 4), that, in not allocating himself a ministerial portfolio, Abal has run afoul of section 3[3(b)] of the Prime Minister and National Executive Council Act 2002 and done himself out of a job.
This section states: “The deputy prime minister ceases to hold office if he ceases to be a minister”. This is what seems to have scared the wits out of the government. 
It is truly pathetic – both the narrow reading of this law by a former acting judge of the National and Supreme Court and the panic buttons pushed – that such reading seems to have pressed in government. The narrow reading of the law might even be deliberate and, if that is so, it is mischievous, even sinister.
I need no LLB after my name to work out that Abal, from the time he made the cabinet reshuffle to this moment, has never ceased to be a minister. One can only cease to be a minister when one is decommissioned as minister.
Decommissioning is a deliberate action of the prime minister with its own due processes. Abal never initiated the decommissioning process for himself.
There have been many ministers without portfolios before now and Abal merely joined their ranks when he chose not to give himself a ministerial post. 
He would have found himself in boiling lava if the relevant law had stated: “The deputy prime minister ceases to hold office if he is without a ministerial portfolio.”  Huge difference.
Now he has given himself one and that is well within his rights as acting prime minister, but there is a definite damage-control feel about it.
Further, at the time he announced the cabinet reshuffle, Abal was acting prime minister.
The Constitution, at section 143, and its enabling Prime Minister and NEC Act section 4 both state that, in the event the prime minister is absent from the country and is unable to readily perform the duties of office, the deputy prime minister is acting prime minister. This part of the law did not apply in Abal’s case as he had already been appointed acting prime minister by Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare shortly before the latter started serving his suspension in April.
As acting prime minister, Abal carries all the powers, duties and responsibilities of the prime minister, principal among them being the man in charge of the entire cabinet of ministers (prime minister).
That is to say that all ministries are his responsibility. Section 148 of the Constitution stipulates that “all departments, sections, branches and functions of government must be the political responsibility of a minister and the prime minister is politically responsible for any of them …”.
He merely delegates or distributes the responsibilities to those he alone can choose simply because it is impossible to do all the jobs himself. In essence, he is minister for all the ministries.
Why Abal’s myriad of advisers chose to remain silent and have their chief executive suffer public embarrassment is, as we say in PNG, “samting bilong ol”. If they have offered sound advice and Abal has not taken it, that, too, is “samting bilong em”.
The silence with which this matter has been met by the government screams an important message: “The government is contemptuous of the people. It does not care to explain what is going on.” That is sad.
As for Yalo, he will have his day in court. He has a case pending and has promised the public he wishes to add this particular interesting interpretation of his to the matter on foot.
When that day arrives, and when all arguments have been presented before the court, those points of law which he holds out in the media as immovable facts may not seem so at all.
We shall see. The law, as he very well knows, is a curious animal. It is never absolute.
It is interpreted in many ways but the relentless passion, with which he seems to be pursuing this matter outside of court, is breathtaking and egotistic.