Don’t waste money on a declaration

I JOIN fellow readers who have expressed their opposition to the current exercise by the Government to have millions of kina wasted on a review of the need to declare Papua New Guinea a Christian country in our Constitution.
Some readers have put forward valid reasons as to why this money would be better spent on the many areas of urgent need – improving the quality of health and education, elimination of violence and conflicts, wealth distribution and improving our law and order situation. They have also highlighted the dangerous implications and pointlessness of amending our Constitution.
For those who haven’t read it, I encourage your to read Dr Robin Oge’s article “Against amending the Constitution to make PNG a Christian country” for a well-articulated case against the exercise of seeking to make this country a Christian one.
The question of why the Government, under Prime Minister James Marape, felt the need to carry out this exercise needs to be asked.
It could be argued that this exercise is a K2 million demonstration of Marape’s ego to fulfil his increasingly muffled call to make PNG the “richest black Christian nation”, knowing that his Government has been unable to deliver on his hollow mantra in any other tangible way.
If he feels the need to declare PNG a Christian country in the Constitution, should we also look at spending K2 million to determine if we need to state that PNG is a “black nation” in our Constitution?
Maybe we need to spend money looking to declare “being the richest” as one of our Constitution’s national goals and directive principles?
But that might be in contradiction to our Christian principles because the Bible teaches us that the “love of money is the root of all evil”.
PNG’s real richness comes from our cultural and environmental diversity.
Our Constitution firmly identifies our cultural and environmental diversity as the source of our richness.
Our Constitution and its preamble is a well-conceived and thought-out body of work that was developed by those that fully understood the importance and implications of its content.
It does not need to be amended on the whim of a Government and prime minister that has failed to deliver real change.
When the term of this prime minister and Government comes to an end, I hope for our country’s sake that they have something more tangible to point to for the fruits of their labour and more importantly, the use of our public’s funds than an unfulfilled misguided mantra and ill-conceived amendment to our Constitution.

Concerned For The Future