What Hela, H’lands need is leadership

MOST members of the public have been decrying for years the amassing of firearms in the Highlands region.
This was seen as a dangerous trend towards adopting guns as part of personal wealth and misguided power in addition to the number of wives, pigs, properties and other assets.
And besides the likelihood of these guns being used for enforcing the “bushman’s law” and “kangaroo courts”, it was dreaded that it may also create a culture of warlords to stamp authority or solve tribal conflicts.
These grave concerns have resulted in the costly call-out of security forces to quell tribal warfare in Hela province.  The unfolding of the covert motives behind the guns lobby and the ugly scenario is now clearly evident as per public commentators like Jeffsatu Lynpin Lokait (The National, Jan 25).
Against the back drop of the front page picture of young boys parading the surrendered guns which I thought was rather in bad taste, the Police  Commissioner was spot-on when he said in the same newspaper edition (The National, Jan 30) that people were not being genuine with the guns surrender as only defective guns were being surrendered.
This is a very sad reflection on the national leadership for failing to stand beside the local leaders when most needed.
The reluctance to surrender the guns clearly affirmed that people were not likely to easily give up their newly found positions of power.
Ironically, the predicament that the province, and region in general, now finds itself in had been in the making for years but the leadership to tackle it head on there and then had been weak, lacking or only attempted using remote control from Port Moresby.
We hope that the government has a ‘Plan B’ to fully recover the illegal guns and restore law and order if this Call Out fails to achieve its mandated objectives.

BT Laskona, Via email