Hosting Apec will pay off

ABOUT three years and three months ago Papua New Guinea hosted the 2015 Pacific Games.
It was against no stiffer opposition than now but PNG went on to deliver the games successfully and found its rightful place in the pantheons of nations and our Kumuls held their head high among equals.
A strong sense of nationalism and pride swept across the land.
The feeling of pride brought back memories when the Kumul Forces returned home as heroes after their successful mission in the Coconut War in Vanuatu in 1980.
During the Pacific Games, as a nation we joined hands and sang our theme song Together We Can at the welcoming ceremony, the night was electrified with the feeling of nationalism.
Love for the country was in the air.
I could literally feel patriotism taking the best of me.
It was like an itch, deep, persistent and profound.
At that moment I felt I could live a thousand years. What a feeling it was – one country, one nation, one people.
The opposition is again doing its rounds and I must say they are good at it.
We have a very hard-working opposition.
Not smart though, for if they were smart, they wouldn’t be the opposition, would they?
The opposition works hard to keep the government in check.
They are doing a fine job ensuring accountability and sensitising issues of national significance.
The only hitch is that they should be doing these things more responsibly.
Hosting Apec is too big for Prime Minster Peter O’Neill and his government or Bryan Kramer and the faction from the opposition.
It requires undivided support from everyone and as responsible leaders the opposition and the government have to work in unison to successfully host this international event.
Make no mistake. We are Melanesians, we are cultured people. We give the best to our guests.
We don’t bring out in-house issues and the dirty laundry when we have guests in our house.
A developing country like Papua New Guinea stands to gain much by hosting hosted Apec successfully.
Philippines is a developing country like ours and successfully hosted Apec twice. It is looking at doing it again for a third one.
According to the World Bank, the Philippines economy is three times larger now than what it was when the country hosted Apec for the first time in 1996.
The report further states that Philippines has a very successful economic formula that has worked well over the past five to 10 years.
As host in 1996, the Philippines strongly called for Apec to help develop an action plan for free trade in the region.
Nineteen years after the implementation of that action plan, the Philippines offered to host Apec again hoping to spread the prosperity to micro entrepreneurs and poor farmers.
If that is not enough, I can give you Peru.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Peru is a developing country. Its income distribution was extremely skewed, with the top 10 per cent of the population controlling 35.4 per cent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 10 per cent controls just 1.6 per cent.
Peru hosted Apec not once, but twice.
The story of Peru’s success mirrors that of any other country that has hosted Appec.
Let’s not be bogged down by internal issues that can be sorted out at its given time and space.
We have bigger issues and pressing matters to attend to that requires our undivided support and national cohesion.

David Lepi, Madang