Lone mama in NW contest

MOTHER’S DAY

By ERIC PIET
MAMA karim yu (a mother bore you), is the catchy slogan inscribed on an election poster of the lone female candidate among 41 men in the 2021 Port Moresby North-West by-eection.
The seat was left vacant by a senior reformist statesman the late Sir Mekere Morauta, late last year.
And, this Sunday May 9, being Mothers’ Day, many will get to remember and celebrate the lives of their mothers (some still living while others have passed on) for myriad reasons, chief among them being that they (mothers/women) are the entry point of human life to this world, which was divinely designed by the Creator.
Yes, without that mama one would not be breathing today. And mama did not just leave you there when you were birthed, her responsibilities increased for you, you were reared, and when misfortune visited, mama did not just watch; she would take it head on. She was mama, you were her own, and hers was all joy when you did any good. Mother is everything!
So, if there was anything that women were proficient in, the skill of management would not bypass them, it was in their DNA. Families function well because mothers play a pivotal home management role, and many professional women have taken that approach to their organisations and were shinning.
Those that have reached the pinnacle of heading organisations knows how it feels to be a mother at home and a professional woman deploying essential management skills at a higher and broader spectrum propelling their organisations forward.
One such versatile woman is the 46-year-old Port Moresby North West kekeni (girl) Anna Kavana Bais, a former top civil servant, who served as the Secretary for Department for Community Development and Religion for eight years from 2013 -2021. In all she has served the department for 27 years.
She captained the ship and maneuvered it through some murky and turbulent waters bringing it from a Category C ranking to Category B, where it now sits. Long story short, she has resigned earlier this year and ventured into one of the craziest things (as per her own words) she could ever do – run for a political seat, which is hard for a woman in a so-called democratic PNG.
It is also crazy given the number of women who had won previous elections.
But the adamant ‘White Frangipani’ (a name or a form of representation of her that is popular among the hearing-impaired population due to a white colored frangipani that she always put on her head) knows the very reason why she is taking a gamble in the vacant city seat, having sacrificed her comfortable public service job.
It was all about people, people who are in the vulnerable and marginalised category (children, youth, elderly, disability, women), whose many excellent policies and programmes that the department has drafted under her leadership could not be sufficiently funded by the Government, letting them to suffer.
“I can’t sit back and watch, and allow the people to suffer more because no one in the big house (Parliament) is being critical about the issues in this social sector.
“I have to go in there to pull resources together for this important sector,” said the former secretary in her farewell note to the departmental staff earlier this year.
If the above quote is of any substance to anyone, the residents of Port Moresby North-West electorate can take to it that it was said by one of the top professional women whose almost three decades-long experience in dealing with those issues could not be matched. With thoughts for real transformation emanating from right within, the constituency would be the one to make that happen, not only for them but for the entire country, should Mama Anna enter the ‘big house’.
Running under the banner of People’s Party led by founder and Enga’s action governor Sir Peter Ipatas and current leader and Jiwaka Governor Dr William Tongap, it is all fitting for what Mama Anna aspires – the party stands for putting the people first. With such logical connections, how could she go wrong?
Parliament badly needs women to contribute to top-level decision making, to bring it back on the right course, after all the Kumul is struggling to fly on one wing so the right thing to do is to fix its other wing and then it will soar up high.
Remember the biblical Mama Esther, a woman had saved the Jewish race from Haman’s orchestrated extermination plot?
And could Mama Anna, a loner among men in this race be the one that has been kept for such a time as this?
Change hangs on you, Port Moresby North West.

• Eric Piet is a freelance writer.