Maladina confident of MPs’ support for changes

ESA’ALA MP Moses Maladina is confident that amendments to the Organic Law on the duties and responsibilities of leadership will get the support of  parliamentarians.
Mr Maladina’s challenge to Transparency International PNG and other NGOs was to get off their “high horses” and find out about the harsh realities facing the majority of rural PNG.
Through Private Members Bill, he was successful last week in getting Parliament to vote 83-0 to amend the Constitution to remove some the commission’s powers.
The amendments to the Organic Law was the next stage and Mr Maladina is confident of securing 73 votes to remove the “blanket directives” issued from time to time by the OC.
He said the whole purpose of the legislative amendments was to make the OC more effective.
Mr Maladina said the OC had been using section 27 to issue blanket directives stopping all Government operations, including medicine from going down to the rural areas.
He said RESI funds, for example, where the OC issued blanket directives affected most rural schools.
“The OC’s action itself is in breach of human rights issues as we do not feel their actions in Port Moresby because we can afford to send our children to school.
“But in rural areas, they felt the pain of that directive,” Mr Maladina said.
He said the OC’s actions were based on the assumption that all the leaders were corrupt.
“If an MP commits a crime, why is the OC referring him to the Leadership Tribunal and not the police or other relevant authorities? Tribunals cannot sentence a leader to jail.”
Mr Maladina said the executives of TIPNG and NGOs were misleading the public.