Political stability key to development

 By JAMES MARAPE
TIME is not a luxury but precious asset. Time lost will never be retrieved.
Since the vote of no confidence stunt was deployed by the Opposition, the majority of public servants have not put their full commitment to work. Investors are hesitant to make decisions for Papua New Guinea as a business destination.
One only has to ask our former prime ministers on how they lost time and energy in managing politics and not the country.
I remember clearly the first speech by former prime minister and now Governor for Western Highlands Paias Wingti early in this parliament. He spoke on the need for political stability as a key impetus for growth because in his days as prime minister he had to watch over his shoulders in case someone stabbed him.
Wingti, like founding prime minister Sir Michael Somare, lost office in a successful vote of no confidence.
No wonder these former prime ministers could not deliver much development during their terms because the average life of a government prior to 2002 was 18 months.
With this retrospective hindsight, what serious work can a government do in 18 months, or let alone this remaining 11 months of this parliament.
When politics is hot in the air, public servants do not get to work, there is no sense of direction or if governments do get changed then the “reinvention of wheel” takes place in development policy outlook as well as public service structure.
This instability engenders weak performance and lacklustre delivery of goods and services.
Political leadership can fail or strengthen our country.
One has to only look at economies around our global region.
Those countries and economies that have advanced in the last 40 years like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia have done so on the back of strong political and public service structure.
PNG in the last 40 years has a higher turnover of political heads and public service heads than countries in the region.
Perhaps, in times like this we must ask: How better will our country be, if a new regime comes into power in an unstable atmosphere.
Being in Alotau with our elected leaders, I see a new trend in leadership. In the Government camp there is one obvious leader and that is our present Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.
A new generation of leaders in this Government realise the vanity of politics and have remained in unison to the course we set in July 2012. We took this opportunity to revisit our dreams in the Alotau Accord and our medium term development strategy and we are appraising what we have achieved and our plans for the nation going forward.
One of the key outcomes of the Alotau Accord is the continual roll out of DSIP and PSIP, among others. So far in budgets 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 we have stuck to our commitments.
One only has to see how equal the O’Neill government has been to date on DSIP and PSIP to all 89 districts and 22 provinces, including the districts of opposition MPs who claim we have been unfair to them.
We have been fair on DSIP and PSIP, hence, I ask this question why this vote of no confidence?
Maybe the no confidence vote is to satisfy someone’s ego and lust to be prime minister.
No wonder when you look at current Opposition you have more than eight prime ministerial aspirants and a host of former prime ministers.
To them I say, the national election is less than 12 months away, maybe your prayers to be prime minister will be answered then.
In the meantime, your ambitions have yet again punctuated this nation in its quest to continue development.
James Marape is a second term MP and presently Minister for Finance and Leader of Government Business. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (1994) and Master of Business Administration (2013) from the University of Papua New Guinea