Sir Michael was a natural leader

AUSTRALIAN journalist Sean Dorney has described the Late Sir Michael Somare as a natural leader who resolutely believed in consensus and compromise.
“In a country like PNG where the people speak 860 distinctly different languages his style of leadership, especially in the early years, was exactly what was required,” Dorney said.
“Putting together multi-party coalitions in PNG is no simple task.”
He described Sir Michael as a man who had a canoe load of charisma.
Dorney said Sir Michael achieved so much he could have been 104.
“The first time we ever spoke, I left a little ashamed,” he recalled.
“It was very early in my time in Papua New Guinea.
“I had arrived in PNG in 1974, the year before independence, as a young journalist working on secondment from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to the then newly created National Broadcasting Commission of PNG.
“Sir Michael was Chief Minister and the NBC news editor sent me along to a Somare news conference. At the time, there were five full-time Australian foreign correspondents in PNG and I was in awe of them as much as I was of Sir Michael.
“I recorded the news conference but did not say a word.”
Dorney said Sir Michael who had been a broadcast journalist himself at Radio East Sepik, smiled at me and said, “young man, what do you think news conferences are for?
“You can ask questions.
“Sir Michael first won a seat in the pre-independence House of Assembly of PNG in 1968.

“He stood for the Pangu Party – the Papua and New Guinea United Party.”
Pangu had been formed the year before by Sir Michael and other members of what they called the “bully beef club” at the Administrative College in Port Moresby.
He became Opposition Leader.
“The Australian minister responsible for Papua New Guinea at the time was Charles Edward Barnes who firmly believed that PNG was unprepared for independence and he predicted independence would not be achieved before the end of the 20th century.
“And he was in no mood to hurry things up,” Dorney said.
“Although Barnes held Australian ministerial responsibility for PNG for a crucial eight years, it is instructive that the authoritative Encyclopaedia of Papua and New Guinea, published in 1972, devoted six lines to Barnes – six lines in its three volumes covering 1,231 pages.
“Those six lines simply record that he was the country party member for MacPherson in Queensland, that he became minister in 1963 and that his portfolio’s name was changed to external territories in 1968.
“Perhaps he should be given credit for inadvertently advancing the independence cause because he became an object of ridicule amongst young, politically aware Papua New Guineans such as Sir Michael.
“My wife, Pauline, who retains her PNG citizenship distinctly remembers Sir Michael’s response when he was once asked if PNG got its independence too early.
“He said the country might not have been well prepared but he and those who supported him did it for their dignity and the dignity of their people.”
Dorney said one of the international issues Sir Michael had to deal with early on was how to handle PNG’s relationship with its giant next-door neighbour, Indonesia – especially since the indigenous people living in the western half of the main island of New Guinea are ethnically similar to his own people.
“The ‘Free West Papua cause’ has enormous sympathy in the rest of Melanesia and countries such as Vanuatu – without the complication of PNG’s 850km land border with Indonesia – can loudly espouse independence for West Papua,” he said.
“Which brings us back to Sir Michael deporting me.
“It was 1984, and an Indonesian military sweep against the military wing of the Free West Papua movement, the OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka), led to 10,000 refugees fleeing across the border into PNG’s West Sepik.
“I went to the border and reported on this which prompted the ABCs four corners programme to send a team up to do a story.
“I put the reporter, Alan Hogan, in touch with contacts of mine along the border who arranged for Hogan to get an interview with the OPM rebel commander, James Nyaro.
“When that went to air, PNG’s secretary of foreign affairs was furious.
“We were accused of either entering Indonesia illegally to obtain the interview or enticing an illegal immigrant to cross the border.
“Sir Michael was prime minister and I was ordered to leave.
“We had two children and Pauline had to accept being thrown out of her own country to keep the family together.
“I was allowed back in 1987 and then spent another 12 years as the ABCs PNG correspondent during which time Sir Michael awarded me an MBE.”
The Grand Chief served as prime minister on three separate occasions.
He became a major statesman in the Pacific and was hugely admired throughout the rest of the Pacific Islands.
“But of all his achievements, the one that impressed me the most was his gracious acceptance of defeat,” Dorney said.
“In 1980, five years after Sir Michael led PNG to independence, Sir Julius Chan, his former deputy prime minister, mounted a challenge and Sir Michael was defeated on the floor of Parliament in a vote of no confidence.
“There were those around Sir Michael at the time who were urging him to declare a state of emergency and to hold on to the top job.
“However, Sir Michael told them he would abide by the Constitution he had done so much to put in place and he accepted going into Opposition.”
Dorney said that had set the standard for PNG ever since.

Pentanu pays tribute to Grand Chief

BOUGAINVILLE House of Representative Speaker Simon Pentanu pays his tribute to late Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare.
Pentanau said it was Sir Michael who appointed him as the clerk to Parliament that set him off on his colourful bureaucratic career.
“I first heard of late Sir Michael when in Hutjena High School in Bougainville and later at Malabunga High School in East New Britain,” he said.
“So when filing my Grade 10 school leaver form at Malabunga High School in 1968, I applied to be an interpreter in the pre-independence House of Assembly just to meet Sir Michael.
“So I joined the House of Assembly on March 6, 1969, and I saw Sir Michael for the first time on the floor of the House on that same day that I arrived on a TAA F27 flight from Kieta to Port Moresby.
“The ensuing years would put me in professional contact with Sir Michael as Chief Minister, Prime Minister as well as Leader of Opposition as I progressed in my parliamentary service career in the service of the country’s national parliamentarians.
“My first impressions, seeing and interpreting for members on the floor, of the man who became Chief and our first Prime Minister and the father of the nation was this.
“Most of his questions to the official members who represented the colonial administration and in most of the debate in the House, Sir Michael dwelled mostly on national matters and interests than on interest of the province he represented.
“This was in contrast to the parochial, and quite rightly, of questions and discussions by most of the members in the House concerning their electorates.
“Sir Michael assumed the national mantra and dwelled in all-encompassing metaphors about a country he envisioned very early in his political bits and pieces and, of course, a country he would lead to independence and become its first Prime Minister.
“The Chief spoke, argued and questioned vehemently about the inevitability of independence.
“In full sight of members looking down from the interpreter’s booths in the House of Assembly I thought then that the man who represented my own province, Sir Paul Lapun (late ) was in the right company with a man who spoke his mind, who articulated more than anyone what he saw and wanted for Papua New Guinea.