Speaker’s means justify the end

JUST when a motion was about to be moved for a vote of no-confidence against the government last month, parliamentary speaker Jeffrey Nape pulled the plug and adjourned the house.
By doing so, he had again ascended over the balance of power game.
Not surprisingly, his action drew a barrage of condemnations from the opposition.
Recently, the Ombudsman Commission warned that parliament had not sat for the minimum number of days as required under the standing orders and all MPs could be penalised.
However, the watchdog needs to allow the parliamentary committee responsible to deal with the matter.
By default or design it is clear that Nape played a pivotal role in the initial formation, and the sustenance of the government led by Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare.
Did the speaker’s raison d’ etre precluded a “meeting of the minds” in private with Sir Michael to sustain the balance of power?
Should a court ruling be made against Nape, it would only reinforce a motion of no-confidence against the prime minister.
To use a metaphor; the political-oil to the bureaucratic-machine may be serviced, but we do not know if the new oil will be crude or refined.     
Time is running out, and the stakes are high.
It is now strategy or tragedy on both sides in the quest for power.
The most important feature of the Integrity Law is its coercive nature to redefine “freedom” of the politicians towards greater freedom and liberation of the citizens through stability in the government.
However, the ousting of the Integrity Law now reverts the nation to the dreary yester-years of party-hopping, fence-sitting, briberies and trade-offs to the ticking clock in expensive camps.
The floodgates are open now for corruption to feed on the volatility in the balance of power game of half-term governments.
Where were the attorney-general and the Supreme Court who should have initially questioned the legality of national executive council’s decision 64 of 1999?
It is a shame for such a knee-jerk institutional redemption of roles in retrospect of its initial indifferences, if not lack of insight and foresight to give any preemptive advice that now entrap us all in such conflict of “legalism”.
Look at history and juxtapose the performance of all half-term or quarter-term governments.
No new governments after a vote of no-confidence has performed much better than its predecessors.
If Sir Michael was seen to be irresponsible, then the National Alliance (NA) members should have stripped him of the party leadership through a party resolution.
Australia’s Kevin Rudd was replaced by Julia Gillard through a party resolution.
The NA could have done likewise.
There is no need for a vote of no-confidence.
International relations have been good so far.
Commerce is booming.
The gross domestic product has improved and new development policies have been launched following from the medium-term development strategy.
The “old man” is just doing fine in managing the country.
Are we going to be a country of perpetual half-term governments and self-imposed lack of confidence and capacity?
The opposition has used three propaganda tactics to justify its existence.
One is timing, where the need for results either blanket or incremental had to be immediately produced or delayed.
The second tactic of propaganda is to lie or tell the truth, often with a little bit of both, but never clear cut on scandals or unpopular decisions.
The problem is to use which “fact” and which to omit to feed the public.
Normally, the truth entails factual account, whilst the lie consists of unsubstantiated generalisations.
The third tactic is the choice between “rational and irrational approach”.
In the rational approach, public statements through the media is constructed to appeal to the educated citizens. 
In the latter, public statements are constructed to appeal to the illiterate citizens’ emotions.
The underlying intent of section 145 of the constitution is for MPs to vote out a prime minister who is alleged to be suffering from incapacity such that he cannot make responsible decisions.
Such incapacity, it is claimed, would result in the country facing socio-economic disarray and institutional decay, amounting to national security threat.
Sir Michael has, however, not shown any obvious symptom of incapacity.
He has effectively sparred on his two feet against the opposition’s verbal onslaughts of allegations against him.
Perhaps, the important agenda of that controversial parliament session was the swearing-in of the governor-general for another term.
Other mundane matters were also dispensed with.
It was the speaker’s wisdom to adjourn the parliament.
His impersonal hand of benign negligence has become an opening salvo of a much larger retrospective of mistakes made.
However, it is worth looking at the speaker’s decision “in the context of deliberate judgment”, to be non-justiceable.
The speaker is calculative, unpredictable and smart.
He had both the government and opposition beckoning him to cast his blessing from the pearly gates.
Nape tamed the versatility of his powers and rode the political undercurrents to capitulate both sides of the house to his end.
His decision has maintained a government that has brought many good developments to the people, despite some unpopular decisions.
It is less convincing that a new prime minister and his ministers will serve the national interests, without siphoning public funds to fund the oncoming election. 
It is conceivable that a new government upon a successful vote of no-confidence holds would be capable of outperforming the successes of the Somare government within a cut-throat time frame of 12 months.
Where is the logic for the opposition to say that the government is not performing to legitimise a vote of no-confidence when history tends to punish such hubris? 
Jeffery Nape is a smart statesman, whose Machiavellian approach has done the country a lot of good.
Issues of corruption should be best left to the law enforcement agencies which seem to have become shrinking violets over the years.
As it is, the only weapon against Sir Michael by the opposition and interest groups are anecdotal remarks.
I say let Sir Michael serve his term out.
Let the people decide in the next general election.

*The writer is a lecturer in international relations and diplomatic studies at the University of Papua New Guinea. He can be reached at [email protected]