TAKING BACK PNG REQUIRES CHANGE OF MINDSET AND VALUE SYSTEM

The National Weekender

By CHARLES BERIT
PNG has a short history as we reflect to our past, let us think of our future and do our best today to shape our country. We have heard this statement echoing from four corners of our country that PNG is at the cross road. The statement is correct but in what context do we mean? Is it corruption, jealousy, hatred, violence, crime, prostitution, homelessness, poverty, under development? Those are just consequential effects but what are the main causes?
When we say “Take Back PNG”, from whom are we referring to? Foreigners, corporations, debtors, politicians, bureaucrats, colonizers? The answer to “Take Back PNG” remain in ourselves as citizens. If we are emotionally attached to our tribe, religion or political leaning to the point that truth and justice become secondary considerations, our education is useless and our exposure is hopeless.
Why are we crying today to make PNG a richest nation while we are already a rich and blessed nation on earth in terms of our resources and diversity of our cultures? In Papua New Guinea we are not poor because we lack natural resources or because nature was cruel towards us. We are poor because we lack ~ ‘Attitude, Management and Leadership’. That is why we cannot follow and teach these principles of morality and ethics to our upcoming generation.
It is not so wise to pursue materialistic richness for a morally poor generation. We must first and foremost consider making Papua New Guinea an ethical state. We live in a time period of moral crisis, with erosion of values and a fragmentation of meaning prevalent throughout the fabric of the society.
The crisis impacts on us personally, as a nation and as a planet. The injuries we inflict on each other and on our environment can only be healed by sound moral and ethical commitment.
The only way for Papua New Guinea to become socio economically rich among the developed group of nations is to be an ethical nation. PNG is a value based society with an oral culture. These values were passed from one generation to the next through traditional institutions such as the men’s and women’s house where special initiation processes took place. These were the universities were everything about life was thought.
However, without properly understanding the implication, churches misinterpretation in teachings condemned most of our good traditional practices outright and discouraged the men’s house. When the learning institution were abandoned, the younger generation completely missed out on learning the set of skills and values to become productive members of the community.
Without values and principles in life, the younger generation turns to lawlessness in the streets and communities.

  •  The writer is a law student at the University of Papua New Guinea.