The time has come for crazy stories

THE time has come to talk the mountains to crumble to valleys and urge the sea to pour into mountain passes complete with ocean liners and for bridges to be built connecting distant islands and for skyscrapers to rise majestically to beat Dubai’s Burj Kalifa.
Election time is here and every candidate is spinning a yarn to rival the best from Antoine Gallard’s Arabian Nights.
And like wide eyed children who marvel at those myths that come to magical life with the aid of Disney studios, grown Papua New Guineans will listen raptly to every word that falls from the lips of some aspiring candidate at every rally and during house calls at night.
It is the season for promises.
It is a season of outlandish claims and irrational behaviour and much celebration and feasting and mischief making.
There is something there in PNG during election time that draws people irresistibly towards the candidate.
Some madness seems to seize hold of even the sanest individual and for a few glorious weeks they are high on some unknown drug and join thousand others chanting and marching, zombie-like, to the polls to elect individuals who they will criticise and come to hate just months after they have put them in office in that manner.
We have the classic tale of the Engan candidate who in a past election told his audience he wanted to bring Her Majesty’s ship Queen Elizabeth II, into some valley in Enga if he got elected.
When it was pointed out to him that the 70,000 tonnes cruise ship might require an ocean to sail into Enga, the candidate quickly quipped: “And I will bring the ocean to Enga too.”
Poor candidate never did make it to Parliament but he has given us a timeless classic to carry forward.
There is that other one of East Sepik origin who wanted to build a bridge to connect Wewak to Kairuru Island so many kilometres distant off the coast.
He, impossibly, got the mandate from this very urban and quite educated electorate to represent Wewak Open but lasted only one term, perhaps because the Wewak-Kairuru Narrows Bridge never entered any conversation after his election.
Another out of Jiwaka photo-montaged his mugshot onto that of an astronaut doing a spacewalk and told the people of Jimi that their son was the first Papua New Guinean to do a spacewalk and that, that feat ought to garner their support and land him in Parliament.
The people threw their votes into outer space and he landed with a hard thud on reality.
Raising it like we do here, it seems fun, even a part of some game but the reality is far more sickening.
Worse, it affects our very lives.
The lies are obvious but the tragedy is that the liars get a following.
And that bespeaks a feature of PNG politics that returns many less than credible people to the National Parliament time and time again.
These less than credible people, now Members of Parliament, participate in decision making as law makers, policy makers, as ministers of state, participate at negotiations with multinationals on resources projects and periodically represent PNG abroad.
The end product is bad laws, bad policies, bad decisions, loss of face and reputation that in the end affects all Papua New Guineans negatively.
And who is to blame?
The blame lands on each voter, every single one of them.
Do not complain if you get a bad politician. You deserve what you get.
So do not be deceived this time around.
Vote wisely.
One vote counts.
You can make a difference.