The twisted concept of leadership

The Wabag Primary School where the Lagaip supplementary election counting has been conducted yesterday closed its doors to further business with the Electoral Commission and counting.
The school had seen enough disruptions and enough violence.
Member for Wabag Dr Tom Lino underlined the school’s decision thus: “So far we have had about five deaths and its quite ironic when election processes are supposed to bring about leaders who care for lives and properties of their constituents, not those who encourage the loss of the same.”
What is Lino saying?
He has saying that the candidates are instigating the killing, the violence and the destruction.
Lino’s next statement puts the matter beyond doubt.
“Let me appeal,” Lino says, “to all the candidates of the Lagaip electorate and their people to respect and support the electoral processes. As leader for Wabag Open Electorate and representing their voices, we are already sick and tired of being the epicentre for election related upheaval and violence in Enga.
This is an unnecessary evil the residents of Wabag have to endure every election.”
Dr Lino is touching at the heart of all election related violence in this country.
He is touching at the cornerstone of leadership and what it means and most importantly what it has done for Papua New Guinea following 48 years of Independence.
Where PNG is today is where the leadership has brought us.
If it is developing in leaps and bounds, credit must go to the leadership.
If its growth is terribly stunted blame must first go to its leadership.
At the electorate level where the choice of the next leader is made, the people are in absolutely no condition to make a fair and proper choice.
They are poorly equipped.
They do not have the education nor the experience.
They must make poor choices and they do so repeatedly across the years.
To such a population you want to place the choice of voting the Prime Minister.
That plan announced earlier this year is twisted in its entirety.
The concept of leadership today is skewed and lopsided.
We remain back in the days when leadership meant choosing the ablest warrior who will lead the tribe into battle and defeat enemy and win the land and the goods of the weaker foe.
Such a view too was held by the Romans and the Greeks and the Egyptians, the Persians and the Israelites of old.
That view belongs to a past age, a time long gone now, decrepit and collapsed with the marbles and concrete of the colosseums of ancient Greece and Rome.
Times have changed.
Education and science have changed the human condition, beginning with his mental and psychological make-up.
Yes, the violence is in there, and will always be there, just below the surface and rushes up every so often, but it is suppressed by education, by common sense and by notions of peace and justice and liberty and equality.
It is the leader who must evoke and inculcate in his or her followers these notions in order to build, rather than tear down, to grow and mold rather than destroy and plunder.
Our people live closer to the land.
They work hard and do manual labour in order to eke a living out of the soil.
They understand violence and hardship.
Death is a frequent visitor and it is often the case that the next door neighbour is the one whose hand invites death.
In such an environment, leadership must take far greater significance.
The screening process for candidates selection must be tougher and the qualification barometers must be stringent and exacting.
The candidate that emerges to take up leadership responsibilities must be able to resist first his people’s and his own desire to advance personal and tribal interests.
He must be able to resist the temptation to take in favour of contribution to the greater national good.
Unless we can make that chance the violence will continue at every election.
And the wretched head of the mob will continue to come into Parliament, a thug in a suit.
How can we possibly prosper in a situation such as this?