Time for fair, safe elections

AITAPE-Lumi MP and National Alliance party leader Patrick Pruaitch’s comments on the way the recent Moresby North West by-election was conducted is reawakening some of our worst fears about next year’s national general election.
Our leaders’ power hungry experience is similar to the new Zimbabwe in 1981, which fell to shambles quickly.
The Rhodesian system, which Robert Mugabe and his team took over, did not materialise the abundant wealth and resources, including the precedential direction the white government laid for them.
Their leaders did not lack the know-how, but they were ignorant of their responsibilities and the very purpose of being leaders.
Their goal was only the retention of power to use greedily.
Like us, every time there was a hiccup in any form of progress, finger-pointing relinquished the people’s many questions.
True leaders don’t point away all the time.
Zimbabwe was leaderless even when there was a leader who happened to be one of the richest leaders in the world at the time.
There wasn’t any election under Mugabe that wasn’t done without rigging and all forms of corruption just so that he stays in power.
In the end, there was no Zimbabwe left for him to lead.
Everyone was against him except his sidekicks.
We have seen evil during elections.
We are feeling insecure now with such corrupt election practices that undermine the accepted election practices.
The people have a natural right to have a leader who is mandated by them via an untampered process.
That natural right cannot be bought nor seized from them by egoists who deviate voters and security personnel’s conscience in the election process by use of money and force.
Just look at the number of the votes of no confidence motions since Independence.
It is only fair to say that too many of them equals a coup.
The election laws are designed by man to work only when ethical human beings use it purposely and the line it threads on to work is very thin.
That is why it strikes back when it is manipulated by insane human beings.
If it doesn’t bring the right results then the people will respond insanely.
Like the saying goes: “When the applied laws fail to help, use common sense to help you survive”.
The most common sense available for the marginalised to utilise in this sort of situation is a nonsensical response when they are not served or having benefited from leadership.
An example is the Tommy Baker gang.
The age range of the gang members, from 17 to 46 years, speaks of rebellion.
Doesn’t that tell a story?
It shows that the Government is fighting the community at large, a sign of leadership failure.
It is a mini war against establishment.
That is why Baker keeps evading the police.
Most public places in the country are simply unsafe while the law and order situation is fast depleting, which are signs of breakdown in leadership at all levels in the making.
Jungle justice and jungle common sense is used to resolve most settlement issues, as law and order enforcers restrict their commitment to only those who pay to remedy their cash burdens.
The law and order situation in the country is at the brink of collapse.
Former United States president John F Kennedy was once asked what would be his advice to a prep kid who would one day wear his shoes.
He responded: “Education is only one part of it, yet many great leaders before me were not as educated as I, but the burden of the call to respond meaningfully to the people is the core ingredient of a true leader”.
Maybe every new leader ought to read his inaugural speech and maybe Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address carefully, reciting both in heart, before entering the parliament.
I believe some sense will creep out from those intending leaders who are hiring evil to press forward their evil intents in parliament after 2022, to give us a giant leap backwards.

Pastor Samson Supaka,
Lutheran Church,
Wewak