Turning point in fighting corruption

The National Weekender
GOVERNANCE

THE year 2024 is poised to take off with a big leap in the fight against the “social evil” of corruption in Papua New Guinea.
Fighting corruption must be everyone’s business because it affects everyone directly or indirectly in one way or another.
There are no official government records of the detrimental effects of corruption in PNG, but anecdotal evidence indicates corruption is rife and is ravaging like a bush fire across the country.
PNG’s reformist prime minister, the late Sir Mekere Morauta described corruption as an evil that was “systemic and systematic” and being evident, entrenched and widespread nationwide.
It is paradoxical that Papua New Guinea is so rich yet so poor.
PNG has one of the world’s most profitable liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, yet this resource-rich nation is plagued with power blackouts. It has severe shortage of foreign currency while the non-mining sector is in recession and the Government has severe cash-flow problems.
Here is a snap shot of PNG’s country profile of natural resources that have the potential of transformational progress and development. On world ranking, Papua New Guinea is/has:

  • 2nd largest exporter of round logs;
  • 3rd largest rainforest;
  • 5th largest vanilla producer;
  • 7th largest palm oil producer;
  • 7th largest copra producer;
  • 11th largest liquified natural gas (LNG) producer;
  • 12th biggest cocoa producer;
  • 18th largest coffee producer; and
  • 20th biggest gold supplier.

As well, PNG has:

  • A uniquely rich coral triangle;
  • Eight operational mines;
  • Marine resources with potential of being world tuna capital;
  • Tropical wilderness and ecological goldmines that contains 5 per cent of world’s diversity in less than 1 per cent of the world’s total land area; and.
  • Culturally diverse with over 800 languages, a gold mine of botany with the only place on Planet Earth where the Bird of Paradise and the largest butterfly are found.

With all the combined natural resources, citizens of PNG should be enjoying a relatively high standard of living with more than exceptional happy life. Regrettably, much of PNG’s wealth continues to be squandered and disappears via corruption resulting in poor, neglect or non-delivery of basic and most essential state services nationwide.
Some direct effects of planned corruption include:

  • Shortage of drugs and medicines for hospitals and health centres;
  • Public servants including diplomats not fully paid or on time;
  • Run down universities, colleges and technical training centres,
  • Schools receiving part or none of promised tuition fee-free (TFF) education funds and other grants;
  • Breakdown of the machinery and processes of government;
  • Dilapidated state of vital transport, telecommunication and other public infrastructure;
  • Destruction, tilting and politicisation of state institutions to facilitate corrupt activities;
  • Dictatorship-type rule with gross interference in ministerial powers and responsibilities;
  • Gross interference in State law enforcing agencies including police;
  • Public infrastructure projects awarded without public tendering or rigged to favoured contractors to channel money to individuals;
  • Appalling and incompetent management of public finances; and
  • A mountain of public debt (K49 billion-plus?).

There’s good new
The good news is that during 2024, some positive and genuine actions will be undertaken to help instill transparent, accountable and good governance in State institutions. One of PNG’s development partners, the United Nation’s Development Program (UNDP) in PNG has undertaken to help address corruption by improving governance through transparent and accountable measures.
Also, PNG’s new and powerful ant-corruption State agency, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), has announced the start of investigations into alleged corrupt acts during this (first) quarter of 2024.
The announcements by the UNDP and ICAC are welcoming news that demand full support from all sectors PNG-wide. The UNDP’s continuing efforts and the ICAC gearing into actual investigations into acts of alleged corrupt conduct gives the nation much hope.
In December 2023, the UNDP called for “a joint commitment to fight corruption in Papua New Guinea by increasing transparency and accountability” in 2024.

UN commitment
The UNDP Resident Representative in Port Moresby, Nicholas Booth undertook and committed that the UN agency is committed to working with PNG State and non-government organisations to address corruption.
“UNDP is determined to help PNG in turning its firm commitments on transparency and accountability into action”, Booth stated in a newspaper article when observing the International Anti-Corruption Day that was observed on Dec 9, 2023: “Together with our national partners and thanks to the generous support by the European Union, UNDP is working with the Government to progress its own anti-corruption-related priorities including implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy and related Anti-Corruption Plan of Action (2020-2025),” he explained.
“It includes drafting the Access to Information Act, and implementing key anti-corruption legislations such as the Whistleblowers Act 2020.”
Booth called for people PNG-wide to “making a joint commitment in fighting corruption by increasing transparency and accountability in PNG during 2024 – that will make a real difference to the lives of all Papua New Guineans now and in future generations too”.
This is a commendable move by UNDP to deal with a “social evil” that is fast eating away the very fabric of Papua New Guinean society having disastrous negative and detrimental effects of on all citizens in one way or another.
International agency efforts to provide good governance, transparency and accountability will help PNG State law enforcement agencies and all stakeholders in ways they can in this mammoth fight against corruption.
Meanwhile, ICAC has announced to start probing alleged corruption cases from January 2024.
Since July 2023, the ICAC had received 70 high profile public complaints following the appointment of three founding commissioners.
The ICAC Chief Commissioner Andrew Forbes said four top serious cases have been listed priority will be assessed before investigations begin in January 2024.
Forbes said the investigations would be without fearing politicians, bureaucrats and people who seek to manipulate public processes for their own gain.
“ICAC and police have already commenced working closely and more work will be done,” he said.
Public hearings or inquiry is new to PNG where more often ICAC is to hold inquiries into certain cases allowing and giving opportunity for public to see and hear.
Recommendations will be made depending on what sort of cases we can undertake and other cases can be taken by police.

PNG has the third largest rainforest and is the second largest exporter of round logs.

ICAC role
The ICAC is required by its own law (Inter-agency cooperation) to, among others:

  • Refer complaints to another agency at any time;
  • Consult, exchange information and cooperate with other agencies provided that it relates to the exercise of their functions;
  • Cooperate with other relevant agencies; and
  • Participate in and organise committees and taskforces, and enter memorandum of understandings (MOUs) for the exchange of information, referrals and general cooperation.

The two governments of Prime Minister James Marape have delivered legislative reforms to help combat corruption and they are: The Passage of the Organic Law on Independent Commission Against Corruption 2020 on November 12 2020 in a unanimously vote of 96 MPS voting for it; and on Feb18, 2020, with a bi-partisan support of 90 MPs Parliament unanimously enacted the Whistle-Blower Act 2020. This act provides procedures for employees to report suspected improprieties in the workplaces; protects employees who make protected disclosures from occupational detriments; and provides remedies to workers who suffer occupational detriment have made protected disclosures.
Under this law, workers can report any suspicious acts in their workplace that may be criminal in nature, failure to comply with legal obligations, miscarriage of justice, putting the health and safety of individual/s in danger, environmental damage, unfair treatment and deliberately hiding any of the mentioned conduct.
On April 21 2022, PNG’s Parliament unanimously passed the Unexplained Wealth Act 2022 to deal specifically with public officials (government officers) using their positions to unjustly enriched themselves. This law makes it illegal for public officials, occupying elective or non-elective offices, to use their positions to unjustly enrich themselves – to make dirty money, do illegal business and wrongly accumulate wealth at the expense of the suffering taxpaying public.
World-wide experiences show that despite the noble intentions by many governments to set up anti-corruption agencies, such bodies fail to achieve the desired outcomes over time due to no political will and resources constraints (money, staff etc.).

Support for ICAC to function
For the PNG ICAC to properly perform its constitutionally mandated functions, duties and responsibilities it is:

  • Incumbent on the Government of the day to demonstrate that political will to rid corruption;
  • Adequately resourced with money and high integrity staff to do its duty without fear or favour;
  • Independent from executive government (appointments, operations, decision-making, staffing powers etc.);
  • Equipped with strong investigative powers;
  • Supported with strong accountability framework;
  • Empowered with strong whistleblower protections (to encourage public confidence to report corruption); and
  • To cooperate effectively with other law enforcement agencies.

For citizens, it must be the duty of every man, woman and child to help by reporting with facts and evidences of any corrupt act to the ICAC and other relevant State law enforcement agencies.
On the part of the executive government it simply needs to ensure it agencies enforce the rule of law – PNG’s problem is non-enforcement by relevant agencies. It should start from the top down, with lawmakers, parliamentarians and senior bureaucrats who have been implicated to be removed and/or prosecuted.
The year 2024 must be the year recorded in the history books in which relevant PNG State agencies, donor development partners and the people make real headway in the corruption fight. As you are reading this article, millions of citizens PNG-wide are suffering and are denied of basic essential public services because much of the nation’s wealth continue to disappear via corruption.
Corruption affects everyone – it must be everyone’s business to help eliminate corruption.

  • Henzy Yakham is a freelance journalist. Story ideas can be text messaged to 72159301.