Way of politics in PNG

WHEN the courts announced recently that the hearings proper on all matters pertaining to the so-called political impasse would be heard in April, another unspoken and perhaps inadvertent announcement was also heard loud and clear by all concerned.
That implicit announcement was: This is going to stretch well into the elections since the writs will be opened on April 27 and a decision will come in the middle of election or it might well never come until after the election.
When that happened, politicians in the Somare camp got terribly nervous. If the court was not going to deliver a judgment before the election, which might place them in government, however short a time, what in the world were they doing in that camp?
And an exodus began.
The O’Neill-Namah camp is swelling to overflowing and growing.
In a sense Sir Michael Somare, who publicly denounced moves to defer elections, stands to gain if the elections were deferred. For then it gives his side time to receive the decision before election. But, of course, a deferral is against the constitution and Sir Michael is right now claiming he is fighting because in his view, the Constitution has been violated.  He cannot have it both ways.
Politicians, particularly in PNG, must be in government going into the election. That is the unwritten rule.
PNG’s kind of politics is about positioning and money.
You have got to have plenty of the latter and have a real talent for the former.
If you have plenty of one but not the other, chances are that you will be left in the wake of others and be lucky to get a passing mention in the pages of history.
Positioning and money are the path to power.
That is why there is a not so silent or too subtle jostling for both position and money in the present parliament.
To be in government is to have access to money and millions of it – public money that is. If one can position one’s self in government going into the elections then as that wonderful Tok Pisin expression says it all: “Tok i dai”. That’s it. Mission accomplished!
So the events of Aug 2 might have been about changing an allegedly corrupt or ineffective regime, and there might have been a presumed vacancy in the office of the chief executive or there might not have been but it was more about positioning and about money.
Whichever group is in government is also in the best position before the general election. There is no two ways about it.
The government is always in the best position to go to the election, claiming full credit for all government programmes and projects and hopes it will convince people into returning it to power.
Plus of course you get to spend government money right through the election because government does not stop for an election. Goods and services must continue to flow.
And so politicians in the Somare camp are flocking towards government. There is, of course, the two-member opposition. But who will want to join them? They have no clout at all – particularly where the all important goods and services delivery are concerned.
At last count, the O’Neill camp had swelled well past 80 and counting.
Now enters another problem, and this one is within government. It also has to do with positioning and money.
When the election comes, does every party want to return Peter O’Neill as prime minister?
Publicly they might make all the right noises but, in the comfort and safety of their party conference tables, they thump their chest and the table and plan and plot to return the most members – to lead the government. If no party did that, it rightly ought to be in church as a choir, not in politics.
So the fight for supremacy continues but, this time, within government. You will see more of that in the coming weeks.
That is all there is to it. That is the way and the nature of politics.