Tag Archives: PNG

Dictators I Have Known – (PNG since August 2011.)

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Susan Merrell

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Belden Namah - image borrowed from http://profile.typepad.com/nancysullivan

By Susan Merrell

Hallo again, to all patrons of the Pig’s Arms. 

I apologize for neglecting to do my part to keep the pub in material, whether informative, controversial, or just entertaining. 

As my excuse: I have lately employed my time with the politics of PNG – to say I’m embroiled would be an understatement.

Hereunder is an article I wrote a few months back on some of the current political happenings.  It was published in PNG. 

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Quick background for those who don’t follow PNG politics:

In August last year, with the Prime Minister and Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare having been critically ill in Singapore for many months, a parliamentary coup took place where over 50 members of the government went over to the opposition ranks, including the very powerful Speaker.

The then leader of the opposition, Belden Namah was the architect of the coup, using his wealth (he’s a multi-billion-dollar logger).  Rumour has it that he paid from 50,000 kina ($20,000) for the most-lowly MP – 5 million kina  ($2 million) for the Speaker. In PNG money (and often only money) buys loyalty and ‘horse trading’ is a feature of all elections.

BUT the coup was conducted under dubious legal conditions (a vote of no confidence was not an available alternative under the constitution so close to the elections.)

Peter O’Neill was installed as Prime Minister – from a different political party (there are dozens of political parties in PNG), nevertheless the real power resides with Namah who took on the role of Deputy Prime Minister.

At first the people lauded the new government as a welcome respite from the previous corrupt one and they were hailed as the saviours of PNG (notwithstanding that the faces were largely the same).

Yet, the legality of the coup was never fully accepted and a court challenge was mounted to establish their legitimacy, which the new government lost. The government chose to ignore the court and have since countered by trying to use their parliamentary numbers to nobble the judiciary.

Removing the Chief Justice, who is their strongest opponent, has almost become their raison d’être  

Meanwhile, the people were horrified that this government should wilfully ignore the precious constitution that they call the ‘Mama Lo’  (Mother law).  PNG is a constitutional democracy and the constitution is revered.

It was the start of the slippery slope from saviours to oppressor.

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Well…actually… I don’t know any personally, but in my studies I have encountered many.  They have similar characteristics.  Their methods are eerily formulaic in their sameness.

WARNING: The people to whom they dictate rarely live ‘happily ever after.’

Belden Norman Namah is Deputy Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Minister for Forestry (a handy portfolio when your personal fortune is tied up with logging), Minister for Climate Control (ditto), Acting Minister for State Enterprises and Acting Minister for Defence.

Under the circumstances, there’s little wonder another commentator called him ‘Belden the Ubiquitous’  (Please forgive me if he’s returned any of his acting ministries to their rightful owners and I’ve missed it)

Namah is a Prime Ministerial ‘wannabe’; an ambition he informed me of personally because he is someone with whom I’m acquainted.

Late last year, he puffed out his fleshy chest and boomed:  “After December 8, I WILL BE THE PRIME MINISTER OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA.”  Nostradamus he aint.

Nevertheless, as a military man, I much admire Namah’s record in Bougainville – his sacrifice was beyond doubt. Yet, Adolf Hitler won the Iron Cross, First Class for bravery in the First World War and we all know what he went on to do, don’t we?

The word ‘military’ seems fatally attracted to the word ‘dictator’ –

Idi Amin, General Franco of Spain, Pinochet of Chile, Mussolini, Muammar Gadhafi, Suharto of Indonesia… I could go on, but I think you’ve got my point.

There are signs that the O’Neill/Namah government are going down the path to a dubious political future, in a push led largely by the ostentatiously wealthy Deputy Prime Minister.

Ominously, ostentatious wealth is a characteristic of many of the most heinous dictators. Idi Amin, for instance, who was often characterized as a buffoon.

Command of the army

Rationale:        ‘He who commands the army, controls the nation:’ is a well-known paradigm that I’m sure is taught in – ‘military intelligence 101’.  (Although I’ve always thought that ‘military intelligence’ was an oxymoron.)  It’s no mere coincidence that many dictators are military men.

Belden Norman Namah is a graduate of Australian Military College, Duntroon, rising to the rank of Captain in the PNGDF (or was that lieutenant? – Information surrounding his military service is a bit elastic.)

During the recent attempt at a military coup by the Somare faction on 26 January this year, Belden really showed them who had the upper hand.  In fact, so in need was the Prime Minister of Namah’s ‘iron fist’ that he made him Acting Defence Minister.

Guma Wau, the actual Minister for Defence is not happy at Namah usurping his role.  That’s too bad for Wau, who will be adequately taken care of soon by those charges of stockpiling illegal ammunition that was found at his home.  Pure serendipity?  The co-incidences of good fortune just keep piling up for Namah.

Quashing of opposition and the formulation of a ‘one party state’

Regimes.          Most sub-Saharan nations following independence, including Congo and Rwanda. Also the former Soviet Union and Liberia, where the ruling party managed to hold onto power for more than a century this way.

It seems to be yet more good fortune for O’Neill/Namah that they have no official opposition, save for two members. What motivated the wholesale defection of Somare supporters to this new government?

Altruism?  Ha!

Ben Reilly in his paper entitled Africanisation of the Pacific points out that being part of the state machine is the best (sometimes only) means of gaining wealth and accessing and exploiting resources in many Pacific nations – as such being on the winning side is everything – staying in power imperative – see below.

Suspend the Constitution

Example:         The military government of Suriname suspended the constitution on attaining power in 1980.  When in 1982 there was a push for return to civilian control the military government responded by murdering 15 people – journalists, lawyers and trade union leaders (see paragraph ‘Censorship’).

Namah is currently in the process of a push to defer elections.  His reasons seem well…reasonable (if you disregard the Royal visit furphy).  Ah yes, but the government will need to suspend the constitution to do this legally.  More serendipity?

Without a constitution, the executive and legislature has no checks or balances – the people of PNG are left exposed and vulnerable, dependent on governmental goodwill. History tells us dictators very rarely have any.

“No one is above the law,” said Namah.  With his legislative numbers, the law is what he wants it to be – and if not he can change it.  The Supreme Court’s role is to interpret the Constitution – but under these circumstances there won’t be one in use.

So far, the CJ has refused to let the executive suspend him, so rendering him redundant would be the next best thing. Bingo!

Nepotism and patronage

Example:         Many dictatorial regimes retained power by putting their cronies into well-paid, powerful positions.  Furthermore, they often mollified those who may have harboured dissension by patronage of a similar sort.  If that didn’t work they were often ‘fitted up’ (flashback to Guma Wau) or sometimes  just…disappeared.

Charles Litau, a PNG party apparatchik was made head of Telikom, recently.  Then there was Mrs. Maladina, wife of the eldest Maladina son who got the plum Brisbane diplomatic posting.  Other Maladina sons include Moses, Minister for Public Service in the Somare government and one of the August defectors who was given the Urban Planning portfolio in the new government. Then there’s Jimmy whose name is inextricably linked to that of Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill by an alleged fraud carried out on the National Provident Fund – still to be investigated by the recently appointed corruption ‘Sweep team’.  Is it politically expedient to keep this dynastic family happy?

Perhaps both were merely the best people for the job?

Ethnic Persecution

Ethnic persecution, while not confined to military dictatorships is nevertheless a feature of most of them. Uganda springs immediately to mind, as does Nazi Germany.

Of all the corruption cases in PNG that could be investigated, the balance has been weighted in favour of those implicating Somare or his ‘kitchen cabinet’.  First it was Arthur’s baby, the IPBC, then it was the tabling in parliament of the discredited Defence Inquiry. But by far the most questionable investigation has been against the East Sepiks who were the instigators of the Supreme Court Reference against the legitimacy of the current government.  Go figure.

The people of the East Sepik closely identify with Sir Michael Somare and ethnic persecution by association is written all over this investigation. There needs a wholesale suspension of disbelief not to suspect ulterior political motives.

Censorship

Example:         To give a single solitary example would be to downplay the importance of controlling information in dictatorial regimes.

Ben Micah, Chief of Staff, Prime Ministers Department last week sent out a press release warning against the dissemination of incorrect information or information that could destabilize the government (as if saying it in one breath, makes those two things the same.)

Apparently, the National Intelligence Office is monitoring your every utterance and PNGeans are tasked with being “vigilant” against dissenters and to report them.  The Nazis encouraged the same.

Well, Ben Micah, tell your bosses that the people of Papua New Guinea are watching them too.

It’s time to bring this ominous political trajectory to a halt.  It’s time to turn Belden the Ubiquitous into Belden the Irrelevant.  There’s a viper in your midst, PNG

POSTSCRIPT:  You may remember that Belden Namah featured on the front age of the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago in relation to the Star Casino where he was named as the Minister from a foreign country who sexually harassed a male croupier while betting in the high-rollers room with $800,000.  I am proud to say that my fingerprints were all over that revelation.

Interestingly, the Gillard government was quick to recognise the new regime – not waiting for the outcome of the Supreme Court challenge.  A faux pas if ever there was one!

Welcome to PNG. Her name is Theresa. She Murdered Her Husband.

19 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in Susan Merrell

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Medang, PNG.

Story and Pictures by Susan Merrell

Greetings from Papua New Guinea.

As Air Nuigini flight PX2 came in for landing at Jacksons Airport in PNG’s capital Port Moresby the PNG national resplendent in his colourful striped beanie sitting behind me let out an excited whoop.

“My country, my Papua New Guinea,” he said very loudly and rapturously

“Expect the unexpected, land of surprises,” he continued enthusiastically citing every tourist board slogan that he could remember in his advanced intoxicated state.

When the aircraft came to a halt on the tarmac, he stood.

“Welcome to Papua New Guinea,” he said to all and sundry, arms outstretched to the applause of a half-empty plane.

While I don’t quite share this man’s unbridled enthusiasm for the country, nevertheless I am somewhat intoxicated by it.

This is my third trip this year.

Those of you who have followed my writing and read my articles (thank you) will have noticed that more and more of my focus has been directed to the Pacific.  It started with my association with Sir Trevor Garland, the Honorary Consul-General of the Solomon Islands, through to the Julian Moti affair and beyond.

Much more than Australia, it has been the Pacific countries that have embraced me and my writing and I now find that I am published much more in the Pacific than in Australia.  My association with the Pacific has also enabled me to branch out into radio and television. I have contributed to radio in Solomon Islands, PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji and Television in PNG.

So here I am in Port Moresby again, in the foyer of the Crowne Plaza Hotel (which I call the Crowne prison because it’s too dangerous for a woman on her own to venture outside).  So what’s the fascination I hear you ask?

And you know, that’s a bloody good question.  The place is extremely dangerous, too dangerous even to catch a taxi.  In the capital cities it’s best that I have a bodyguard when I venture out, even in broad daylight – can you believe that?  Of course I do stand out like the proverbial ‘dog’s balls’ – white skin, blonde hair.  Here, I’m exotic – which is something I’ve always aspired to, but in PNG it’s not a good idea to look different or rich – and yes, in PNG I look rich too.  Extreme poverty is rife.

But for a journalist the politics and the issues here make the Australian socio-political landscape look like sliced white bread – all a bit bland.

PNG is a country that has been dragged screaming into modernity and only some of it. Over 80% of the country still subsists. Some of the more remote areas (and there are a lot of them) still have no electricity. There are precious few roads and most areas have to be accessed by air. The main highways, such as they are, are often impassable. Health care and education is very piecemeal indeed. Ironically, you really take your life in your hands going to a hospital in PNG. When the Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare got sick and needed heart surgery, he went to Singapore. No one has ever accused the Grand Chief of being stupid – corrupt, yes, stupid, no.

Which brings us to the subject of corruption.  It’s rife in PNG at all levels. Greg Anderson, the head of the Chamber of Mines in Port Moresby likens it to a mafia with tentacles that reach out widely.

Corruption is a by-product of ‘the resources curse’ apparently, and PNG has been surviving on the proceeds of investment in its resources since independence in 1975.  Many people are becoming rich on the back of PNG resources – except the people of PNG – although the economy is doing well with PNG’s GDP about to double thanks to the $15 million PNG Liquified Natural Gas project headed by the multi national Exxon Mobil. And the government is managing the economy well with the country experiencing significant economic growth – delivery of services they aren’t so good at  – shame about the people still dying of preventable diseases in such a rich country.

It’s not so surprising that in this scenario crime is rife and law and order issues are significant. If the major contributing factor is poverty, the prevailing tribal mentality also contributes. Tribal fights break out with regular monotony at the drop of a hat.  Arms hacked off, people killed and this is at a market place in Port Moresby.

Ancient superstitions are still practiced – although now there are laws against them.  Not that long back, beyond the 1930s, some of the tribes were cannibals. Eating human flesh was usually a magical ritual. When in February of this year a man was caught eating his baby daughter alive, it was ‘sorcery’ that was blamed.  The baby died. Thank goodness it was just a girl. (That was an ironic comment in case anyone believes I was serious!)

Theresa

Attitudes to women here are disgusting.  Many consider a female has less value than a pig. A ‘bride price’ is paid for a wife and she’s a man’s possession and not a very prized one at that. Domestic violence is rife at 70% overall. In some areas it reaches to 100%. It’s accepted and has become normalised. Sexual violence towards all females is high with many women saying that they wouldn’t bother to report rape unless it was a gang rape. Rape is no big deal – not to the men anyway. Police are part of the problem, often perpetrators themselves. There are laws that protect women in PNG it’s just that no one takes notice of them.

When I was last in PNG I spent a day at Bomana prison interviewing 11 women murderers.

She murdered her husband - but not before he did this to her.

Of the thirty-eight inmates, thirty-six were in for murder. Yet, murder is not a female crime. But all of these women had been the victims of prolonged domestic violence before the worst of circumstances created murderers of them.

All had either killed their husbands or the other wives or girlfriends of the husband, hoping getting rid of their rivals would stop the man beating them–  (polygamy and promiscuity is rife). All had the scars that proved their stories. When, in the telling,  their stories came to the part where they’d killed, especially if it was their husband, “what took you so long?” was my usual question. I suggest that many of these women would have been found innocent by way of justifiable homicide were they tried elsewhere and not in PNG.

The great irony and shame of all this is that PNG is, geo-physically, one of the most beautiful countries. With Port Moresby being just a three-hour flight from Sydney and less than an hour from Cairns, tourism ought to be flourishing.  Even the ‘Crowne Prison’ in the centre of grotty downtown Port Moresby is on a hill at the centre of a peninsular with the port on one side and the beach on the other – stunning.  Sunsets to die for.

You just need to look past the mean streets that are stained with bright red ‘Buai’ spittle (Betelnut – a national past time.)  The habit of chewing and spitting “buai’ is responsible for the spread of Tuberculosis which has had a few break-outs recently.  Apparently the spittle evaporates in the heat and rises and people breathe in the contaminated air.

On Tuesday, I’ll be going to Madang on the north coast to hear the judgment in a court case involving mining and the environment handed down. I could stay in Port Moresby and get the information second hand but Madang is so gob-smackingly beautiful that you’d have to be mad to miss any opportunity to spend time there.

So many stories, so many surprising contrasts. Papua New Guinea, expect the unexpected.  (Oh my God, I think I’m channelling my bright-beanied fellow air passenger).

Docherty

12 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by in Sandshoe

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By Sandshoe

I moved with an even attention to not raising the alarm of the many eyes I believed were watching the trespass and tugged at Docherty’s boots as they manipulated frantic purchase on the sill of the entrance into the grass hut. The distinctive difference of the hut on stilts Docherty had run towards and deftly up its ladder was its higher elevation. He had in the same movement pushed athletic bulk in the dense black of the narrow entrance. A crescendo of murmurings suggested to me the compound’s native inhabitants in the likely proximity I had interpreted from eerie silence as Docherty and I approached just ahead of the others the red dirt track leading down to the settlement and grove of cultivation.

I supposed Docherty could not hear the murmuring in his scrabble part-inside and part-out of the construction. His legs and rubber-soled boots seemed to be pushing him inwards. Thick woven walls and his excitement doubtless insulated him from eruption of noise in any exterior world. The sound of the voices cackled in my mind with the danger I had sensed in the surround of tall native grass clumps and straggling palms and trees. These were people who had not seen the full potential of a white invasion I wondered. Their tones sounded referential, consultative rather than rabidly murderous. They might slit our throats with some polite justification if Docherty did not withdraw himself out of the hut I considered.

Only three ancient elders sitting in rock-like silence on a bench in the centre of the compound, about a quarter of the distance from the circular wall of huts where it bowed away neatly from our line of sight where we had entered the arena suggested habitation. The red ground of the compound beneath our feet that I supposed was tramped by generations into a compacted floor was so bare of debris it appeared fresh-swept. The rock-like silence endured of the elders and I wondered as I glanced discretely towards the row of men if they could speak. I supposed the venerables were left behind by the fleeing men, women and children who it was seeming had abandoned their village at the sound of our progress along the track from the landing strip on the edge of that high mountain place. The elders looked fragile, skeletal, but sighted or not seemed observant in their still demeanours and I drew the sense of their strength, their respect into a reservoir of belief I may be saved as I reached to grasp Docherty’s boots again.

We flew to the location in a plane that was chartered as result of a chance conversation in the Port Moresby Club. Docherty, buying up big and ferrying trays of exotic liquers he was insistent those who had never experienced them try got into a confrontation with a patron it transpired was a pilot scheduled to fly to keep an appointment in the Central Highlands the next day (He said it was social; a Saturday afternoon piss-up we surmised later). You will see natives, he assured Natural Ringleader Docherty loudly, Good Fun, Loveable Docherty, waving a dismissive hand at suggestion danger was involved. He would fly a little earlier than he intended, that was all. We could do whatever we wanted on arrival at his destination as long as he was left to his own devices and we meet him at the scheduled time for the return flight. If you don’t, the pilot warned, I’ll leave you on the mountain. On our arrival, he waved us in a direction opposite to his own.

Tugging sharply on Docherty’s right boot, I realised as equally as I did there was little danger for us in the original environment, that a sense they were in danger had begun crowding the natives from their hiding places. Big Docherty was used to being in charge. He needed strong persuasion to reverse his impulsive lunge. I said firmly, “Docherty, get out. You’re trespassing. This is the private property of these people.”

“No, No” I heard the muffled voice declare as if the magnification of the soul of an hypnotic, “There’s something in here. I want to see. I’ve got a match. I’ll light a match.”

I reached further into the dark cool and commanded by a combination of touch and tone that Docherty get out.

“You’re in danger. We all might be.”

I could hear the grasses rustling more loudly and rhythmically.  The rising crescendo of murmuring was louder because it was drawing nearer.  I just knew, although there was no sound of feet on the earth or on twigs or fallen palm branches.

“Everybody’s out,” Docherty had casually commented when we arrived on the edge of the mountain overlooking where its slope fell sharply on one side into a ravine and to a glimpse of the peaks ahead of huts in a circle. I was awed by the silence as we looked down on the splendid array of bright-leaved fronds and tropical bushes interspered with palms. “The people are hiding,” I said, instinctive, young, sensitive, attuned immediately to the meaning of the sound of a silence I had never experienced before and cherished for knowing.  The air was crystal-glare. Despite our elevation and the sun was near enough its height, on exertion the heat was a swelter. It was air stripped nevetheless of the extreme stress of the sweltering heat of Moresby.

The bareness of the red-brown earth of the compound was a striking monochrome of colour in a rich mix of hues of green beyond the circle of this evidence of residential life.

As if a light had come on in Docherty’s head deep in the hut’s interior, Docherty’s head popped out of the black mouth of the hut. Docherty to my surprise looked mildly confused by himself, as if he was even grateful if he was to about to be slaughtered it would be from a standpoint of a renewed consciousness of realism. Having shown not the least consideration of fearful possibilities, possibilities seemed to be occurring to Docherty in a rush like the onset of a sudden tropical downpour of rain that is heralded by an atmosphere of pure swelter. Beads of moisture glistened in the sun that was falling over him like an illuminator of lost dreams, his face changed in the same thought to a sense of hope in contrast to sense of loss. I suppose he suffered hell. I supposed he thought of his one child in the States who he told me on our group chartered flight from Cairns was home in the States. That was my first experience of hearing the word “weed” and what was meant as he told me his despair his son preferred it to law school and described its effects. No Doubt Docherty as he scrabbled off the ledge of the hut now considered his own status, a now common trespasser attested by the extra tinges of pink flaring through the tan of his affluent and untrammelled face. The murmurings of the voices like the presage of a mob moving closer had remained uniform as if the same words and similar were being repeated by different people under the direction of a conductor of an invisible choir of voices reciting an orchestrated sound symphony. I had just finished High School. I was 17 and it was three months before I heard a choir perform an acapella sound poem I heard as a similar musical effect. As instantly as Docherty exited the hut, the music of the voices faded and fell to a low volume before rising to a cacophonic babble. Docherty flared red above his light cotton round neck t-shirt.

“What will we do?” he asked me.

I said lightly and pleasantly, accepting my leadership as survival, turning, looking at Docherty over my shoulder, “We walk back the way we came. Follow me.”

Docherty followed me to where the others waited ashen-Docherty greeted his  wife shame-faced and she gathered him-and I walked with an easy stride indicating “Follow”. Everybody seemed to realise the safety cue I might best be seen with the red sun leaping through my hair as a young heroine leading Docherty away from dangerous mischievousness. We walked towards the narrow gap between two huts the way we had entered the compound. The silence that fell of the invisible people who lived here and had fled I was sure from their homes at the sound of our approach reassured. It meant we were free to leave. The sun etched a mottle on the trail through the vegetation when I glanced back where the huts described their edge around the circle of trodden red soil that was flat and occupied again only by the three old men I now did discern on the bench seat. I would never know them. We walked across to the red-dirt earth of the hill track we had followed down the mountain to the village and the sun blasted its heat on the steep aspect of the hill as we climbed to its top.