Peter O'Neill has fully understood this central motivation amongst his parliamentary colleagues and, so far at least, has proved marvellously adept at entrenching himself in power as a consequence.

PNG's malaise, although having a distinctive Melanesian character, is merely part of the broader malady infecting the world's democracies.

Across the globe we see increasing evidence of how the voters who feel powerless and disenfranchised by today's "retail politics" are turning to populists offering sometimes quite extreme alternatives to the status quo.

It is no accident, I think, that that the emergence of a professional political class is being accompanied by growing resentment and anger amongst electors.

Increasingly, politicians are not seen as being of or even for "us", but as being of and for "them", whoever they may be.

This is the burden that Hillary Clinton carries in the USA, while her inconsistent, intemperate and sometimes irrational opponent, Donald Trump, is able to flaunt his "authenticity" by deliberately ignoring or demonstrating total contempt for the accepted political norms.

It is amazing to think that Trump, who is spectacularly lacking in all of the critical attributes necessary for presidential office, is leading Clinton in recent polls.

The alarm bells are ringing loudly for every political party in every democracy, yet our politicians seem unable or unwilling to respond with anything other than more of the same.

This greatly emboldens authoritarians everywhere, who see this of further evidence of the fundamental weakness of democracy as a system of governance.

We have, of course, seen this before. As the world's democracies flailed about during the Great Depression, the Italian, German and Japanese fascists constantly sought to contrast their strength and certainty with the doubt, equivocation and fearfulness of their opponents.

After Munich in 1938, when the Western powers shamefully ceded control over Czechoslovakia to Germany, Hitler was heard to say he had seen Germany's enemies close up and that they were "worms".

Might Mr Putin be thinking the same thing as he gazes upon the debacle that is Europe and the emerging political disaster in the USA.

The further cementing of Peter O'Neill's power in PNG is simply another manifestation of the apparent failure of democracy across the globe to effectively deal with a range in serious international crises and local socio-economic and political issues.

Make no mistake, we are living in increasingly dangerous times for the world and the inherent risks involved are being greatly exacerbated by the manifest weaknesses now apparent in the world's most important democracies.