See who I met at Grand Papua Hotel - & some thoughts I had
02 June 2019
DANIEL KUMBON
PORT MORESBY – We had quite a lunch at the Grand Papua on Friday.
By ‘we’ I mean Keith Jackson AM, who wrote the Foreword to my latest book ‘Survivor’, his lovely wife Cr Ingrid Jackson, a councillor in the shire of Noosa on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, and their son Ben, a communications specialist working with the Australian aid program in Papua New Guinea.
After we finished, the Jackson family met Hon Wera Mori, commerce minister and member for Chuave in Simbu, where Keith had come as an 18-year old to teach - and has remained a friend of PNG ever since.
Wera and Keith exchanged contact details and spoke for many minutes.
(As it happened Wera had been a student at a school at which Keith’s close friend Murray Bladwell had been principal and Keith was able to put them in touch after 50 years.)
Keith and I also met my ‘Facebook Warrior’, Hon Bryan Kramer. It was an honour to meet the fiery member for Madang who had made it possible for PNG’s new prime minister Hon James Marape to ascend to power just on Thursday.
At that very minute Marape was upstairs on the 15th Floor of the Grand Papua forming a caretaker government.
Another surprise for me was meeting my own Kandep MP, Hon Alfred Manase, as I was in the hotel lobby. The moment our eyes met he greeted me warmly and we took photos.
We are family, it was impossible to ignore. We are all linked one way or another, even to Don Polye’s Gini village in Kandep.
This thing called ‘politics’ must not be seen as a weapon to separate or attack people and turn them into enemies.
Argue only against policy issues which you don’t like.
And this must be borne in mind by supporters on both sides who abuse Facebook to launch personal attacks on behalf of our leaders.
They go to the extreme of swearing at each other while hiding behind fake names.
Remember, we will continue to use the Kandep-Mendi Highway which Don Polye built.
We will continue to take medicine at the Kandep Hospital that Alfred Manase has maintained and where an ambulance was delivered recently.
Kandepion people must drop their negative attitudes and learn to leave politics to the politicians.
You never know, they could be wining and dining somewhere when you continue to live with your hatred and resentment for the rest of your life with only your shadow following you around.
Morning Daniel - I was thinking of you this past week when I passed your old stamping ground at Thompson House in Cardiff which is near the more recent Millennium Stadium in Cardiff city centre where Wales beat Oz 9-6 last November ending a 13 times losing streak for us Celts.
Alas your temporary home has been demolished in the major redevelopment of the area with huge office blocks mushrooming in the area.
I have in my possession a Council handout about the reconstruction which included political promises that when the bus station, outside the main railway station, was demolished in 2015 it would be rebuilt as part of the push for a greener transport hub…by autumn 2017. It is now June 2019- yet not a sign; not even of its foundations.
No wonder ‘people’ worldwide have a very jaundiced view of their MPs. We peasants complain that they are ‘gilding the lily’ or guilty of ‘terminological inexactitudes’ as Churchill cleverly said when apologising for saying a colleague was lying. Or even, ‘You know politicians are lying when their lips move!'
What gripes me is that in many nations’ elections, that use the first past the post election system, the elite and their media supporters then use the term ‘populist’ in its pejorative mode when describing our voting in droves for a person or persons not part of their clique.
Why use populism as some sort of denigrating activity? Surely in so called democracies the majority are obviously expecting to see their candidates elected. I had hoped the preferential voting system of PNG would have been effective in removing the bad rulers of the nation.
Sadly it hasn’t done so. Why not? Is ‘family’ which you just wrote in connection with Alfred Manase MP too important to ignore for so many PNG voters that they can ignore his or her known failures to their extended families, clan or tribe?
I shall never forget the maligned president of TIA and sometime MP for Kavieng Walla Gukguk telling his people to use three criteria when selecting a leader: Savi bilongim. Fasin bilongim. Sindaun bilongim.
Or in de Inglish: His or her knowledge and experience. How they react with others. How they live their family lives.
Many of us would fall short of those credentials. The bitter truth is people get the sort of MP the majority voted for. In the computer world they have a mnemonic GIGO or Garbage In Garbage Out. I was going to write pneumonic but that can often be fatal…..perhaps that is just as relevant to PNG politicians too.
We had a clever saying on Lavongai, ‘Yu inap long kunai bilong Magam?’ I always have thought it refers to your locale being the most important factor of your life.
Posted by: Arthur Williams | 02 June 2019 at 07:38 PM
In pastaim, people shouted insults at real persons to whom they were opposed, and stood their ground facing real consequence of impact.
By their outburst they were emboldening themselves. And still this occurs.
Policy was the fact of the array of opposed people, words lasting momentarily unless swelled by numbers and repeats. Policy was person.
To “leave politics to the politicians” is to assume a way of confrontation where only the pastime leader made maus noise.
Now digital device is the 'air' into which the insulting words are hurled, and with scant consequence.
What is imagined by the user of digital device? Is it policy? Nay, it is yet person.
Question is how to grow understanding of policy propositions out of which respect of politician as person is ensured, even if opposed.
While it is valid to say “argue only against policy issues”, it is despairingly urgent that folk be engaged in “arguing for” policy, that is, learning mechanisms and advocating for policy positively.
Thus said from my faraway sitdown, while Daniel and all PNGers search for tru tok.
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 02 June 2019 at 06:11 AM