Robert Nog Akuna

I AM a community leader in Port Moresby and I think that political graft or corruption is now becoming a serious and controversial subject in our history since independence.

The corruptive influence of political ambitions has haunted civilised men over the last 10 years. Politicians fall into two groups; there are those who use money to win and those who use power to win money. What is the truth about the men who govern our life?

Ten years ago, politicians began to shift from “leading and serving” the people and used their positions to fill their own pockets. Waigani has become a synonym for graft, bribery, corruption, intimidation and theft. Politicians passed bills to protect and promote their own selfish interest.

Senior and honest public servants are terrorised to the point where they lose all self respect, dignity, moral values, ethics and even death. Key government body’s are corrupted with political influence.

A contractor who wants a job can send a bill twice the proper cost, and he and his boss (politician) will split the difference.

Every Papua New Guineans see Waigani as a model for how to get rich. Political cronies are appointed to key government institution who will control and supervise the genneral election only to appease their political mooters who are now in all sorts of trouble.

They will be sent out to selected polling booths in the disguise as public servants and rough house tactics will be applied to make sure results are in their matter’s favour. It is now becoming a habit to use political scandals as a weapon for overturning governments. What sort of precedent are we setting for our future generation? It would seem, therefore, that the history of politics in interwoven with a thick black band of corruption. It is a well-known axion that power, which is what politics is all about = corruption.

What is less widely realised or acknowledged is that the fact that it is the voters, those who give power to the corruptible, who must also bear much of the responsibility for the dishonest leaders and the crooked regimes. Whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequences to you ….. be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them and in that case honesty and virtue are ruinous.

God Almighty please save Papua New Guinea.