On June 29, 2011, acting Prime Minister Sam Abal announced the Commission of Inquiry into the Special Agriculture Business Leases (SABLs) and Urban Development Leases.


Mr Abal appointed John Numapo as Chairman, Nicholas Mirou and Alois Jerewai as Commissioners and several other people were appointed to provide technical advice to the Commission. Abal expressed confidence in the team he had appointed that they will do a good job. The Commission was given three months to complete the task and present its report to the Government, which will then present it to Parliament.


At the same time, an Independent Task Force on SABL was appointed and chaired by another prominent Papua New Guinean, Robert Igara. The Task Force was to manage the SABL issues in the interim while the CoI was underway and will also take carriage of the implementation from the findings of the CoI. The Government allocated K6 million to fund the inquiry, which it hoped will see some positive changes and bring about tangible development in the agriculture sector. The Terms of Reference were drawn up for the CoI and a set of objectives were set out for the inquiry to achieve.


Customary landowners in PNG, affected by the SABLs applauded Abal for setting up the CoI. And the green groups and non-governmental organisations that were working in partnership with them to bring a stop to the granting of the SABLs were also happy that at last, the Government was listening to them and was moving to address their concerns.


Today, there is disappointment all around. Yesterday we reported that the investigations by the CoI have been deferred for an indefinite period. Our attempts to get someone in the CoI to explain the reasons have failed. Someone need to come out and tell Papua New Guinea, why a legally constituted CoI was stopped from doing it work? We have suspected all along that the there are MPs in Parliament, some of them ministers in the current government who are up to their eye balls in the SABLs. The CoI, if allowed to proceed, will certainly expose their involvement in these activities.

Are we to assume that these MPs have something to do with the deferral of the CoI? Let’s hope this is not the case. The CoI is going look into the various land transactions involving both the state and customary land in PNG. It was also going to probe into the role of various government agencies involved in the issuance of the SABLs. And it would certainly have looked into the logging industry in PNG.

These are powerful organisations and it should be in their interest to ensure that the CoI gets to complete its work and clear up all the questions handing over their involvement in the SABLs. We are sure all these agencies of Government and the people who obtain the leases have nothing to hide. 
The setting up of the inquiry, was viewed by the PNG public and international critics, as one of the most important decisions, Abal as acting Prime Minister, made this year. And his critics were aware that he would face opposition from various interest groups but there was never any doubt that the CoI would go ahead as announced by Abal.


So why is the CoI deferred indefinitely? Someone needs to give the traditional owners of more than 5.1 million hectares of land that was taken away from them under the SABLs a satisfactory answer. These people have lost their rights to their land and many of them are watching the logging companies moving in to cut down their forest and shipping out the logs from their trees under the pretext of establishing oil palm estates.

And in places, like the pristine Torricelli Mountain Range in the Sandaun Province, it is home to the endangered Weimang Tree Kangaroo. Logging is threatening to wipe what is left of PNG. We are told, an SABL covers this logging area. The CoI must proceed.