By Martyn Namorong

Doctors are failing health

Planners are failing Planning

Lawyers are failing Justice

Educationists are failing education

Etc...

It's time to turn the spotlight onto the people who are really running the country or rather doing is bad job at running it.

Politicians cop a lot of flack and the squatter settlers do as well but then who really is in the engine room of the country. Who runs the health system or the education system, etc...? And are these people doing a good job at running these institutions/arms of government?

The only thing that’s been consistent is the absence of justice. Why? Because the mechanisms that are supposed to maintain the integrity of government systems and processes have failed to provide oversight and remedy faults.

This failure of governance has been partly driven by politicians and mostly by collusion of parties within the executive arm of government. There also seems to be very high tolerance of this dysfunctional state of affairs, amongst the general populace. It is in this ecosystem that corruption and inefficiency thrives.

Politicians get lampooned in the media. Grassroots have foreign aid being handed to them to change. But who addresses the inefficiencies and deficiencies of the professional class.

If change is to happen in this nation, it has to come from within the epicenter of this chaotic system. It has to come from the professionals in government and/or business. To expect it to be driven from the top or from the grassroots is to ask for something Hegelian - the creation of order out of chaos.

An approach that would be less violent is for the professional classes to deliver on what they have been largely failing to deliver on. It is about making a choice to change direction and to challenge the status quo.

PNG is at the cross roads. We can allow the current exploitative relationship between all classes or work towards building a fairer society. I believe that push into the right direction will have to come from the engine room – the middle class. The alternative is to let conditions deteriorate and the oppressed rise up with fire and brimstone.