By James Macpherson, Eric Kwa and Ray Anere* 

Crisis

Political climate change can create a political cyclone. Controversies over parliament’s election of the Governor-General, votes of no-confidence, environmental legislation, integrity of political parties, and infrequent meetings of parliament are political climate changes. Parliament risks unconstitutionality and irrelevance. This could be the cyclone.

From ABC Radio

It was expected to be one of the most explosive legal cases Papua New Guinea had seen for years. The elderly prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, was hauled before a specially convened tribunal to answer charges of official misconduct.



But compared to the political dramas that preceded it, the action in court turned out to be something of an anticlimax.

 

On the 21st of February 2011, we posted a letter by a very concerned Australian Citizen, Trevor Freestone, addressed to Julie Bishop, regarding the serious governance issues facing PNG. Below is the response from Honorable Julie Bishop, MP, and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament:

By Lydia Kailap*

THERE ARE THREE kinds of raskols in Papua New Guinea: street raskols; nasty street raskols; and the real raskols.

From a Special Correspondent*

Papua New Guinea suffers chronically from the way in which state equity participation is negotiated in major resource extraction projects.

A combination of the worst possible behaviour from international resource companies, which is as bad in PNG as it is in any country in the world, abetted by the incompetence of the National Government in negotiating equity participation, means that PNG ends up seeing its resources shipped offshore with the lowest possible returns to the Nation.

The World Bank is on a mission to encourage sweat-shop style factories in Papua New Guinea and we need to tell them NO!

By PMIZ Watcher

The Environmental Impact Assessment for the government's Pacific Marine Industrial Zone in Madang paints a terrible picture of the likely social and environmental impacts of the project.

The 39-page EIS was prepared by the Department of Commerce and Industry in June 2010 and submitted to the Department of Environment and Conservation.

Spotted by PMIZ Watcher in the Post Courier

By John Fowke