With an election that is fast turning out to be the worst in the country’s history, incumbent Prime Minister James Marape’s overseas trip to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting is wrong morally and in principle.
Every leader at the PIF will be wanting to know how the National General Elections is turning out in Papua New Guinea?
How is James Marape going to respond to their queries?
How is he going to explain why some parts of the country are yet to poll but he has been declared the country’s first MP?
How is he going to explain the economic stagnation, the lowest vaccination rate of all countries in the Pacific and the non-payment of COVID-19 bills and the death of the mining and forestry industries among all the other ills of the largest Pacific Island nation?
How will he report the state of play three years on of his dream announced to the United Nations to make Papua New Guinea the “richest black Christian nation on earth in ten (10) years?”
To all these questions, if he answered truthfully, he would shock all the leaders of the PIF into silence, each of them wondering what manner of man this Mr Marape is to present himself at a distinguished gathering as this and call himself a leader, a man who has succeeded men well known in the Pacific such as Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare, Sir Julius Chan and Mr Paias Wingti?
If he begins lying, he will also shock his audience into silence, each with exactly the same thoughts as I mentioned above.
Lastly, he represents nobody except the Tari Pori electorate and no Government as all its membership is at the elections.
He is a caretaker Prime Minister and he ought not to have travelled at all. The Foreign Affairs Secretary will suffice and every leader in attendance would understand the reasons why.
But Marape, in his vainglory, has never once listened to good counsel or thought twice about actions he is about to embark upon.
Most times in the last three years he has been wrong.
This is one of them and it is my prayer that this is the last one. The country has seen and felt enough pain from a man who once famously announced to the country in Parliament to endure “short term pain for long term gain”.
Needless to say, we cannot see when and where the “long term gain” will arrive from, but we see short and long term pain everywhere.
That is the Marape legacy: PAIN.
“GOD SAVE OUR COUNTRY”.
Next : Marape : No, Namah, O’Neill and David will deter my Men and I from our course for a better PNG
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