Do what is right to protect PNG's interest


It's 31 years since Papua New Guinea got independence.
Up until today, nothing much has been achieved. I still eat kaukau and drink cold water from the bamboo.
I walked many miles to catch the next donkey to get into town. While in town, intimidated by street boys and robbed of my only K5 meant for a packet of rice and a can of fish.
On my way back home, gun wielding criminals threatened and robbed me of my only clothes.
At home my wife is in labour.
No nearby aid post, we had to transport her on a stretcher miles into the nearby clinic.
Upon arrival told that the medicines were run out or I have to pay a fee up front first. While waiting she dies.
The story goes on. Good leaders of this great nation — When will I see electricity into my kunai house? When will I see a road into my village? When will tribal fighting stop in my village?
It's 30 years since independence and I haven't seen any real development taken place yet.
What I read every day in the news- papers are the stories of corrupt politicians misusing public funds, travelled overseas on regular basis, passed parliament bills to suit their own interests, appoint their own political wantoks to head government offices, deals under the table for exploiting of our resources by foreign companies, etc.
Leaders, whose country are you destroying and whose interests are you serving?
You must know in you heart that you are representing the interests of the country, not yours.
Always do what is right to protect the interests of the country and its people.
If it means to sacrifice your own life, please go to the extreme. You can go to another country for medical treatment if you are sick.
But when you die, your body will never leave the shores of Papua New Guinea to be buried in another country. You can change your face by plastic surgery. You can change your skin colour. You can change your appearance.
You can do anything to your body as long as you don't want to be called a Papua New Guinean or recognised as one. But remember, blood is thicker than water.
Deep in your heart you will still know that you are a Papua New Guinean by birth. Leaders of this beloved country of Papua New Guinea, I'll die rather than live to see you destroy our beautiful country.

– Lucas Kiap
UNITECH, Lae

"I still eat kaukau and drink cold water from the bamboo. "

I don't get it. You write this sentence as if it's something bad. What would you rather do, eat unhealthy fatty fried chips from the fast food places instead of the healthy kaukau? Would that be a step forward in development for you?

Instead of drinking cold water from the bamboo, would you rather be drinking coca cola, known to rot teeth and cause diabetes, instead of that cold, fresh PNG water? Is it a step forward in development for you to drink something less healthy than the cold water?

You must be an irreversible kind of coconut!

See if I can summarise it for both of you. You twos are both correct if I am to put both your ideas together;

Development is not only the ones with flashy homes, living in luxuries, eating manufactured food, heavy industries, etc. This type of development is the Western's perception/definition of it. "Development" is not a Tolai Kuanua word, nor a Hagen Melpa word. This is an introduced word with their own definitions and requirements; increasing GDP.

We have our own ways of development or should create our own ways, without doing away with industries and globalization. We need a SUSTAINABLE way of development where it is environmental friendly, use of local and Appropriate Technology. That is where the government should come in with Micro-credit Schemes, Policies, Political and Legal Support, etc. All should be focused at RAISING THE INCOME level of individuals in a more sustainable manner both for now and in the future. Every other ideas are crap, although important, because if you cannott raise the income of the rural majority, that development is dead, and government is considered DEAD too.

Many societies in the world (esp, developing world) are into their own PATH to development (No need for the Western definition of development). We don't need the Western requirements like houshold washing machines, or GDP, etc. PNG has the resource-based potential to achieve this form of development. If income for everyone is rased (through both formal and informal means), we'd ultimately raise our GDP and GNI. That is what we should pursue.

You don't have to agree with me
Aiop

Aiop, you made a nice statement for us.

I agree with you.

However, I have not seen that most Papua New Guineans truly understand the points you are making.

This is especially true to those who grew up in town, use computers, have lost their customary land, etc.

Those people see development as little more than western kago. Regardless of whether that kago is good or bad for us, they just don't think that deeply to analyse. New fast food stores and they think it is good. If a Macdonalds fast food place came to PNG they would cheer instead of understanding that it is nothing more than fancy packaged foreign junk.

Thus, they would not support a PNG government that did the things you mention as much as they would support that same government putting all the money into fancy stop lights in Moresby, city roads without potholes, and then pushed out the squatters so they had no place to go, ignoring the rural people by default.

The average Papua New Guinean on these boards is a member of the mostly 'me first' middle class of our country and although they may say they support rural development and sustainable resource use, they are actually more interested in what the government can deliver to THEM and THEM ALONE. These people do not think ahead. They may understand the definition of sustainable but they do not know how to analyse whether changes coming into our country are sustainable at different levels.

People!

For your info,

Environmental friendliness is only a portion of what 'SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT' actually refer to.

Do your homework again.

That is what you think. Sustainable Development is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. I cannot mention everything so do not say, I don't know Sustainable Development. I can lecture you if you like.

Aiop

Aiop

I do not need a single bit of your lecture, you can do to some other people. I pointed out that your view of Sustainable Development was more into environment and appropriate technology utilization. Which I said was only a portion of what the whole concept actually is.

In your second posting here, you have clearly mentioned the point that you should have mentioned earlier on. Which again will coincide with what I percieve to be Sustainable Development.

So there you go, you know Sustainable Development, I know it too. Again, thanks for offering to lecture me but I don't need it.

Aiop made a good statement with stronger points than this silliness over the definition of sustainable development. Is that all that Scapers can contribute to this discussion?

Is the educated elite truly so ignorant? (or maybe you're too busy waiting for the cargo to fall from the sky, upon orders of the Somare government?)

Anonymous,

I don't wait for Somare, his family or cargo as you mentioned. Besides I am not ignorant as you propose and not even an observer in development.

Any beneficial concept that is discussed in these threads and are of importance nationally should be carefully disected to make sure every reader fully understands the whole picture of the issue.
And only then can we make the discussions interesting and HOPEFULLY come up with something tangible.

Yes I do agree with some infor posted by Aiop.

If you think the issues should not be dissected properly, and you used the term "silliness"then you are telling me that you are one of those who accepts half baked information which in reality leads to no where.

Tok i dai!

What was Lukas Kiap's point at the first place?

What would be some of PNG's interests?

Askim tasol.

em tru he was not specific

You guys are all being carried away, and you all are not sticking to L.kiap's topic. The second guy who responded first started attacking him, instead of him asking Lucas for clarification or definition of the tersms and expressions Kiap used. This in itself is already a simple clear examply why PNG politics and governance is failing. We PNGians do not tend to support, correct or ask for clarification. Most of the times we lack listening and we think our ideas are the best. Then somebody else turns up and puts his ideas and it gets complicated and it results completely our of order from the original topic. Lets sort ourselves out by coorperating with one anohter and and encourgaing one antoher, insetead of attacking one another and thinking my ideas are always the right idea. I am a hardcore highlander PNGian and one thing I have come to realise of educated PNGians is that: They do not want to accept one anothers idea easiyly, and they think they ideas are always the right one. We do not tend to acccept or give allowance for corrections in our ideas. That is why we still have a long way to go. My advice is let us learn from one another and build one another.

Yea, I agree with you. Many lack respect of others and fail to listen to others opinions. Some think they are always right, stuborn and can't be considerate of others.
That is why many say PNG people have attitude problems. Once their side of the coin is not attended to they resort to violence.