The report by the Commission of Inquiry into the clandestine escape of Julian Moti has now been leaked to the public. Many PNGns are now recepients of this report in their inboxes recently. Australian media reports indicate the escape is orchestrated by the respective Prime Ministers of PNG and Solomon Islands.
After setting the process in motion, Sir Michael adapted a pretentious face confessing that he knew nothing about the escape and promised the Parliament and people of PNG that he will get to the bottom of it and that those who are responsible for organising the clandestine trip will be dealt with it.
Australian media has now revealed that there was no depth in the story that Somare told PNG.The depth he mentions was the pretension that someone else gave the orders allowing himself to be absolved of any moral or political blame even legal guilt.
In the course of maintaing his face, other people were made victims. The sad thing is that their victimisation was of no concern to the Prime Minister whom many believe is the 'father of the nation'. What kind of a 'father' would victimise his own people in order to maintain a face of superficial depth?
The depth Somare promised has however been exposed largely by the power of the report to resist itself being just another file of paper work that could collect dust in the filing cabinets of Waigani like other such reports produced by numerous Commissions of Inquiries.
The depth, we are now told by the Australian media, is that Somare went at lengths to conceal his tracts. He was kindly asked by his Solomon Islands counterpart to get rid of Moti. What would PNG lose if Somare told us right then and there that it was his decision to get Moti into Solomon Islands?
While a standing Court order prevents its release and the possible spiral of legal consequences that might ensue, the illegal leaking is reminiscent of the illegal escape of Julian Moti who evaded the Courts of PNG.
As the Moti saga spirals into layers of complexity, questions about the findings of the original Commission of Inquiry might not surface and it will end up accumulating dusts. A lot of public money has been used to fund the Inquiry and its outcome is useless if there is no political will in the forthcoming Somare led government to return to the Moti saga. And if Somare has his way, the story of Julian, will be buried because it is dead issue.
This leads us back to the questions of an accountable government that should celebrate the rule of law.
Below is a letter I wrote to The National newspaper in March this year when the Australian Alexander Downer first made an ultimatum to the PNG Government concerning the Moti saga.
http://www.thenational.com.pg/032907/letter1.htm
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Demand weakens PNG’s sovereignty
I READ with concern the ultimatum from Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer concerning matters of law, justice and fairness relating to the Moti inquiry.
Proponents of a banal nationalism might see this ultimatum as patronising and a tactful diminution of our national sovereignty.
Like an individual person, sovereignty motivates a compelling language to assert, defend and protect itself against the invasion of its autonomy such as we now see in the dictatorial prescriptiveness imposed on our government by Downer.
I would, however, think patriots might want to suspend our naive nationalist commitments to concepts such as sovereignty and perhaps re-examine the steps our government has taken to erode and desacralise this very concept of sovereignty as far as the Moti saga is concerned.
Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare has constructively eroded our sovereignty by proclaiming explicitly that the Moti saga is a “dead issue”.
The statement reflects an absolute disregard for the rule of law.
Sir Michael has also moved to dissolve the inquiry and has been inclined to ignore and annul the findings.
If sovereignty is bound up with the rule of (domestic and international) law, then it has gone with Sir Michael’s persistent reluctance to submit to the dictates and spirit of law.
Any nationalist appeal or assertion of autonomy that employs the language of sovereignty without a parallel respect for the rule of law is vague and empty and could unwittingly provide a pretext for tyranny to install itself in the guise of democracy.
I therefore read the ultimatum as a “writing on the wall”.
It is untenable to subscribe to a naďve language of sovereignty to resist the Australian ultimatum which might be read as a theoretical gesture pointing to the apparent fact that our sovereignty has been sabotaged in the Moti saga.
If we wish to rehabilitate our dogmatic and comfortable sense of sovereignty, we must insist that the findings and conclusions of the inquiry are made public and that those who compromised the rule of law are dealt with accordingly.
The inquiry is the one and only way that we will tell ourselves and our international friends that we have and are interested in our sovereignty which has not only been strangled, dumped into a bag and taken out with Moti and from our subsequent attitudes to retract from responsibility.
Despite its apparent intrusiveness, the nominal dictates of the Australian ultimatum is unfortunately the only way we now have to show cause for our so-called sovereignty if those who have the locus standi such as the Ombudsman Commission do not intervene in deliberating the legal merits and findings of the inquiry.
The Australian ultimatum does not undermine our sovereignty but it is rather a philosophical laugh that diplomatically alludes to its sad decline.
Through metaphoric allusions of diplomacy, the ultimatum is telling Papua New Guinean nationalists like me that our sovereignty has been abandoned.
Much like other calls that countless Papua New Guineans have repeatedly made in the press, the Australian ultimatum should be embraced to help us regain what we have lost in the Moti saga so far.
Any naive commitment to the concept of sovereignty and the concomitant resistance towards the Australian ultimatum is to sit ourselves too comfortably in the fuselage of an empty conceptual plane whose contents have been flown out with Moti on the night of Oct 10.
Like a person who waxes and wanes, sovereignty can depart on an aimless flight on the wings of political expediency or it can settle in obedience with the abiding gravity of constitutional democracy.
If we resist the moral dictates of the ultimatum, if we ignore and annul the findings of the inquiry, what options do we have to regain our sovereignty?
Any appeal to the language of sovereignty without an equal commitment to the rule of law is like talking about a dream in which a man’s soul has been dislodged from his body and gone astray in the night.
Yet since the night of Moti’s clandestine flight, the soul of sovereignty has been seeking to restore itself in the body of law that governs Papua New Guinea’s constitutional democracy.
This metaphoric nightmare will remain as a pestilence of justice if respect for the rule of law continues its slide down beneath the threshold of accountability.
First things first.....
The report that has been leaked is another attempt by insiders with outside interference to influence the formation of the PNG government especially at this time. While I agree that those who are liable should be dealt with, the process must take place first and foremost.
Do you ever ask yourself why now?? Also the Moti report is still at the courts to be deliberated upon. If the report was published, it would be seen as a "contempt of Count" and those who published it can be held liable for it.
Let the courts deal with the process and later we can deal with who is responsible and hold all of them accountable who their actions and involvement in breaking PNG's laws.
I could go further, but let me stop here and we can discuss these after a few responses.
First things first.....
The report that has been leaked is another attempt by insiders with outside interference to influence the formation of the PNG government especially at this time. While I agree that those who are liable should be dealt with, the process must take place first and foremost.
Do you ever ask yourself why now?? Also the Moti report is still at the courts to be deliberated upon. If the report was published, it would be seen as a "contempt of Count" and those who published it can be held liable for it.
Let the courts deal with the process and later we can deal with who is responsible and hold all of them accountable who their actions and involvement in breaking PNG's laws.
I could go further, but let me stop here and we can discuss these after a few responses.
It was briefly mentioned that the Moti report was leaked to the Australian media. PNG could not publish it because of the Court proceedings currently taking place. "Contempt of Court" as one would say it.
