Author:
Fr. Robert Plews Laka
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Date Posted: 02:33:29 06/20/07 Wed
PNG election time! Men and women alike, wish to win the race at the different seats they contest and I believe our people, majority of our people in PNG and Enga are at the peak of their excitements in showing support and solidarity to the candidates they support. That is the beauty of democracy PNG inherited from those who colonized us. Quiet ironically most candidates sail along the current, labeling their ships “Free Education if I win” and I wonder if all our people are aware that, Free Education and Right to Education is not the same thing. Candidates as well as the aspirants to the top job (Prime Minister) use this banner promising our poor people at the villages “manna from heaven” to gain enough number to make to the post. And I believe, educated ones are some how “baptized” by this phenomena. I don’t blame our poor people in the villages for the lack of awareness to distinguish the difference between Free Education and Right to Education.
If I may share, for the benefits of our awareness, the Right To Education (RTE) defends the right to education and human rights in education, and promotes enhancement of all human rights through education. As a specialized applied research project, policy makers carry out assessments of the global realization of the right to education, provide input for education strategies, and facilitate exposing and opposing human rights violations.
On the other hand, Free Education or subsidized education provides no financial cost to students attending any educational institutions. This is the phenomenon which is sweeping throughout PNG and political candidates are riding on it. However, the old jargon goes, “nothing is free”, someone has to pay still stays the same. Even if the students nor the parents would not pay, someone pays and that is what most candidates in PNG promise to our people, but how they would do it and where they would get the money are yet to be publicized for the benefit of doubt of the majority.
However, my question is, if the Right to Education is a universal human right, then, why does the candidates have to promise what is already a for right to the people? UN (with PNG a beneficiary) defends and defines the Right to Education for all citizens of the world but what our politicians have mislead our people in the past was the so called Free Education and that is: if you vote me, I give you this, if not, I won’t give you.
I am yet to see and read the policies and guidelines set by aspiring candidates for the top job to define Right to Education in PNG and Free Education in PNG. It is about time, PNG and Enga must vote for someone who has a vision and a strategic analyst who would propose what is best for PNG and not one who would “spoon feed” the simple village people. We don’t want to create a cargo cult mentality by creating a dependency syndrome for our simple village people in PNG. We’ve got to move on in this global village.
Those good Engans back home, please education our simple people, enlightening them with the POLICIES the political candidates come up with. You are the eyes, the ears and the hands for the good and simple village people back home.
God bless PNG and Enga in this coming election.
Fr. Robert Plews Laka, svd.
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