| Subject: Leaders intoxicated with PRIDE - Bire Kimisopa |
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Chicko
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Date Posted: Fri, Oct 03 2008, 12:34:18pm
Opening sentence very true for people like Don Polye....
By MADELEINE AREK
THE leadership of the country is so intoxicated with pride and arrogance that humility, decency and honesty cannot be found, former internal security minister and businessman Bire Kimisopa said.
Papua New Guinea had been likened to a nation governed by a select few, he said, adding the rhetoric of political stability alone could not salvage the country.
Addressing the Community Coalition against Corruption forum at the main Waigani campus on Tuesday, Mr Kimisopa said it would require a lot of political savvy on the part of those who had been elected to serve if PNG were to become a powerful nation in future.
He said with the public being disorganised and disinterested in their elected members, moral decay was likely to creep into the public service with terrible social and economic consequences.
As an example, he cited the hearings of the Public Accounts Committee.
Speaking on the topic How can governments reduce corruption?, Mr Kimisopa told the forum that while PNG was blessed with natural resources, the gap between the promise and reality was so wide and there had been very little effort to narrow it although the leaders had offered a litany of excuses.
He said Parliament was being drenched with so much controversy that it had become the epicentre for moral degradation, with the reverberations felt in the provincial and district council chambers throughout the country.
“Our people’s real income per capita is vanishing at the petrol pumps and the fortnightly basket of food supplies is being eaten away by inflation,” he added.
Mr Kimisopa said there were more than 60,000 school leavers looking for jobs every year but only 10% succeeded.
“Hospitals are running out of drugs and patients are being turned away.
“Mothers are delivering babies on cement. School closures are also imminent ,” he said.
Mr Kimisopa said the country was experiencing a law and order problem.
“The rate of prosecution failure for crimes is between 70% and 80% and there are nearly 500,000 infected by HIV,” he said.
http://www.thenational.com.pg/100208/nation7.php
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