PNG political party officially out of coalition

Transcript

The second biggest party to emerge from Papua New Guinea's 2012 election is now officially out of the government coalition.

The Prime Minister Peter O'Neill has written to Don Polye to notify him that the Triumph Heritage and Empowerment Party, known as the THE Party, is no longer part of the coalition.

Johnny Blades reports on the sidelining of one of PNG politics' major players:

Since his sacking as Treasurer in March, Don Polye has been a vocal critic of the Prime Minister. The fallout descended quickly into a war of words but until now it was unclear whether Mr Polye's party was still in the government benches in parliament. However, floating around the middle benches himself, the Kandep MP continued to criticise Peter O'Neill over various executive decisions such as taking out a controversial 1.1 billion US dollar loan without consulting parliament. Mr Polye has also been keeping the heat on the Prime Minister to clear his name in regard to the major fraud case in which he allegedly approved illegal state payments of around 30 million US dollars to a law firm, a case which is still with the courts. But despite uncertainty over his role in the fraud saga, Peter O'Neill still enjoys the support of a huge majority of MPs and has been able to lure a number of MPs from Don Polye's party over to his People's National Congress, which has over 40 percent of PNG's 111 MPs. However Don Polye claims that his party is intact and still has fourteen members.

DON POLYE: You probably would have read that five of them have moved across to the People's National Congress side. In fact, that's practically what you've heard, politically. But really, legally, under the OLIPAC (the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates) and the THE Party constitution, all these members are still intact with the Triumph Heritage and Empowerment Party.

The THE Party had the distinction of being the party with the most female MPs in the parliament since the 2012 election, with two of only three women MPs in the 111-seat parliament. The THE Party had evidently deployed greater efforts than other major parties to support female candidates to get into parliament, which is no mean feat in a country like PNG. One of those MPs, the Governor of Eastern Highlands, Julie Soso, appears to be sticking with Don Polye as his party is sidelined from government. However the other female MP, Delilah Gore of Sohe, left the THE fold earlier this year to join the PNC, and she is now Community Development Minister. As many as five of Don Polye's MPs have signaled they will remain loyal to him, although at least half a dozen others are unwilling to stick with him. One of the defectors is East New Britain's Leo Dion, who was effectively given the role of Deputy Prime Minister by virtue of being in Don Polye's party during the formation of the coalition government in 2012. Mr Dion says leaving the THE Party wasn't an easy decision.

LEO DION: There has always been instability within the government, and when you have instability, you don't have any progress, do you? Every decision that I made is not done for personal reasons. It's done on a moral... good reasons, for the constituents, the people who have voted me in, as well as the government of the day.

Leo Dion says that PNG is a democracy and you can't force MPs to join the opposition. Yet the growing concern is that MPs can be forced to join government by making access to lucrative district service improvement funds dependent on it. It's something that PNG's Registrar of Political Parties and Candidates, Alphonse Gelu, says has become a pattern and must be addressed for  the sake of PNG's democracy.

ALPHONSE GELU: If we are really serious about being a vibrant, parliamentary democracy, we must change this practice.So it is something that we need to change. We need to change this practice and I think from the political level down to the bureaucratic level, the bureaucracy that is responsible for the disbursement of these funds should not hold any members of parliament to ransom by not disbursing those funds.

Alphonse Gelu recently described the decimation of the opposition to 3 MPs as a major concern. It's also been raised as an issue in parliament by the MP for Sinesine-Yongomul. Kerenga Kua, who was removed as Attorney General by Peter O'Neill almost three months ago, warned of the dangers of not allowing for voices of dissent in PNG's democracy. He has called for an inter-departmental committee to investigate the decimation of the parliamentary opposition.

KERENGA KUA: Is it because of the personality of the leader of the opposition? Is it because of the inability of the members of opposition to work together as a team? Or is it because the DSIP [District Service Improvement Fund] is operated and disbursed with the opposition being penalised? What is it, we need to know. All of us have a vested interest to remain in government, but we also need an opposition  because the system requires it."

However, the Governor of the National Capital, Powes Parkop, told the house that the government allows for scrutiny within on the National Executive Council. He cited Israel as an example of a country with a functioning democracy where there is no opposition as such to government. Meanwhile, criticism of his government by the likes of Don Polye and Kerenga Kua has been dismissed by Peter O'Neill as sour grapes over him sidelining them. However the standing of both ousted Ministers among sections of PNG's public remains strong and their criticism is resonating on social media too. The upshot of the ousting of Don Polye is that unless his group chooses to sit in parliament's middle benches, the opposition may finally be bolstered in terms of both MP numbers and political clout. The vocal opposition leader Belden Namah and his popular deputy Sam Basil would gladly welcome the addition. The government has a unified front but machinations behind the scenes suggest that various players in government are biding their time before making their own bid for power. A small window for motions of no-confidence against the Prime Minister is approaching and a move against Peter O'Neill cannot be ruled out, especially given the fact that he has powerful enemies across the parliament benches.