Transcript
JOHNNY BLADES: The Pangu Pati executive has been pushing for the party's MPs, who coming into this parliamentary term numbered about fourteen (although these things are often fluid in PNG), pushing them to break away from Sam Basil because the executive say he's been expelled as leader and doesn't have mandate any more. The Morobe provincial branch of the Pangu Pati executive is the latest to say the MPs must break away, particularly with the fact that most of the MPs in Morobe are Pangu MPs, seven or eight of them. It's quite a powerful block, provided they stick together. There are signs that there's going to be a motion of no-confidence in Peter O'Neill in the parliament, perhaps next month when parliament reconvenes. So the Morobe branch wants the Pangu Pati to defect from the O'Neill coalition government. What's interesting about Pangu is that at the last election in 2017 they campaigned on a platform of removing O'Neill from power. Therefore it shocked a lot of Pangu supporters when just a month or two later, after the new parliament emerged, they joined the O'Neill government.
DON WISEMAN: But it can be argued that Sam Basil is the Pangu Pati. He brought them out of the wilderness before that last election.
JB: He did. The party had no MPs until that last parliament when Sam Basil revived the Pangu name, brought in another name. Then, after going into that last election with just two MPs, they did really well. They energised a lot of voters and brought all these MPs in. Pangu was so anti-O'Neill, that's what energised their grassroots support. Moving to the government was a shock. But as we know, Papua New Guinea politics can be a little unpredictable. And there is that Trojan horse theory: some say Basil is just biding his time in the government before he makes some sort of move against O'Neill.
DW: Well, Sam Basil and the Pangu Pati seemed to have benefitted from the recent reshuffle after the resignation of Marape from the government.
JB: Yeah, so James Marape resigned as Finance Minister, closely followed by the Attorney General Davis Steven. Two high level resignations, indicating that not all is well within that ruling People's National Congress Party and the government. So Basil was elevated, but as much as anything there was a feeling that Pangu Pati hadn't been fully represented with portfolios in the cabinet until now. So in some ways, the reshuffle was just kind of addressing that gap. The Pangu ructions are a bit of a sideshow, really. There are signs of a lot of dissatisfaction within this coalition government. We've heard a number of the Highlands government MPs in recent days criticising the government for going into this new Papua LNG gas project. They're concerned about the terms of it and whether landowner interests are being protected. So that dissatisfaction now seems to be surging ahead of this likely motion of no confidence.
DW: It's quite remarkable, isn't it? Because the People's National Congress, the party of Peter O'Neil, it had looked impregnable just a matter of couple of weeks ago, and now we're in the situation where more resignations are possible aren't we?
JB: Claims that there's great dissatisfaction within the government have been going on for months, but we haven't seen clear signs of it until the last couple of weeks. But Peter O'Neill has been the dominant political player in Papua New Guinea politics for what... seven or eight years now. He's a master at garnering the numbers, and we can't count him out just yet. But there's no doubt these ructions represent the biggest threat to his leadership that we've seen since he emerged as leader back in 2011.
