Resignation call spreading across PNG

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Protests against Papua New Guinea’s prime minister are spreading around the country.

The protests have been given impetus through a national awareness campaign by university students calling for Peter O’Neill to stand aside to face questioning over an alleged fraud case.

Police fraud squad officers secured an arrest warrant for Mr O’Neill two years ago over his role in allegedly illegal state payments to a law firm.

O’Neill’s lawyers launched a series of legal challenges to the arrest warrant which are yet to be finalised in court.

Thousands of citizens in Eastern Highlands, Western Highlands, and Enga provinces have come out in support of the students’ call for O’Neill to resign.

About five thousand students at the University of PNG in Port Moresby have been boycotting classes for a month.

The protest has seen them pitted against not just the government but also the UPNG management, in a stand-off they appear unlikely to back down from, the ABC reports.

Students at PNG’s second biggest tertiary institution, the University of Technology in Lae, have also held protests, although without interference from the management of their institution.

In the last week, groups of students from both institutions have travelled to the provinces to raise awareness about the issues they are protesting about.

In Madang province on the north coast, university students held a large rally in Madang town. Observers noted they were well-conducted and peaceful.

There have been similar mobilisations in most provincial capitals in PNG’s Highlands region over recent days.

In Mt Hagen, one student leader warned locals that the prime minister’s refusal to be questioned over the fraud case was setting a dangerous precedent.

“If the prime minister is trying to go above the law, then the parliamentarians, the members who are under the arms of the prime minister they will try to go above the law,” he told the crowd.

“And then the chain of reaction will come even to the grassroots level. Then there will be a lawless society.”

In another Highlands province, Simbu, around six thousand people attended a forum discussing concerns that the prime minister has been complicating efforts to probe high level fraud.

Social media reports have emerged indicating that protestors could conduct blockages of PNG’s premier road, the Highlands Highway, if the prime minister doesn’t step down.

Responding to university students’ demands for his resignation, Peter O’Neill earlier this week indicated he had no intention of standing down, arguing that matters being raised in the protests are still before the courts.

- RNZI/PNC