PNG professional workers call for PM Peter O’Neill’s resignation

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – A group of professional workers in Papua New Guinea has threatened to shut down services if the country’s prime minister refuses to resign.

The coalition of so-called “concerned citizens” includes pilots, aviation workers, lawyers and senior union members, the ABC reports.

They claim to represent workers from a number of industries and have given Prime Minister Peter O’Neill a 48-hour deadline to step down and allow police to question him about a long-running corruption case.

One of the group’s leaders, pilot James Makop, said the workers wanted Mr O’Neill to resolve the allegations to end political tension in PNG.

“No man, not even the prime minister, who is mandated by us, by the people of Papua New Guinea, on borrowed power, can raise himself above the rest of us and say he’s above the law,” Mr Makop said.

O’Neill was overseas at the time of the group’s announcement.

He has previously said the corruption allegations against him are politically-motivated, and defended his right to dispute them in court.

Another member of the group, lawyer Moses Murray, said workers were spurred into action when police shot protesting students at the University of Papua New Guinea on June 8.

“Citizens have woken up,” he said.

“The students wanted to air things out and they were stopped.

“The use of the guns on unarmed students, that calls for us to say ‘it is time, it is time that Papua New Guinea must know that we need to do something now to save this country’.”

The action by professional workers adds to the groundswell of discontent with Papua New Guinea’s government, and more specifically the administration of Prime Minister O’Neill.

O’Neill has repeatedly tried to thwart investigations into allegations that about $30 million of fraudulent legal bills were paid to a legal firm Paraka Lawyers. It is alleged the payment was made on the written insistence of the prime minister.

Interviews with one prominent lawyer have suggested some, if not most, of the missing money had been siphoned into Australia to buy real estate or other investments.

Lawrence Stephens, PNG chair of anti-corruption agency Transparency International, said attempts to find the money or question the prime minister had yielded little information.

“Many people are particularly concerned that he has made no apparent effort to work to uncover the circumstances that were involved in that particular law firm receiving the funds that it was receiving or to look for other cases where the huge amounts of money have gone missing,” he said.

“In one instance he admits to eight billion kina lost from trust funds with no sign that there’s any interest at the official level in trying to track this.

“People get pretty frustrated. These are trust funds collected by government on behalf of the people for all sorts of different reasons – landowners, people who are resource owners – their money in accounts and simply lost.

“Those accusations go back over many years. O’Neill will point out that he has never been found to have committed an offence and so he deserves to be treated as innocent by the law.

“But he’s vigorously used every legal channel that he can to avoid presenting the information that investigators are seeking.”

In response to the recent student boycott calling for his resignation, O’Neill published a lengthy response, saying: “I wish to state clearly that I have no intention of either stepping aside or resigning from the office of Prime Minister.” - PNC