GoPNG Is Trying To Be Peaceful And Is Turning Out To Be Harmless Which Is Harmful For PNG

The observed rise of lawlessness and disorder in these recent times is also a reflection of the GoPNG becoming harmless. They say violence begets violence and this is true among the people but GoPNG, as a parent, must not hesitate to respond decisively and forcefully to quell these violent disputes and arrest and punish the offenders as a deterrent.

One of the functions of government is to ensure that there is law and order and to protect the individual citizen against abuse and coercion by other citizens. But the government appears to be failing miserably in living up to this function.

Our responsible State authorities are not intervening assertively and aggressively into violent arm conflicts and are leaving people to settle disputes on our own. "Pait na kilim yupela yet igo ikam na yumi stap" is what authorities appear to be saying as GoPNG takes more and more of an observer/spectator role. GoPNG tries to be neutral and peaceful in these violent situations but instead it is increasingly losing its own reputation and appearing as harmless.

In a time of increasing 'big headedness' and blatant disregard of law enforcement authorities and agencies by the citizens, GoPNG must earn the right to be peaceful. They say "a government is peaceful only if it is capable of greater violence". Aggression respects aggression! Power respects power! If the government is not able to display its might and show us who is in control, it will not be respected in this function to maintain law and order and in brokering peace.

Maybe an authoritarian police state will make our paradise safe again?

Perhaps we should side with China to to leverage an authoritarian police state to make our paradise safe again.

Postscript

Democracy appears to be not working effectively for us now as our people take democracy to the extreme by expressing themselves irresponsibly. Even if we have 'good' leadership, a bad system or style of government is still going to beat a 'good' leader all the time in any systematically corrupt system. Often when people make reference to a 'good' leader, it will be based on the utilitarian good outcomes they deliver to the majority of the people regardless if the government system is good or bad. The 'good' leaders are not judged on their methods but based on the outcomes.

Where democracy is not working for us and to break this cycle, the leader we have now must be prepared to do some 'bad' to change the system of government for the greater utilitarian good. They say "hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times". We need a 'strong leader' who should understand that in this hard and trouble times, it is time to stop leading and start herding the people and other leaders into the right direction.

Some individuals have the personalities to lead, but, they must have the opportunities and the situations in which to display their initiatives in a system setting that they operate in. Would a ‘good’ leader be able to operate and lead effectively in an already bad system? If the system is not enabling the leader to deliver the required outputs, then the leader must use his/her initiative to change the system for the better, not just for him/her now but also for future leaders to thrive in. The leader must adapt the system to suit changing times and attitudes.

When the leader acts bad but improves the system, many of us will be quick to acknowledge the leader as a good leader and quickly ignore the fact that in fixing the system the leaders had to sometimes ‘operate in the dark to serve the light’. The ‘emotional bank account’ the leader has created in our mind is full of good deeds or credit that despite the debts or bad deeds, the credits will easily outweigh the debts.

Leaders who understand this will operate accordingly to change a bad system into a good system and we all will sing their praise as 'everything rises and fall on leadership'.

Why Parkop Can Survive the Yoga Saga: Emotional Bank Accounts, Timing and Peoples' Short Memory.

Consider your bank account as a scale pivoted at the fulcrum. On one side you have credits and on the other side you have debits. In the normal or zero state, the scale is balanced with credits equaling debits. If you withdraw credits, the scale will tilt in favour of debits. But, if you deposit credits, the scale will tilt favouring credits. Similar and opposite happens to the debits when you add or subtract them. To avoid debts you can withdraw from the bank only if and when you have sufficiently excessive credits in your account.

The emotional bank account works similar to the described physical bank account. In the emotional bank account all good deeds build credits onto your account and every bad deed will remove credits from your emotional bank account. If you have high credits stacked up, a bad deed may reduce your credits by taking away some credits but the remaining credits may just be enough to still tilt the scale in your favour. But if you have less to no credits at all, a bad deed is going to cancel all your credits and accumulate debits which will tilt the scale against you.

Do you think Powes Parkop has sufficient credit to offset his yoga saga?

If Parkop survives any leadership tribunal that may eventuate from this yoga saga, two things in favour of Parkop is time and peoples' short memory. This yoga thingy happens now in the first year of the 10th Parliament period. The remaining four years of this parliament is a long time in politics for people to forget quickly. Not only this length of time but also our peoples' apparent short memory, and by the fifth year, close to the elections, people will have their current anti yoga emotions drown out and already care less about the yoga scandal.

Parkop may or will have regain enough credit by then to tilt back peoples' emotional bank account in favour of our yoga governor Powes Parkop.