SIR MEKERE - THE FORGOTTEN REFORMIST
By Charlie Gilichibi
(Published by Post Courier, Friday 26th July 2024)
A date winged its way past last week. It came and went without any fanfare.
The government didn’t remember it. The people, including political watchers, historians, and anti-corruption NGOs forgot July 14.
The significance of it has been left behind. For want of an iconic statesman, let me just suggest Mekere Day.
On that day, 25 years ago, Sir Mekere Morauta, PNG’s greatest reformist politician, ascended the steps of Parliament House as Prime Minister.
In under 3 years, he delivered so many reforms for which we seem to be thankless.
1. Financial stability. We now have a stable financial industry by shielding it from political interference. We have a strong, stable, and sound banking sector which is healthy for business and personal banking. A strong savings and loans sector with total deposits/assets standing at K2 billion. In the superannuation sector, member savings grew from K500 million in 2002 (NPF K150 million and POSF K350 million) to K20 billion today for a million-plus working Papua New Guineans.
2. Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates Law (OLIPAC). This reform enabled Sir Michael Somare’s National Alliance Party to rule. It delivered a solid decade of fiscal discipline and strong economic growth that has no parallels in the 50 years of our country’s existence. This is when political stability and concentration of power are used for a good purpose and not for personal ambition and enrichment. Unfortunately for the OLIPAC, we have people who think they know more and over-interpreted the Constitution, took up a Supreme Court reference, and killed it. There are God-Given Natural Rights and Man-Made Qualified Rights. This was grossly missed and we lost a tool to tame our politicians.
3. Electoral Reforms. We used to have 20-40 percent representation in winning candidates to represent the people. That margin for the majority of winning candidates is now above 60 percent. Sheer numbers speak that we have enhanced and elevated our democracy for people representation.
4. To protect the assets of Western Province people, OTML and PNGSD were isolated from political interference. Politics got the better of things and expropriated OTML under O’Neill Government. Credit to Sir Mekere, he came back from retirement in 2017 to try and fight to reverse so much of the political disease that ate into our country’s vital organs.
But political will wasn’t there. Besides many other reforms Sir Mekere could have imparted if he had more than 3 years to govern as Prime Minister, he had the concept of creating a National Roads Trust and keep it away from political influence. The intention is to have it as a sustainable mechanism to fund national highways. We also have State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Sir Mekere intended to rehabilitate them and fully or partially privatize them.
He was lucky to merge a bankrupt PNGBC with BSP. However, he didn’t have the benefit of time to finish his work. Ross Garnaut once asked Sir Mekere: “You have created so many successful institutions and systems. What happens when those after you come and destroy them?”
Sir Mekere responded: “It does not matter what may happen after. The important measure is that it has been proven that it can be done by Papua New Guineans.” It always occurs to me how much more Sir Mekere could have achieved for PNG if he had one full 5-year term or two. I have no answer for it.
But we can be thankful he came along and showed us that it can be done.
People will not forget how Sir Mekere touches their lives even to this day with his reforms.
Only through reforms can we start to make a better country for ourselves, so we can have better political, social, and economic infrastructure to create the environment for the lives we dream of.
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How Sir Mekere became PM by sheer luck created by Haiveta and Pundari on the 13th and 14th of July 1999 below.
https://youtu.be/bWUMaJqiLrg
Or search in Youtube under "Sir Mekere - PNG's Best Reforms Prime Minister Ever. For the last 50 years and the next 50" to watch the video
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