PNG a dysfunctional blob: US cables

According to WikiLeaks, Papua New Guinea was described by the US Embassy Officers and Australian Officers as “dysfuntional blob”

While this may impact PNG-Australia relations, I don’t think the PNG Government wants to worry about that at the moment. We all know the views from Australia and US will never change. Jumping up and down just because someone call me FAT will not change their views……I just must prove em wrong!

Similarly, the PNG Government shouldn’t burden itself on name callings but should conduct itself in high regards. Let children play their games of name-calling!

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Papua New Guinea’s public service was a “totally dysfunctional blob”, while its political institutions are incapable of producing leaders who would work in their nation’s interest, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare is painted as a leader who sidelines MPs with integrity and dishes out jobs to his favourites, including his son Arthur, whom he appointed a government minister.

In a cable dated April 2006, the US embassy notes that Sir Michael sidelined three of his most effective cabinet ministers, who could have been expected to resist irresponsible moves to pass out favours.

“To not mince words, the pork has hit the fan,” the cable said.

It said trying to getting business done in a lead-up to an election in PNG was “always hard”.

“Somare has freed himself from inconvenient checks on his ability to wheel and deal,” it said.

“These events just confirm that PNG’s political institutions are still a long way from producing national leaders with incentives to work in their nation’s interest.”

The cables also noted comments from Australian embassy officials in June 2007 who described generational change in PNG as a “false hope”.

“Other Australian officers described the PNG public service as a totally dysfunctional blob that is great at planning but appalling at implementation,” the cable added.

A July 2006 cable said PNG was steeped in traditional magic and ignorant of modern economies.

It said Papua New Guineans were easy marks for Ponzi schemes, which proliferated throughout the country.

It said with an election looming the politicians were “dusting off their bottles of snake oil”.

The cables said the government had presided over the closure of health centres and schools, the collapse of effective policing and a steady rise in crime but there would be little mention of this during the campaign.

“Instead the themes will be the ageless one of which clan/village can get its man into government and reap the benefits thereby.”

 http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8294107/png-a-dysfunctional-blob-us-cables

When the Cat is away…… the mice began’s to play

Sir Michael Somare returns to Papua New Guinea today!

This is almost 3 months after he was hospitalized and given leave by Parliament to undergo and urgent medical procedure. Whilst Chief Somare was away the Parliament decides that there was a vacancy in the Prime Minister’s post and opted to elect a new Prime Minister. Peter O’Niel was chosen to fill the vacancy.

ESP now has placed a Supreme Court reference questioning amongs other things if there exists a vacancy in the Prime Minister seat and also if Parliament acted out of its rules by voting for a new PM on the same day instead of the next seating of the Parliament.

But Sir Michael arrives back today in the country because Parliament choose to seat earlier than expected. Rather than risked being removed from Parliament for missing 3 consecutive seating…… Sir Michael Returns.

It would be interesting to see what transpires on Tuesday…… obviously Sir Michael would head straight to the PM’s seat…..and I wonder what would happen. Will speaker Nape move him to the opposition??

Only time will tell……..can’t wait for Tuesday!!

 

 

 

It was an Honour

Last week was one of those stressful and most intensive week of my entire life. Maybe close to sitting for an exam during those years back in Uni. Late to bed and early to be awake and even a month prior to last week, it was just hectic.

Rex & Serah with Lars Thunell in Tokua Airport

The subject of my stress was the visit of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) CEO & World Bank Executive Vice President Lars Thunell to Papua New Guinea. He spent almost 5 days here which is the longest he has been to any country apart from United States.

Lars Thunell’s visit was to signed an Establishment Agreement with the Government of Papua New Guinea and officially open IFC’s office in Deloitte Tower. Whilst in PNG, Lars was able to go on a trip to Goroko to open a BSP Rual Bank and Kokopo to visit the Digicel distribution network at work.

Lars strikes me as a very down to earth person and whilst he was in Kokopo I introduced him to Mary one of Digicel’s sub-distributors. Mary was able to demonstrate to Lars how EVD works on a phone-to-phone basis. While marshalling Lars around Kokopo market and even having a chat with Mary, he seems very interested in Mary and what Mary had to say regarding the Digicel sub-distributor program.

Lars is not the first VIP in the World Bank Group that I have meet, in 2007 I meet with Paul Wolfowitz who was then the President of World Bank in Singapore during a joint IMF/World Bank annual meeting.

Life is short, and I must say it was an Honour to have meet people like Lars Thunell and Paul Wolfowitz

Rex and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz in Singapore

Hekari made us Proud

It was 1:30 am in the morning…… and I have just camped under my tin-roof sacked at Tauram Beach in Port Moresby. Red-eyed from sleep, I rushed to put on my small generator so I can get a glimpsed of Hekari United in action againts Al Wahda in Abu Dhabi. Generator started and my portal TV switched on, I seached to find the correct channel to get EMTV. However, my wired-hanger antenna just couldn’t pick out the signal.

Disappointed, I resorted to text my friends who would be awake to watch the match on TV. Yes… found someone up… Thankyou David.. but no thankyou for the result of 2-0 before half-time.

Balloons deflated, a feeling of disappointment I walked into my little sack and just wanted to get some sleep and forget that Hekari was loosing and quietly hoping that Hekari would come back into the second half and turn things around. Hopefully if I go to sleep and get up in the morning to turn my computer on, i’d get a different result which would have made my entire week.

It was not to be……but one thing Hekari would have gone away with is the fact that they have seen football biggest stage. They would have now experience what is like to be competing againts the worlds best. And to be a force to be reckon with, they need to polish up on their act, play with their hearts and play smarter…

Hekari has made Papua New Guinea proud and certainly all of the Pacific Islands!!!

back again

And so I am back again to my old blog :’(

I had thought moving towards the new site Yu Tok Organization was going to be a great success. And while it was a great success in the initial stages and we had thousands and many subscribers and visitors who visited the site each day, we though we had made the break that we would now launch a successful social network site on NING Plateform.

While this was possible, I didn’t anticipate a minor glitched which turn out to be a major problem. NING Plateform which was suppose to be a free hosting site decided to do a u-turn and start to charge it’s subscbers on the site. Now while it can be beneficial and profitable for some… NGO like Yu Tok cannot afford it as we don’t charge our members either and knowing that our members are also from developing worlds that can’t afford to subsribe monthly to our site.

So here we are, out of pocket and out of ideas and with my tail in between my leg have decided to get back here and reorganised and restrategied and see where I can take it up again. The idea of this bigger and better social network still reigns but all I need now is someone or someway to at least sustain and maintain a social network.

The possibility is still there…..I just need to find a way to sustain it

Social Networking Website

 

Dear Readers

I have been neglecting this blog for a long time now…… gosh I can’t even remember when I last posted here.

The reason being that I have been working on a new Social Networking site in Asia Pacific Region. The social networking site is similar to Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, MySpace and the list goes on… What its great about this site… is that it is owned and run by me (yours truely) but also have moderators from over the Pacific Region.

Yu Tok Organization or Yu Tok Social Network is a growing social networking for Young people and those who are young at heart in Papua New Guinea and across the Asia Pacific Region.

The site has the following Features;

• Discussion Boards
• Chat Rooms
• Groups
• Videos
• Music Site
• iMagazine
• iPaper
• Games Arcade ( over 200 plus)
• C31 – our new Partner in our quest for a community TV

From the day that I launced the website and till now here are my stats;

466 members	1557 photos
372 songs	77 videos
103 discussions	63 blog posts

Not to mentioned I have 10, 435 visitors from 59 countries.

And the amazing thing is people are signing up almost every day…..

So if you looking for a place to hang-out with wantoks or friends….. and wanting to create a network and meet people….check the site out.

Congratulations Helen

Helen Samilou, famous for her bravery towards discrimination due to her status as living with HIV/AIDS has been awarded the Papua New Guinea 2008 Award for International Women of Courage. 

This remarkable woman has defied all odds and has come out publicly with her status. She not only told everyone about her status but she has gone a step further by advocating for People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and been a role model for many. Another guy, Peter Momo is also doing his part advocating and also warning people to be careful with their life.  

 

Helen was presented this award by Ambassodor Leslie Rowe in a closed ceremony held at the American Embassy on Wednesday morning. In attendance was Dame Carol Kidu, the first winner of the Award in Papua New Guinea.

Dame Kidu congratulated Helen but was ashamed the government of PNG did not do more for people like Helen and also was not present for the awards ceremony.

Vodcasting key to Media Development

My media training class where asked to do podcasting. So what is vodcasting??

According to Wikipedia “Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures. The term is an evolution specialized for video, coming from the generally audio-based podcast and referring to the distribution of video where the RSS feed is used as a non-linear TV channel to which consumers can subscribe using a PC, TV, set-top box, media center or mobile multimedia device.”

So my small class which I have been facilitating for media training armed with a digital camera started to take short clips of them to upload onto youtube as part of their training. But because we there are 10 of them… we decided to make just one video and combine smaller ones together. I decided also to add a few pictures I took on my trips around PNG so it gives a PNG flavor to the video. While the final product was not as impressive…. due to lack of better video editing software… I was able to upload something.

There has been an interesting discussion also on Masalai blog about Government TV and my good friend Badira has suggested that digicams and camcorders would be easily accessible to young people who would produce short clips and make content out of it to be aired on TV. So maybe this is the first step towards such activities….a crash course on social media. 

Need for Improvement in Women Soccer

I was one of the many Papua New Guinean die-hards of soccer at the Loyd Robson oval to watch our Woman National Team take on the might of New Zealand ferns. The winner of the two teams will be representing Oceania at the Woman’s World Cup.

We cheered and screamed and shout to push and support our woman… but it seems they wern’t interested or maybe they underestimated their own capabilities. Our gurls seem to have lost the soccer match even before they took the field. There was no desire in the strikers to run at the opponents defenders. When they lost posession they all moved back and no one wanted to force the opponent to make a move. Now I’ve been to bisini and I’ve seen the PMSA teams play…. I note that, its the same tactic being used.

What is wrong with our coaches? Have they lost vision or even creativity? No wonder we get hammered when we play against Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Why can’t we change the style of playing? Why can’t we start doing the simple things correct by play short passes instead of longer one and not going anywhere? Its really disappointing to note that…. the woman’s team where trying to hit the long balls when they don’t have height in front.

Now… I was glad that we didn’t conceed more than 2 goals… but I am utterly disappointed about the style of play that our clubs are adopting… its just not suiting and not working.  And to top off the disappointment is when our girls stating to play alittle dirty when they where 2 goals down.

What happened to “Fair Play” ? If you where beaten by a better side… work harder and try next time…. its embarrasing already to see them kick the opponents and pull their shirts and not even apologising or helping them off the ground.

Lets be creative… look at the south americans… we may learn a thing or two.

Traveling in PNG

The youth social media training with MediaSnackers have introduced me to a new site called Animoto. This is site is a place where you can upload your pictures and it will create a video of them. It can also factor in music for your folders so you can have a slide-show of pictures with music.

 Anyway… this interesting site has prompted me to upload pictures of my trips to Manus, Goroka, Wewak and Miline Bay so I can share with people. The short video is only 30 secs long as longer versions will costs a few cents.

 Well, hope you enjoy the pictures!

Okay.. okay… I can’t seem to embed Animoto on wordpress…. so I’ll just make a short video and upload to youtube for viewing.

Laters people