The Story of Bidder 70

By the time his deed was done, he had become known as "Bidder 70". But when he was standing alone, in the midst of a crowd of people representing  billion dollar oil industry giants, Tim DeChristopher knew that whatever he chose to do inside the crowded auctioning room would have to amount to a felony and that he would be liable to face criminal charges. Today he waits for the judges to deliver a verdict that might send him to prison for 10 years for acting to prevent the oil and gas industry from committing an even greater crime against his country and its democracy.

Tim De Christopher AKA Bidder 70

On December the 19th, 2008, Tim De Christopher left his university campus after a finals exam and he headed straight for the venue of a controversial event. The US Bureau of Land Management was staging an auction in a bid to sell off oil and gas drilling rights to over 150,000 acres of wilderness in Southern Utah. 

Hundreds of protestors had gathered to try to stop the event which was controversial because there was a lot of concerns about its legitimacy. It was called the "fire sale" - the Bush administration's last great gift to the oil and gas industry. As this was during their final days in office, the Bush administration had nothing to lose. The sale of the lands had been given the go ahead. 


As events unfolded to seal the fate of history, Tim arrived alone on the scene.

He looked around him and could see that the public protest was getting nowhere. Walking around past the protestors, he eventually stepped inside into the auction area wondering what he could do. What could he do at such a late stage? How could he disrupt the auction?
The auction officers asked him whether he wanted to join the auction. He accepted and was given a number on an auction paddle. As history would later remember it, the paddle was numbered 70. He had become Bidder 70. Was this enough? What could he do with a bidding paddle? Swat a fly maybe, but stop a multi-billion-dollar industry from taking over public lands? - Not very probable. He took up his place with the paddle, his mind racing. He was in position but what could he actually do?

Amongst the protesters who had earlier spoken out against the sale of the Utah lands to oil and gas companies were Steve Bloc, Conservation Director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which had even the pursued the matter in court to try to stop the sale of the lands and lost. 
Actor and activist Robert Redford had also spoken out on television. His appeal is transcribed below here.

Robert Redford: Anyone who has been there, can testify to the fact, that there is no place like these lands. These lands are not chains and bushes. The lands are ours. They're ours because they're part of our legacy, they're part of the American human legacy. No place on earth can speak to the balance of beauty and nature like these areas. 

There's so much deception, so much sleight of hand here. I mean how would you feel, if there was an heirloom that was centuries old and someone came in while you were not looking, or distracted you, by creating something over here and took it away from you? How would you feel? 

This in not their land. This is our land. These are public lands and the BLM was supposed to be protecting these lands on our behalf. Once the lands are taken away, they're gone. And gone doesn't come back. 

So I feel strongly that we have to do everything, and it isn't a question of trying to talk to them. Forget that. That doesn't work. They've been trashing the environment ever since they came in, almost as if it is their duty to do so. But when they trash our lands and not theirs, and claim it is their prerogative, something is pretty criminal. So I say stop it. Enough is enough. Not only will it not serve the purpose they keep stating - it's not gonna provide any new energy. It's gonna pollute what we've already got, and it's gonna take away something that is ours to give to our children and their children, and their children, and their children and their children.
So I feel pretty strongly about this and I appreciate being given a chance to speak on it. As I said before, it's an emotional situation for me and we should not allow this to happen. It's criminal.

A few hours later later, the 27 year old was apprehended by federal police officers and taken outside for interrogation, Tim kept wondering to himself as he was being ejected from the auction premises whether he had done enough to disrupt the event.
How Tim Disrupted the Utah Oil Bid with a paddle

We pick up the story again from Malak Behrouznami, a journalist with the Real News Network, who interviewed Tim on April 1, 2009

BEHROUZNAMI: Tim DeChristopher, also known as Bidder 70, was indicted on two felony counts for his participation during a US Bureau of Land Management gas and oil lease auction that took place December 19, 2008, in Salt Lake City. DeChristopher is being accused of disrupting the auction by purchasing 22,000 of 130,000 bids in an attempt to save the land from gas and oil development. The bids comprise a total of $1.7 million, which DeChristopher is unable to pay for.

DECHRISTOPHER: Well, I showed up at the auction, which was very controversial because there was a lot of concerns about the legitimacy of the auction. It was the very last one of the Bush administration. They were auctioning off huge tracts of land outside of Arches and Canyonlands National Park for oil and gas development. So I walked in, and they asked me if I wanted to be a bidder, and so I said yes and ended up with a bidder paddle and then got inside and saw an opportunity to make a really serious stand against this auction. So I started bidding first to drive up the prices, and then actually winning parcels. And I ended up winning 14 parcels before they stopped the auction and took me out and interrogated me at that point.

BEHROUZNAMI: On January 17, 2009, the Bureau of Land Management was found to be at fault for violating environmental protection laws concerning air quality and historic preservation. Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina temporarily froze the sale of 77 parcels. On February 4, 2009, the Obama administration's interior secretary, Ken Salazar, pulled the 77 leases, which included DeChristopher's bids.

DECHRISTOPHER: There were several issues involved in this auction. Probably the one that's gotten the most attention was just the destruction of our national heritage. These were pristine lands right outside of Arches and Canyonlands national parks. And I think a bigger factor is the threat to our climate that's associated with this drill now, think later mentality that is posing a massive threat to our future. And then the other issue involved in it is the lack of a democratic and transparent process, where the BLM wasn't following their own rules in holding this auction. And that's really the reason that it was overturned later on is that the government admitted that the BLM hadn't done an adequate environmental impact statement, they hadn't weighed the consequences, they hadn't discussed things with other government agencies the way they were supposed to. And it also later turned out that the BLM was in violation of a law that went into effect in 2001 requiring them to weigh the impacts of climate change with any decision like this that they make.

Second Interview by Emma Coleman of the Huffington Post

Emma Coleman: What compelled you to go to the auction and do what you did?

Tim DeChristopher: I saw the auction as a confluence of several issues. The one that got a lot of attention around that time was the destruction of our natural heritage -- that these were beautiful public lands that were being destroyed. But more important to me was what I thought was the destruction of our democracy that this auction represented. That this was public property and yet the public had been locked out of the decision-making process. And the government agencies weren't following their own laws in the way that they ran this auction. But probably the biggest motivation for me was the threat of climate change. And the threat that this "drill now, think later" mentality represented to my own future and to the future of the people that I care about. We've certainly seen the results of that mentality over the past few months and its directly destructive impact.

Tim DeChristopher Faces Sentencing on the Felony Charges on July 26th 2011

Tim was convicted on March 3rd and faces sentencing on July 26th (Delayed from June 23rd, read about the delay here).  Anyone able to donate to help his legal team prepare for appeals can do so here.

But Tim is not lying down for anything.

Power Shift 2011 Keynote Address

To understand a little more about the man behind Bidder 70, we should listen to him express his convictions when he spoke about staying human as we wonder what we should do to save the Planet Earth during our lifetime.

Notes:
1. As a lot of people may be trying to view this video, please do be patient and let it load before you can enjoy viewing it.
2. Remember that the Title of this Blog Article is also a link to the support site for Tim DeChristopher and the Peaceful Revolution.

Where Private Goes Public

Resignation of a Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea

"Ailing PNG leader Somare retiring: family". So reads an article headline in an Australian online Newspaper, ABC News, which goes on to report:

"The family of Papua New Guinea's prime minister Sir Michael Somare says the veteran leader is retiring because of ill health.

The 75-year-old underwent heart surgery earlier this year in Singapore and remains in hospital.

Sir Michael's son, Arthur Somare, said Sir Michael remained in intensive care and was "not in a good enough condition" to discuss retirement, so the family took the decision on his behalf.

In a statement, Arthur Somare said complications from his father's heart surgery "further delayed the anticipated time in which Sir Michael was expected to recover and return to Papua New Guinea".

"Therefore, on behalf of [his wife] Lady Veronica, I wish to announce that it is our family's collective desire that Sir Michael be allowed to recover at his own pace and therefore retire," he said.

"In our considered decision to do this we believe PNG should have a level of certainty with regard to political stability and leadership well into the future.

"This has not been an easy decision to take without full and proper consultation with Sir Michael."

Other newspapers carried similar versions of the story.

Legal experts have deemed this public announcement, unconstitutional, stating that the only way a Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea can resign is by notice in writing to the Head of State. Only after that would the Governor General upon accepting this resignation, proceed with the appropriate processes towards appointing a new Prime Minister.

Sir Michael and Lady Somare in younger days

The Prime Minister and Grand Chief is ill somewhere in Singapore and he probably does want to resign from his office as Prime Minister. It would be fitting that this reality be treated and approached properly by those that are able to act. Arthur Somare, upon assessing his father's health could seek assistance from the Prime Minister's staff so that they would be able to take appropriate actions according to protocol. 

Public Announcements and Accountability

Sir Michael is Arthur Somare's father. But as a national leader himself, Mr. Somare, son of our chief, needs to recognise the definition between Sir Michael, father of Arthur and Sir Michael, father of Papua New Guinea. Accordingly it would be inappropriate that he would regard the Grand Chief simply as his own father while making public representations or when making public statements regarding the office that his father holds. 

Mr. Somare should conduct himself in such a way, so that also, when there are allegations of corruption or any other allegations of crime committed in high office, leveled against the Prime Minister, that these are clearly separate from any that are level against Arthur Somare himself.  In this way, both holders of public office could be perceived separately by the public according to their innocence or their guilt. Of course the law sees them separately and under law they would be charged and tried separately even though each may be called as witnesses to give evidence in one another's trials.

But this article is merely concerned with Arthur's handling of his father's image in the hearts and minds of Papua New Guineans. It aims to reestablish the public claim to their part of the heritage from a leader.

It would be a pity if a scenario of family interest and allegations of corruption were allowed to cloud the great investments in public interest that the grand chief spent so much time and energy in struggling for.

People close to the Chief should allow the ordinary people of Papua New Guinea the possibility to hold Sir Michael in the original regard of the early years during the young country's age of idealism.

In his tribute to the late "Mr Grassroots", cartoonist Bob Brown, David Ingram refers to the idealism of that period:

"It was an exciting, optimistic period in PNG, with the peaceful transition to independence from Australia and the handover of the nation to mainly young indigenous men and women. What they lacked in skills and experience, they made up for in energy and youthful idealism. Even their first Prime Minister, Michael Somare, was only 39 at Independence. The national watch cry was “Go ahead strong!” and as the expatriates withdrew south of the Torres Straits, many were replaced by volunteers from around the world, mainly from Australia, Britain, Canada, the US and – through various religious or political organisations – Western Europe. We all knew our jobs were only meant to be temporary and most of us left when our time finished, but others, such as Browne, were seduced by the country, its climate, its natural beauty, exotic cultures and, most of all, by its friendly and welcoming people."

Sirs, Michael, Yambakey and Tei

Leaders as Part of the Public Heritage

Whoever we are, or what ever we have become as a country of people, we deserve our public heritage in all its forms and conditions.

Sir Michael, Sir Yambakey Okuk, Sir Tei Abal, they are all members of a group of people who are part of the heritage of Papua New Guineans. They are considered public property.

We can still sense this respect for Sir Michael, in the writings of many Papua New Guineans. In his award winning blog site, Malum Nalu once featured a story reflecting the actions of Sir Michael in moving Papua New Guinea towards its Independence.

There are millions of Papua New Guineans who in spite of the many struggles and the shifting tides of nationhood, still regard Sir Michael as the hero of PNG's achievement of independence. In fact, in the mid to late 1980s, when rural people were asked about their political system by filmmakers, not many politicians were widely known to the grassroots people. Sir Michael's name "Somare" remained and probably still remains the only household name in the political knowledge of a majority of the public. Many people from all over the country cried for him the first time he lost his Prime Ministerial post in a vote of no confidence. I asked some of them why they were sad for him when they had a new PM in Sir Julius Chan. They said: "He is our prime minister. He gave us independence".

Due Regard

Today, as Arthur Somare, perhaps motivated by his own aspirations and political positioning, fails to separate family from public office or to care about or recognise his father's place in the hearts of millions of Papua New Guineans, many people would urge the question: "Could we have our Chief back now please".

In that kind of idealism in the public sentiment, leaders of Papua New Guinea need to remember the wish of the ordinary people to live in the country of their dreams and by such force to be better guardians and stewards of the people's common heritage.

The Prime Minister has got his own staff including high level officers (from the Prime Minister's Department) who must have access to Sir Michael during moments where his health permits official business to be discussed and transacted. So there are people who can help the Prime Minister draft a letter of resignation to the Governor General if he is unable to do so himself at this time.

Even if it would prove detrimental to the political aspirations of the National Alliance, the chief in his moment of ill health, should not be used as political leverage for future political speculation. He has done a lot and deserves better treatment from those around him.

A Death Penalty

Here's a poem I wrote a long time ago, in Goroka - somewhere after the death penalty was introduced in PNG. 


I guess it's not really a poem, just a thought about what we were going through as a country and the decisions we were making then - and now too. 


I'm quite fascinated with all kinds of organisations and how close or how far away they are from the human heart, soul and spirit. That's for me one of the questions about what makes an organisation such as a country move - the spirit of organisation or its instruments, or both or none of them.


This came into question for me especially because we made a law that allowed us to take human life - which touches on many dimensions where we begin to question our moral values. And I was thinking that maybe the country had developed a certain mood - 20 years after independence I thought wow, we are finally united about one thing. We collectively feel a mood of anger about the state of crime and lawlessness and we have decided to choose an instrument to deal with our matter of concern - a deadly instrument.


This was the death penalty so obviously it was not an ordinary kind of legal decision. It was a decision to commit collective murder.


I'm not one of those people who believe that human goodness and morals should be regulated by law and at the same time I believe that we are not a cult which has to be ruled by any religious law. That would not be prudent because not many Christian denominations can agree to come to a common understanding about many parts of their holy book.


Although our constitution says that we are a Christian country, we are also a secular state, in that no affair of the state is regulated by the ruling of any single one of our many church denominations. That would be just too chaotic and unnecessary. Specific church belief and moral teachings belong inside each congregation and everyone agrees that religious beliefs should not be imposed outside of a particular congregation so that it would bear upon the dignity and rights of other people from other congregations and other belief systems. 


By that same argument, as a culturally diverse country, none of us expects that our national affairs be run using the systems of only one tribal culture but rather by a neutral system of laws that we can all find appropriate and fair to people of all cultures and creeds.


Anyway that is the background to this "poem". Happy reading.

A Death Penalty

They sat under the shade

Of a meeting mango tree

The magistrate and a councillor

And the mother of the house

She rattled with her cooking

The pastor was her husband

And formal with their guests

The day was to be long

Their voices grave in tone

The law had long been passed

Death was legal and proper

To punish crimes to a degree

The councillor faced the magistrate

This concept is a crime

How would you so determine

A crime to be so bad

That one must die for it

Good councillor my friend

I cannot be exact

I myself feel convicted

That I must pass a judgement

To take a human life

Even from a criminal

The law abiding pastor

He spoke of these two questions

Who would kill the sentenced

And how would that be done

But pastor said the councillor

Do you accept this law

No councillor good friend

You know of course I don't

I too must live with it

But I was only asking

The three relaxed to eat

And she spoke then quite clear

You three important men

Custodians of the peace

Leaders of the thought procession

People behind you who scream

They would not wear your sandals

But look at how they shout

Expatriates, businessmen and politicians

The elite the cream of society

Your other frightened people

Who understand no modern laws

They live each day supressed

Not knowing how to move

Your justice frightens them

With tearful eye she left

There sat the men alone

Their voices rose again

Dilemma persisted

Who was to execute

What would a method be

They contradicted much

Of words they'd said before

But some of what they thought

Had life and left their tongues

A man must do the killing

It fits in with his roles

A woman fits the role

She represents the conscience

Maybe an expatriate

They run the country too

A criminal should execute

They handle blood much better

A tribal fighter too

Would do a job well done

Politicians and hypocrites

They too deserve to hang

Bureaucrats perhaps

They work without their souls

The list went on and on

They thought they had to stop

And search for ways of killing

With shudders they proceeded

They made a gruesome list

Each item was explored

Criterion Accorded

Pointed with et cetera

And contradictions too

The ideal execution

Was one that ended quick

Or had public support

Public participation

Where we all shared the blood

Our unborn children too

And we were satisfied

That justice had been done

And criminals learnt their lesson

Perhaps a cult or caste

Could do the dirty job

Without identity

An execution mask

A new tradition mask

Said a passing bloke

Eavesdropping to the beach

They slept that night without

Much peace from all their talk

And sunlight speared them wake

To walk back to the log

Under the mango tree

That still provided shade

Reminiscent moods

Came clouding present thought

The three old man sat silent

Before their talks began

A gloomy rifting silence

Sobbered by the night

Separated by concerns

Their betel nuts were slow

To melt their frozen tongues

Their minds just sought recluse

To gather and be strong

The pastor cleared his throat

We did not make the law

Ourselves are not to blame

That's true the council said

We help to keep the law

But laws are changing now

The magistrate conceded

We must keep with the change

The law frustrates me too

Gets difficult to rule

To tell where justice lies

You know that past traditions

Knew justice clearly too

We're ruling for two cultures

The old ones and the new

Please bear that in your mind

I justify no crime

But striving to be fair

To understand all sides

Is difficult enough

And then I stand alone

Sending killers to their graves

I would be killer too

A murderer if you like

And you too are the same

You would condone me too

Criminals kill for sure

But you and I let's think

Is it the same for us

To plan a person's death

To sit under this tree

Premeditate and contemplate

Entertain visions of their blood

You would agree with me

That when we choose to kill

Eradicate to settle crime 

Achieve justice by a death penalty

Society would have changed

These unkind brutal measures

Will they solve our problems

And will the crime rate drop

That's not a proven fact

Martin Maden 1995

What is Development?

Part 1: Medicine

We have all been thinking and talking about the definition of 'Development' especially within the dilemma we find ourselves in, in Papua New Guinea regarding this question. 

There are many controversies and contradictions concerning not only the ideal path we wish to follow, but also our development choices, the advantages of certain choices and also the negative aspects of some of our choices. 

For sure we cannot all be happy about the various development choices we have to make, but one of the crucial considerations of development lies in the nature of the acquisition of collective consent about our national choices, goals and objectives. 

Every society, every country requires a systematic procedure towards arriving at collective consent. Many traditional societies in Papua New Guinea could offer our national governments so many models of seeking, negotiating and acquiring community consent. In our traditional philosophies we even have names for many of these methods. Yet like every other democracy on earth, Papua New Guinea's democracy struggles with acquiring public consent for our national decisions.

We have maybe too often heard the rhetoric about 'development principles' but often the actual principles behind the choices we make as a collective entity, fail to manifest themselves in the form of collective human satisfaction and harmony. 

The effort it takes for any country to arrive at collective consent on any development issue is very difficult to attain. As a result, as we see in Papua New Guinea, and even in the United States of America, the fine art of acquiring collective consent is often avoided altogether. 

Some members of parliament like Moses Maladina, try to invent policy loop holes that can help Parliament to avoid the task of acquiring public consent, but rather seek to bulldoze laws through parliament without public information, debate and collective decision making. Others spend their time in parliament as specialists in filibustering while others, our 'yo-yo' members, spend their time crossing floors and just playing the numbers game. So it happens that we can very easily make a mockery out of our systems of state and thus we also see our country committing a major failure in one of the crucial principles of national development: the achievement of collective consent. 

And let us not forget: the true art and objective of politics and parliamentarianism is to seek to acquire public support for public proposals and programmes - not to just be in government.

Why is it so difficult to acquire collective consent? I may get back to this at a later issue. Today I want to deal with one of the crucial ingredients of collective consent:

The recognition of Common Values. 

In Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin, we call this 'Luksave'.

I will take the example of Health and Medicine for this first installment because this is one of the things our rural people cry out for when they want 'Development'. Rural people all over Papua New Guinea are signing away their rights to their natural livelihood on the land because they want schools, roads and hospitals.

We all want good health. But at what point can we as a country arrive at the common recognition of this value - in a way that we can approach our health development programmes in a systematic manner, without too much argument and fuss along the way, about what our priorities are, what are the standards, what are the best medicines, what is the best medical equipment and technology available on the international market, what kind of facilities to build first and where, how do we maintain our existing facilities, and at the end how do we build a reliable health system in which all our people and cultures may have faith?

My good friend, an Egyptian doctor working in Goroka in 1994, Dr. Adel El Mezin Ibrahim, told me once that: "Medicine is common sense".

So today I look back at our country, floundering with indecision, and sometimes suffering from a seemingly lack of commitment to the perseverance needed for establishing the right health system for Papua New Guinea. And I ask myself how we may, on our own, with our own human, material and financial resources, run, manage and maintain for a long time, a sustainable health system, until the very culture of proper health care and awareness becomes an internalised part and action in the psychology of all our people?

Everywhere I go, I'm always befriending medical doctors, medical researchers, anyone that can give me a clue about the riddle that riddles our people. I have flown from many very rural places in Papua New Guinea accompanying sick people who do not know their way to an urban hospital from the airport, offering to take them there myself - some of them so sick and suffering from things like tropical ulcers that the whole aircraft could smell like there was a very large dead animal on board. My heroes are those pilots who fly those little aeroplanes into the clouds of the various PNG mountains, some of them never to return.

Like many fellow Papua New Guineans, I have seen the look on many people's faces in the last hours before their death, I too have carried the bleeding and I feel that sometimes the blood leaves permanent marks on the back of my shoulders. I still hear the voice of the last person I tried to rescue in Goroka: His last words to me were: "Martin, mi no nap pilim wanpela samting long nek blo mi igo daun long lek. (Martin, I can't feel anything from my neck down to my feet). 

So I can understand our urgency, our strife and our cry for development. But it would be detrimental to consistent development in one were to proceed and to operate in crisis mode. We need to be systematic. We have to use our common sense. But we have to recognise our needs and to act appropriately and accordingly. We have to strive to create an environment of collective comfort and benefit for all our people. Then at one point in the future we may find that we can actually walk together.

Last week I was talking to a medical doctor, Dr. Wagner and his wife in Rottweil, Germany. We were talking about super bugs, and other medical considerations that I get curious about. Eventually, I ventured to ask Dr. Wagner, where we are as humans in our advancement in medicine. And together with his wife, they told me something that I felt was worth reflecting upon and sharing with all our people.

Dr. Wagner: In the last one hundred years, the greatest advance in medicine came in two main areas: 

1. Recognising that we must separate our drinking water from our sewage water. This recognition led humanity to successfully combat Cholera and many other diseases caused by the contamination of drinking water.

2. The second was recognising the fact that we have to separate our rubbish from our living environment. This recognition led to a cleaner living environment, free of infectious diseases that spring from the accumulation of waste.

I was quite surprised and happily shocked by the simplicity of his deduction. So I thought I'd probe further. I asked Dr. Wagner about the medical advances and research into, the identification of various kinds of bacteria and viruses and he agreed, but insisted that these advances cannot overshadow that medical advancement in the two areas he had mentioned.

And so what about penicillin I asked him... 

Dr. Wagner: The industrialised mass production of penicillin was perfected around 1945. Yes penicillin was an important discovery... at this point, Frau Wagner cut in to offer an explanation:

Frau Wagner: Penicillin cannot make a big difference to human health if we do not organise in order to avoid the danger of continuously re-infecting ourselves.

And there it was from Frau Wagner: a reiteration that even the great medical discovery of penicillin could not overshadow those two great steps mankind had taken in the advancement of medical science which her husband had spoken about.

Sixteen years after my conversation with Dr. Ibrahim, Frau Wagner was telling me again that chemical advancement alone, cannot replace common sense in Medical Science. So I was transported back in space to Papua New Guinea and the ample rhetoric we have heard over the years about development and health care, asking myself the same questions we ask over and over again about the state of our health system. 

Back to our dilemma of development and the acquisition of collective consent in development directions, I think it is time that our people stop accepting to be led blind by rhetorical slogans. We should require that our public officials give the public the basic confidence and belief, that we can endeavour, to achieve collective vision and progress. They need to challenge, to prosecute and to continuously debate reflections on the public good, and derive from those reflections, information that they themselves trust, so that they may be clear about what they want to say to the public. We need to be better informed collectively, so that our common sense can inform and facilitate our collective consent. 

Sapos yumi olgeta i kamap long wanpela luksave, em bai yumi hariap tasol, bai yumi wanbel long wanem kain plan yumi laik bihainim.  - The secret to collective consent lies in first achieving common recognition of shared values. 

Dilemma of Leadership and Governance

The Pacific country of Papua New Guinea has come to another crucial crossroad in its development considerations. This week the discussions and controversies surrounding the Ramu Nickel Mine in its coastal province of Madang flared again due to the recent National Court decision not to lift an injunction on the Ramu Nickel Mine.

The fear of the Madang people is about the mining tailings and the waste management of tailings because the mining company proposed to dump mine tailings directly into the sea. This is a genuine fear and really should have been taken seriously by the government of Papua New Guinea, respected by other Papua New Guineans and the Chinese mining company as well.

Cart before the Horse? photo: http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/cart-before-the-horse.png

Instead, the government of Papua New Guinea went to unnatural efforts to silence the voices of its own people. It made amendments to existing and legitimate laws in order to facilitate the mining contractor's exploitation of the nickel mine and it acted in many ways to hinder the powers of its own state departments tasked with policing mining and other large scale resource extraction practices. But worst of all, the government of Papua New Guinea even proceeded to remove the basic rights of its own people which had been enshrined under the National Constitution.

Mining is responsible for the greatest strife in the history of Papua New Guinea when it caused a civil war to erupt on Bougainville, a former province of Papua New Guinea, in 1989. Bougainville has now gained its own autonomous rule and government, but the cost of human life was great for a small country which saw a civil war that went on for almost three times the length of the second world war, claimed more than twenty thousand lives and shocked a nation which had never imagined its army pointing guns at its own people. But after more than fifteen years of civil war, this blemish now stands to forever be a stain in the history of a once hopeful nation.

Now thousands of Madang people are greatly concerned about their own livelihood and the future state of its unique marine environment and the sea on its coastline into which a Chinese mining company plans to dump the nickel mine's tailings waste.

Papua New Guinean government officials say that the delay in these mining plans will affect the national economy and future investment. Criticism from the government aimed at NGOs especially those issuing from the Honorable James Pundari who wants to create a government body which polices the activities of NGOs should also be taken seriously. These statements should be considered from many perspectives. 

Two things perhaps should be first recognised and considered amidst the frustration of government leaders and officials: 

One, that the country has not had an effective opposition since the passing away of Sir Yambaky Okuk. Papua New Guinea misses such a leader today as Sir Yambaky. Although he himself was not free of political controversy, he was notorious worldwide as being one of the most effective and fiery leaders of the opposition of any modern democracy.

The second question concerns the intentions of the Papua New Guinean government to create a watchdog tasked with watching NGO activism in the country. NGOs and civil society in today's Papua New Guinea, form one of the few effective oppositions to a seemingly "dictatorial" democracy, which itself is active in trying to silence its own Ombudsman Commission by formulating policies which hinder the Ombudsman Commission's roles and activities.

Herein lies a dilemma and perhaps the hypocrisy of a governmental regime concerned with silencing opposition to the excesses and errors of its own political practice while at the same time active in its policy efforts to create loop holes that could advance unaccountability. Many people see Papua New Guinea's politics to now be on a path to creating super individuals out of leaders elected by ordinary citizens into public office. This indicates that our politicians are assuming the ordinary mandate to public service to mean a licence to wield absolute and oppressive powers.

The Ombudsman is the legitimate watchdog that watches all forms of public leadership. NGOs countrywide respect the role of the Ombudsman Commission. A couple of years ago NGO leaders of Papua New Guinea even pointed out to our Ombudsmen and Ombudswomen during an NGO leadership gathering with the Ombudsman Commisioners, that in the future, there may be a need to explore the idea of an extension of its functions to include the scrutiny of corrupt practices in our own NGO leadership. We wanted this to also include the scrutiny of the leadership of church based organisations where corruption has also been experienced by many of our communities. This point concerning governance and leadership is about the conduct of people who are elected to posts of public responsibility and their abuse of that public trust and the abuse of whatever public office to which they are elected or employed to serve a community.

At this juncture, it is probably time to look at our national dilemma of leadership and governance and to look at the pretexts offered to ordinary Papua New Guineans as the grounds and reasoning as to why it is necessary and rational for politicians to require next to absolute powers while at the same time, trying to hinder the powers of any legitimate opposition to and scrutiny of the nature of their practises. 

Our politicians and government officials express that they carry on as they do under the duress of legitimate concern for the national welfare and development aspirations of Papua New Guinea. But what really is this development that they seek for Papua New Guinea? Ordinary people require some evidence of a systematic drive at least to manage and maintain existing public assets and infrastructure prior to undertaking new and more demanding tasks. People need to witness a consistent and explicit investment in our children's education and in our health facilities. They need to see their government investing a greater effort in the business interests of our rural people. If our politicians really believe that a mine is an activity in which surrounding communities can fully participate in and benefit from, then they should show the people what causes our leaders and public officials to have such a strong faith in mining. They should provide and show financial flow plans where royalties from mines would actually be found to improve the local people's livelihoods. They need to show us a single mining community on Earth which had a vibrant economy after the end of a mining activity. Yet, this is not at all the issue that the Madang people are facing.

The people of Madang are simply opposed to the proposed method of mining waste management. They reject the mining company's proposal of dumping mining tailings directly into the sea for the next decades of the life of the Ramu Nickel Mine. The government and the mining company should accept this concern and invest a considerable effort in finding better alternatives, instead of concerning themselves with destroying the people's democracy and the national constitution which protects our basic human rights and legitimate wish to survive in a comfortable environment.