BY DAVID LEPI
Why O'Neill really matters?
Peter O’Neill dominated Papua New Guinea politics for almost a decade before his ousting 2 years ago. How did he do it, and how much of a shadow does he still cast?
Like a posthumous honour O’Neill is far better celebrated now than when he was in power. People now fully appreciate how better he was until he was gone.
The starling contrast of O’Neill and the current government’s approach to service delivery is a reliable yardstick to measure leadership.
O’Neill’s government suffered an abrupt ending only to appease a fickle mob who gullibly took what political opportunists and lying mongers put on social media as the gospel truth.
His two year absence at the helm of leadership, besieged and in miserable isolation, marked the beginning of the end of infrastructure revolution that awakened the national consciousness and realization of improved assets will lead to economic growth.
Authentic national leaders do not arise often. They are forged more by fate and circumstance than by human design. Two years on, the full implications of O’Neill ’s era – a period in which he acted as the modern Papua New Guinean leader who saw his nation’s aspirations tied to that of the global family and has a role to play in the region it co-exist– have yet to be understood. His most enduring legacy was to build the PNG economy on a strong infrastructure backbone.
For O’Neill PNG an ethnically diverse, tribe-based society and is also an export driven economy integrating rapidly into a globalized world.
The fact that O’Neill today occupies a central place in PNG politics is in no little measure due to the man and his work. His other legacies such as the Union Bank of Switzerland loan may be open to dispute and it may also be too early to pass a final verdict on as there is a commission of inquiry currently underway.
O’Neill growing up as a village boy understood the everyday struggles in the village and to that of PNG an ancient civilization yet a young thriving nation. Thus his policies were relevant and his approach to implementation were pragmatic as life changing.
Like in the parlance, where there is a will there is way, where was no road he built one, one by one a wharf, jetty, bridge, school, university, college, hospital, free healthcare and education and no stopping.
To me O’Neill is the kind of navy diver extols by Billy Sunday in the movie Men of Honour.
“The Navy Diver is not a fighting man, he is a salvage expert. If it is lost underwater, he finds it. If it’s sunk, he brings it up. If it’s in the way, he moves it. If he’s lucky, he will die young, 200 feet beneath the waves, for that is the closest he’ll ever get to being a hero.”
O’Neill detractors would claim that corruption marred his reputation, but to date none of those allegations stood a chance in court.
All is lost because of a lie spewed by a man armed with a smart phone and a personal vendetta. He thought he destroyed O’Neill but he never considered the full implication of his lies and consequences of denying the people the leadership they deserved best and the services now found wanting.
