25th Anniversary of Sir Mekere as the Best Reforms Prime Minister

14th July 2024 marked 25 years to the day Sir Mekere Morauta was elected Prime Minister. It came and went without any fanfare. In under 3 years, not 3, but under 3 years he delivered so many reforms.

1. 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 and slightly under a million contributors. 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 or so 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 and 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 is used for a good purpose and not for personal ambition and enrichment. Unfortunately for the OLIPAC, we have people who think who know more and over-interpreted the constitution and 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% representation in winning candidates to represent the people. That margin for the majority of winning candidates is now above 60%. Sheer numbers speaks 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 appropriated 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 the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Sir Mekere’s intention was to rehabilitate them and fully or partially privatise them. He was lucky with merging a bankrupt PNGBC with BSP. However, he didn’t have the 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 forever 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 shown us that it can be done.

Please watch the video below in remembrance of Sir Mekere being elected as Prime Minister on the 14th of July 1999.https://youtu.be/bWUMaJqiLrg