We must not forget that the same laws will apply in the same national parliament and provincial houses of assembly. In the same national and district courtrooms, case law will grow and precedents will continue to be set in the absence of the hard questions that may never get asked about the blatant breaches in our society and adopted system of government.

From 2017 our leaders will (more than ever before) need the knowledge, political will, grace and patience to restore integrity, democracy and the rule of law as a national emergency in order for all else to be rebuilt without exception. The truth is a new government in 2017 will inherit inter-generational debt, a massive deficit and redundant parliamentary rules/standing orders governing important decision-making processes. Not to mention the crumbling sanctity of the National Executive Council (NEC) or cabinet.

They will realise that legislation set up in principle to provide robust governance mechanisms have been misunderstood or ignored by their predecessors. In 2017 a newly elected parliament will discover an exhausted public service, a manipulated police force, an angry defence force, and many broken Papua New Guineans with drought and income starved families and disrupted livelihoods.

Those elected Members of Parliament will find very drained state-owned enterprises, institutions and agencies incapable of operating with only a steady trickle of public funds to deliver wages, health & education or district support according to policies and promises of the past and present. They will find that the much promised revenues from oil and gas have been committed to paying off the current government’s unilateral decisions and therefore debt for unauthorised loans for generations.

New leaders in 2017 will need to navigate a global economic downturn of epic proportions with PNGs development and economic interests at heart. Our new leaders will discover that our broken service delivery system and our overheated economy will need more than elected candidates with tunnel vision.

Those elected will need to be legislators, not aspiring millionaires or public finance managers. Newly elected leaders will require an understanding of serious fiscal discipline, tax and industrial relations reform and economic modelling that reflect PNG’s economic conditions and our revenue-earning potential in sectors other than petroleum and energy.

PNG will need MPs who are humble yet extraordinary thinkers to guide monetary/fiscal, social, cultural and development policy simultaneously to aid a new-look holistic reconstruction strategy focused on understanding that our vast natural resources should never again be left to a single individual who knows no institutional, spiritual, executive or national boundaries. Those new MPs should be held to the universal promise that candidates seek election (and re-election) to be servants to their people not master manipulators of their resources.

All the hopes in online commentary revert to a single assumption that PNG will inevitably have free and fair elections next year. If all we do is dare to dream it’s no longer enough because we will inevitably get what we vote for yet again.

Photo: Sepik Wewak Urban Local Government facebook group

Announcing release of the final MDG progress report last week, Forum Secretary General Dame Meg Taylor praised Pacific governments for their ‘substantial progress’ in meeting the development goals, and offered a modest excuse for the lack of performance measured in many areas, particularly in poverty reduction, gender equality, and environment improvements: ‘The MDGs were global goals and applying them at the national level was difficult. In addition many of the MDG indicators did not suit the national context.’

I suggest a different way of evaluating lack of progress on MDGs. Juxtapose the Forum’s MDG assessment with the following headlines: ‘Another PNG MP to stand trial for fraud,’ ‘14 Vanuatu MPs heading to jail,’ ‘Eight sacked over government fraud in Solomon Islands,’ ‘Widespread fraud suspected in Marshall Islands government departments,’ ‘Green light for former Cooks minister to be tried,’ and so on.

It starts from the top and rolls down the line of government workers who view ‘government money’ or aid funding as a pot of money to put in their own pockets. Unfortunately, anti-corruption institutions and enforcement systems are weak in most islands such that there are more government leaders and workers focused on manipulating government finance systems for their own benefit than there are people and resources attempting to enforce accountability and rule of law.

Speaking last week about the Marshall Islands’ membership in the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, Auditor General Junior Patrick confirmed this concern about the reliability of enforcement systems. He said the initial UN review of government systems shows there is a framework in place for preventing corruption. But, he added, he would like to see the UN anti-corruption review go a step further “to see if implementation is effective, what is the time frame for investigations and prosecutions, and what resources are available (for accountability efforts). We have a framework, but is it functional?” For small island countries in particular, where enforcement capability is modest, this is the $100 question.

These same political leaders and personnel in government ministries and agencies—mentioned in the headlines above—were supposedly responsible for delivering performance on the Millennium Development Goals, development plans, and a host of other government services. But when large numbers of government officials are focused on personal instead of national interests, it is obvious their nations are not going to be effectively implementing poverty reduction schemes or gender equality goals.

In an earlier blog in this space, I commented: ‘Corruption comes in many forms: coming late and leaving early but getting fulltime pay, not carrying out the mission of a government office, manipulating tenders and funds for personal interest, and seeing some or all of the above and doing nothing about it.’

From the many corruption investigations, some of which have led to high-profile prosecutions in the region, we now know that leaders in many countries are running government as if it is their personal business. So when people talk about island leaders and saying things such as, ‘Strong political leadership and commitment’ is what is needed to make progress, are we simply kidding ourselves? Political leadership and commitment for what agenda? We simply cannot continue to ignore the fact that widespread corruption is undermining rule of law and slowing progress to a crawl in many countries. The imprisonment of 14 Vanuatu MPs is a landmark anti-corruption development for the Pacific. But over recent past years, penalties in the region for corrupt actions by politicians have been modest to non-existent in many islands, reinforcing a prevailing message, at least at high levels of government, that crime does, indeed, pay.

So eight of the 14 Forum members managed to implement only two or fewer MDGs. In September, all the countries in our region signed onto the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promising to implement these over the next 15 years. We could not manage seven MDGs and now we’ve got 17 SDGs, with 169 targets—who exactly is going to make these 17 SDGs a reality in our islands? This is not to say that public health professionals, doctors, educators, community development specialists, and staff at the Forum Secretariat are not committed to making improvements in their respective islands. The point is that for them to be successful, they have to have the attention and support of political leaders. Yet many of these leaders appear to be more focused on self-interested business deals or embezzling aid funding than they are on implementing national development priorities.

Only two nations—Cook Islands and Niue—met all seven MDG targets, while Palau accomplished six. These nations should be recognized for this laudatory performance and probably the most helpful development for the rest of the Pacific islands would be for this trio to convene a working group to identify and share the ingredients that allowed for their success so that other countries in the region can see if there is anything in the Cook Islands/Niue/Palau models that would work elsewhere. Still, until corruption is minimized and rule of law is emphasized, getting traction on the new SDGs is going to be a challenge in many islands.

Caption: The Vanuatu bribery case has made headlines across the region (pictured here). The Vanuatu Appeal Court will deliver its ruling next Friday on appeals by 14 MPs jailed on bribery convictions.

While there appear to be far more democracies in the world than ever before, the CPJ’s executive director Joel Simon says there is a sinister new threat.

And this is in some respects more troublesome than the old style dictatorships. Simon describes this new scourge in a recent book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Press Freedom, as the ‘democratators’, those leaders who profess to be democratic but are actually subverting their mirage of open governance. As Simon says:

“What are these differences between dictators and democratators? Dictators rule by force. Democratators rule by manipulation. Dictators impose their will. Democratators govern with the support of the majority. Dictators do not claim to be democrats – at least credibly. Democratators always do. Dictators control information. Democratators manage it.”

Simon points out that democratators win elections yet while they may be free, they are not really fair, meaning they are decided by fraud.

He has a growing list of leaders that fit this label, including Latin American “populists” like Rafael Correa of Equador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, “European backsliders” like Viktor Orban of Hungary and Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed former president of Ukraine, and African leaders such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

Also high on Simon’s list of media threats is the way terrorism has impacted on how big media groups currently go about their global news-gathering. Conscious of the ever-present threat of ritualised kidnappings and bombings, journalists are sometimes forced to report from bunkers and are less enthusiastic about meeting uncertain sources in case they might be abducted.

Even the appearance of journalists sometimes makes them look like an extension of the military – with helmets, flak jackets and camouflage fatigues. This accentuates their targeting by fundamentalist groups who regard them as an extension of the ‘state’.

China is the elephant in the room when it comes to freedom of information. While China’s leaders embrace the internet, they believe they can, and ought to, control the web. It is clear that China has the technological means and resources to make internet control a reality.

Chinese authorities use monitoring and filtering to keep a lid on the cyberspace “conversation” to prevent repercussions.

United States responses to the Wikileaks scandal in 2013 and the massive surveillance revelations by Edward Snowden encouraged allegations of hypocrisy from critics pointing out that Washington’s commitment to internet freedom dragged when its own geopolitical interests appeared threatened.

Earlier this month, I had the good fortune to be in Brussels as one of the people giving feedback at a stakeholders meeting for a massive European Union-funded research project on the media reporting on six major violent conflicts around the world, including the Syrian civil war and conflict in Burundi.

While there I happened to pick up a new “Euro” style newspaper called Politico, which steered me to a remarkable media development in Spain with the headline “He brings news of the future”

“Who was he?” asks the subeditor in me when it was always drummed into us to have a name in the headline. (The online version changed the headline).

This was the story of Pedro J. Ramírez, one of the leading editors in Spain, who had been in charge of El Mundo for 24 years. But he was sacked by his newspaper’s owners.

Why? Because under his leadership, El Mundo pursued a robust investigation into corruption implicating the governing Popular Party and the Prime Minister [Mariano Rajoy].

When he was fired, Ramírez used his massive €5.6 million pay-out to help fund a new online newspaper, El Español. His pay-out plus record-breaking crowdfunding doubled what had been previously raised by a new Dutch publishing venture, De Correspondent.

Another interesting success story has been in France, where investigative journalist Edwy Plenel, famous for his Rainbow Warrior bombing investigation in 1985 for Le Monde, founded Mediapart.

He has assembled a team of some 60 journalists and his fearless brand of investigative journalism is shaking up the establishment.

Even in New Zealand, where the mediascape is fairly dire with hundreds of jobs cut in recent years—and a loss of 180 jobs in a recent shake-up at Fairfax New Zealand, the country’s biggest news publisher, there are stunningly innovative things happening.

The main independent New Zealand media group Scoop Media – and we at AUT’s Pacific Media Centre have a partnership project with them, Pacific Scoop – has launched a new crowdfunding business model and established a Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism. The inititiative by Selwyn Manning in launching Evening Report web portal has also been significant.

This brings me to the achievements of the University of the South Pacific and its talented new crop of graduates. Close to 200 USP journalism graduates are now contributing to the Fiji and the Pacific region’s media and related careers.

Through its long-standing award-winning newspaper Wansolwara – now 19 years old, surely a remarkable accomplishment for any journalism school in the Australasian and Pacific arena, the student journalists have played an important role in independent, engaging and truth-seeking journalism.

Personally, I shall always remember with pride my experiences with USP and Wansolwara over the five years I was with the campus – the longest by far of any expatriate educator. Wansolwara was founded by student editor Stan Simpson and lecturer Philip Cass. And Pat Craddock of the USP Media Centre was another key person in building up the programme.

One of the highlights for me was the reporting of the George Speight coup in May 2000 by the courageous USP students. They won many awards for this.

It was thanks to the groundwork and experience that I gained at both USP and previously UPNG as a journalist turned academic that I was able to go to the next level at the Pacific Media Centre.

There I have been able to blend some of the best elements of academic media studies and practical journalism that makes a difference.

A tribute too to Dr Shailendra Singh and his team, Irene Manarae, Eliki Drugunalevu and Dr Olivier Jutel. Shailen was recently the first home-grown academic at USP to gain a PhD in journalism at the University of Queensland with the first major survey of the Fiji mediascape for more than a decade. Congratulations Shailen for a very fine thesis!

My concluding message to graduating student journalists is that no matter what government, political or industry pressure you face, you should hold on strongly to your core values of truth, accuracy, honesty and courage in the public interest.

Our communities deserve the best from their media in these deceitful times. University media are among the few that can still be trusted and they should do their best to contribute to democracy with integrity.

So go for it and change the world to the way it should be!

Caption: Pacific media cover a Pacific Island Forum summit in Vanuatu, 2010. Photo: Ben Bohane/wakaphotos.com

The prevalence of corruption is the direct cause of pervasive poverty in our region. Some may contend that poverty is the cause of corruption. I hold a contrary view. I come from a country richly endowed with natural resources, yet the majority of our people live in abject poverty. Corruption is the direct cause of poverty in my country and the same goes for many Pacific island countries. The failure to meet most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a testament to that.

The excess effects of corrut to that.

The excess effects of corruption does spread beyond the borders. They take the form of refugees, money laundering and other illicit activities. The digital world has changed the dynamics of the world map so that today, transactions can be conducted at the click of a keyboard or the tap of an iPhone. Our jurisdictional differences are becoming less of a barrier for those wishing to conduct illicit financial transactions.

Today, we are witnessing a growing trend, though not uncommon, whereby those in power use that power to enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of the people. And when the anti-corruption institutions hold them to account, they refuse to submit. They use their powers and state resources to subjugate anti-corruption measures and avoid scrutiny. Most recently some of the most telling examples of threats to the rule of law, democracy, security and prosperity in our region include:

• The extraordinary efforts to obliterate anti-corruption forces to protect one person in Papua New Guinea;
• The acting President of Vanuatu pardoning himself and 13 other members of parliament after being convicted of bribery, even when the matter is pending sentencing; and
• The bribery scandal involving the Nauruan prime minister, his justice minister and an Australian phosphate company and the alleged actions by the Nauru Government to terminate the visa of the Chief Justice.

We have seen examples of how corruption transcends national borders, for example:

• The forgotten case of Australian companies and advisors implicated in diverting K100 million of PNG Motor Vehicle Insurance Ltd funds;
• The revelations by Australian authorities that at least AUD200 million of PNG corruption proceeds are laundered or invested in Australia every year;
• The recent findings of the Financial Action Task-Force that Australia is becoming a hotspot destination for property investment using illicit funds, mostly coming from Asia-Pacific countries;
• The recent revelations by SBS Dateline program of how Australian lawyers are involved in laundering corruption proceeds into Australia; and
• The recent revelations by Sydney Morning Herald of an Australian oil company, the Australian branch of an international bank and Australian lawyers involved in structuring a predatory loan arrangement.

Many of these examples have highlighted how the people who have been exposed in these corruption scandals have no trouble transferring and living off their ill-gotten gains. With access to Australia, for example, many have access to quality health care and education whilst at home the robbed majority continue to suffer in abysmal conditions.

In saying this, I am also conscious of the fact that in most developing countries, apart from simple survival corruption, most of the high-level corruption are facilitated by and benefit those in power. If corruption-free and good governance are the values and standards we want to see reflected in our neighbourhood, we should live for and fight for their worth. Although it may come at a price. Few may not like it, but the victimised majority will appreciate our efforts. Based on my personal experience, I can vouch for this.

Australia, as member of the G20 and the OECD among others, has obligations under various international treaties, memberships and agreements. Most countries in the Pacific have adopted the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). While progress has been made to establish an APEC Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies, I am unaware of a regional framework in the Pacific Islands Forum to combat corruption and money laundering. Perhaps that may be an agenda for the next forum leaders discussions?

So the question is, when does corruption in one country really become a matter for regional leaders?

One can trumpet the robustness of its own domestic mechanisms but if that ‘robust’ system is not detecting and combating corruption and money laundering more widely, then that system is a problem in itself. Or is it just a case of lacking political will to act?

This is an extract of Mr. Sam Koim’s presentation to the Voices for Justice conference held at Parliament House, Canberra on 13 October 2015.