SCOTT WAIDE
| My Land, My Country
LAE - How much of the economy do we own? All the prime shop spaces in our towns and cities are owned by foreigners.
Can we easily get financing for a business? No. If we do get it, are the terms PNG-customer friendly? No. And shop space rentals are unaffordable.
Governments past have had no will to reduce costs for Papua New Guinean entrepreneurs and to create havens for PNG-owned business to grow.
There is a lot of rhetoric, and it will intensify next year as people prepare for the silly season.
But rental costs are among the highest in the region. Cartels are paying off government workers, buying off properties and evicting our own people.
Our justice system even favours the cartels and their lawyers.
We refuse to believe that organised crime and their masters have become bolder because our systems and its custodians have allowed themselves to be bought off.
The educated ‘elites’ and ‘intellects’ graduating from a failed education system seek opportunities to profit from the system and those less educated.
We sing praises to sweet talking leaders, and reporters repeat word for word without understanding the corrosive impact of that cheap narrative.
We criticise the media for not taking on corruption, but when they do nobody takes custody of the information and uses it for community action.
We are led to believe that that unions, protests and free speech are all illegal and should be discouraged.
Truth is Somare and the independence generation wrote those things into our laws.
How did we come to forget our rights? Because our education system made us stupider that our grandparents’ generation.
It taught us not to think for ourselves. A dumb generation raises dumb kids and dumb kids grow up to be dumb adults who vote in dumb politicians. That’s the truth.
They’re the ones who despise intelligence and free speech. They are offended by the expression of rights.
Wake up Papua New Guinea! Wake up! You need to get up and fight for what is yours.