The 111 seats in the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea are treated as prized trophies to be aggressively contested every five years.

Candidates and their supporters do everything they can to seek election or re-election.

The national elections tend to be pitted battlefields to display personal, tribal and sectarian power and might. In some electorates, the battles are literal with violent confrontations and even death as experienced in 2017.

Much personal and public money and resources are expended in the process.

As discussed last week, such is the quest for the elected public office that the legal and original intent of the election process falls victim to this rat race to claim the 111 seats.

The quest for elected public office in the National Parliament is supposed to be for men and women of

equitable thinking and passion for national duty to be legislators and for supporters who subscribe to such a noble tradition we have adopted from our colonial mentors.

The 111 seats are not a means to an end. It is part of a continuum to advance the national vision and desires of everyone for a better country.

The pitted election petitions disputing results in the Court of Disputed Returns would not come about if candidates and their financiers and supporters subscribed to the original purpose of the elected public offices and conducted themselves accordingly in the first place.

The regular threats of votes of no confidence (VONC) partly through a Parliamentary term and the costly interruptions and corruption that spawns from it would be abated if everyone respected the mandated purpose of the 111 seats.

When it comes to addressing our common national enemy, corruption, there has to be a national resolve to unravel the root causes of it such as the selfish intentions to seek election into Parliament.

Members of Parliament over the years have come a long way to dismantle structures and institutions and created others to feed the selfish intentions that propelled many of them to seek election in the first place.

The creation of the District Development Authority (DDA) and the District Services Improvement Program (DSIP) and the Provincial Services Improvement Program (PSIP) funds that each MP is entitled to administer, is one stark example.

The DDA and the DSIP or PSIP run counter to or parallel with the existing public service structure in the districts and provinces. The MP, a legislator by tradition and mandate, is required by the DDA and DSIP/PSIP arrangement to be directly involved in the executive function of service delivery and deal with money, which is the role of the public service.

This is where it gets interesting when it comes to assignment of projects and awarding of contracts in the districts and provinces where the MP is the chair of the DDA or Provincial Assembly and Provincial Executive Council in the case of provincial governors.

The temptation to award contracts for projects in the districts and provinces to campaign financiers and diehard supporters in the last election is always there. Today, businesses of supporters of MPs or those owned by the MPs and their family members tend to have the upper hand to take up the projects funded by the DDA and the provincial governments.

The scenario is repeated at the national level in the way contracts are handled from the national government through the various departments and agencies. Those associated MPs and in particular Ministers of Cabinet tend to have the upper hand in picking up the contracts.

The privatization of much of the functions of the Department of Works in the mid-1990s feeds directly to the desires of MPs to benefit their political survival or chances of re-election.

Under the old Department of Works, the entire government vehicle fleet for all departments and agencies were managed by it under its Plant and Transport Branch (PTB). Under PTB, all government vehicles used by all departments and agencies were maintained and fully serviced by it. Essential service vehicles such as police beat patrol cars and ambulances greatly benefited from the service provided by PTB in those days. Since the dismantling of the original PTB, we now see the police patrol vehicles and ambulances are barely serviced or when they break down, they become difficult to be serviced or replaced in a timely manner as was the case in the past.

Today, those picking up vehicle hire contracts with government departments or agencies often are businesses connected with an MP or from someone who has bought his or her way in for contracts.

These are but two examples of how the system of governance in PNG as shifted significantly from its mandated intent since independence. These days, the government processes and service delivery mechanisms are tainted with political influence with the intent to gain for the well-connected and political backers and to seek re-election so the cycle repeats.

It makes the 111 seats as highly prized trophies that spawn pitted battles to seek election every five years and engage in costly VONCs partly through a Parliamentary term. Thank you, readers for reading this views of yours truly, Melanie. If you have feedback to matters discussed here or have a suggestion for a topic to discuss email the editor of Wantok at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I will be happy to receive your feedback and suggestions for topics to discuss.