The story line would be different had the cocaine-loaded Cessna 402 plane successfully flown out of the makeshift airstrip near Papa-Lealea, north of Port Moresby and arrived at its destination in Australia.

The Australian media reported that the plane was under surveillance of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as it departed Mareeba in Far North Queensland on Sunday 26 July and the AFP were awaiting its return.

It would be a massive national ignominy for Papua New Guinea had the plane successfully left PNG shores with the cargo of cocaine and landed in Australia. What would the PNG law enforcement agencies have felt and said had the plane left with the cocaine and was impounded by the AFP in Australia?

It would have been a great national embarrassment indeed.

The AFP have told the Australian media that the plane was trying to take off from the makeshift airfield when the pilot experienced difficulty executing the lift off and crashed into the bushes. The Australian media reported that the light plane could not be airborne due to the heavy weight of the cargo of cocaine bags it was carrying.

The plane then veered off into the savannah grassland and eucalyptus bushes at the makeshift airstrip. What the AFP told the Australian media means the plane successfully landed at the makeshift airstrip and the cargo of cocaine bags that was brought to the site was loaded onto it. Those involved in this massive drug smuggling operation successfully brought the bags of cocaine to the site and were about to witness the plane fly off with the cocaine when the unexpected happened – it could not lift off.

This was a massive act of fate in a country with increasingly weakening surveillance and law enforcement systems.

It is now apparent that those who were there at the makeshift airstrip to load the plane and provide the aviation fuel to the aircraft for its return to Australia had all the time to unload the plane and take away the cargo of cocaine bags when the flight was aborted.

It is despicable to fathom the ease at which this drug-smuggling operation was carried out on PNG soil up to the point of the unloading of its cargo after the aborted take-off of the plane.

It is also unacceptable that such a large quantity of cocaine was moved around undetected in PNG, a country not known for such an illicit drug trade.

How did this amount of cocaine enter PNG and from where or was it produced in the country? Who were involved? Are there people in high places and positions of responsibility in various state agencies and private sector involved? Will our law enforcement system reach these people and hold them to account? The public would not want to see a repeat of the case surrounding the twin bank robberies in Madang and Kerema in 2008 where the people high places and the criminals involved were let off by a highly compromised law enforcement system.

Is the recent drug smuggling operation part of an ongoing movement of large quantities of cocaine and other illicit substances through PNG’s sovereign territory?

Who was responsible for constructing the makeshift airstrip in the middle of nowhere at the back of Papa Lealea villages? Did the local Motuan landowners give approval for the construction of the airstrip and were they involved in clearing the landing strip in a country where compensation demand from local landowners follows every development involving customary land? These are the sorts of questions the law abiding PNG public require answers from the law enforcement agencies handling the case.

PNG already has a poor track record of handling high profile cases of unlawful activities involving persons in high places and those associated with them who are henchmen who carry out the unlawful acts. Some of the high profile incidents that questioned our integrity as a nation in recent years include the following: The clandestine PNG Defence Force flight to a remote location in Solomon Islands to drop off fugitive Fijian born lawyer Mujo Sefa, the twin Bank South Pacific robberies in Madang and Kerema, the awarding of PNG citizenship and passport to Indonesian fugitive millionaire Djoko Tjandra under the fake name Joe Chan, the UBS loan to buy Oil Search shares and the secretive arrival of Chinese businessman Chen Maelin on a private plane as a guest of the Government by passing all immigration, customs and COVID 19 protocols when the nation was in lock-down. In many other countries these sorts of incidents would not just die out without appropriate corrective actions and those responsible held to account.

What has happened is something that must bother the highest echelons of authority in PNG as a sovereign state and everyone else down the rank and file of the law enforcement apparatus. It must trigger the strongest response from the highest offices of the land. This is to hunt down those responsible and hold them to account under law to tell the world and particularly the well-connected criminals that the PNG is not a rogue state nor a place for the well-connected criminals to carry out their evil acts and expect to get away easily. This case must also be a major wake up call to Parliament to review the laws pertaining to drug use and trafficking and violation of PNG’s territorial sovereignty.

It is so important to safeguard our integrity and not allow well-connected criminals and their backers in high offices of PNG to undermine us and our sovereignty. We are not a failing state or failed state - not yet.

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