The separation of powers between our three arms of government - legislature, executive and judiciary - must be maintained at all times irrespective of the circumstances.

The legislature or National Parliament, which is the supreme law-making body in Papua New Guinea, is headed by the Speaker of Parliament and comprises all the Members of Parliament (MP).

The executive comprises the Prime Minister and all Ministers collectively called National Executive Council and the public service. The executive implement the laws developed and passed by the Legislature.

The judiciary consists of the court system and interpret laws of the country and ensures that everyone within the PNG jurisdiction abides by its Constitution and the laws and that the inherent universal and constitutional rights of everyone is protected.

Compromise this timeworn doctrine of separation of powers and PNG would be on its way out of being a proud Westminster-based constitutional democracy.

The recent events in Parliament (legislature) that ended up in the Supreme Court (judiciary) in November this year and what had happened in the so-called “political impasse” between August 2011 and April 2012 and its fallout that resulted in court cases and one leadership tribunal hearing do not augur well for Papua New Guinea. Such events question our ability safeguard and respect the doctrine of separation of powers as a democratic nation.

These incidents are serious lessons that all of us as citizens must learn and prevent them from being repeated in the future.

We are 45 years old as a democratic country. We have come a long way as a nation of a thousand different tribes united under one flag and one constitution. This is something we must all never forget and every child at home and in school must be educated about it to value it.

World history is replete with instances where thousands and even millions of people have been killed and hurt when democracy and the freedoms it espouses were destroyed by dictators and sectarian interests.

We did not came from such a history and we must never behave to the contrary to bring our country down to the destructive ways of other places on earth. Our comparatively brief colonial experience under colonial rule was less oppressive and destructive than in many similar encounters.

We probably were among the luckiest of the colonial experiments where nobody really colonized us on a sustained period like in some other parts of the world.

Our encounters with the British and German colonial mentors were brief. We are a colonial child nobody really wanted to have, so to speak. As a result, after an intermittent colonial presence, the British and Germans gave us to the British colonial outpost, Australia, next door to take charge of us.

Australia’s involvement with us was brief as well and it hastily prepared us for decolonisation. Thanks to World War II, whose conclusion saw the creation of the United Nations, our decolonization was rapid.

Taking on the call by the UN, Australia prepared us with such haste to become decolonized and independent and this happened in I975 – a mere 30 years after the end of World War II.

Australia may not have had the time to build more physical infrastructure and institutions and educated the manpower as we would have liked as result of the its rusk to prepare us for decolonization as directed by the UN.

However, Australia left us with a solid foundation with a homegrown Constitution and all its enabling laws, a Westminster parliamentary system of government based on the Australian-Anglo tradition of democracy, a functioning public service and an economy primarily based on agriculture. For this, we must be thankful that we were given a constitution and system of government, that enables freedom for all and that it allows for each one of us the right to realise our potential.

Australia’s close proximity to us has worked in our favour as well in that, Australian civil servants, entrepreneurs, missionaries and the like would still be around or operate between the two nations to ensure things were functioning here.

This close relationship may not have worked perfectly at the best of times or in some encounters over the last 45 years. But how comforting it is to have the presence of a ‘big brother’ next door keeping an eye out for the little brother from sidetracking. Australia has been around to lift us up and move on in some of the natural and man-made crises have had since independence.

With a strong democracy like Australia next door, we have not disintegrated into a sectarian enclave of competing tribes despite some of the testing times we have had with the Bougainville Crisis and the associated Sandline Crisis, violent elections and so forth.

The “political impasse” of August 2011 and April 2012 really tested us to our core. But thank God, we stood tall and moved on. This past few weeks have tested us as a nation once with the two arms of government – the legislature and executive – being caught in competing politics and political perspectives.

The third arm of government, the judiciary, has been invited to arbitrate the somewhat divergent take on parliamentary democracy between the key players in Parliament. We as citizens, await with betted breath about the result of the arbitration by the third arm of government and what transpires thereafter.

The last thing we the citizens would like to see is the three arms of government encroaching each other’s constitutional space and thereby compromising the doctrine of separation powers.

For all of us, the citizens, we would like to keep the sanctity of the separation of powers for the good of all us and our country’s future. Ends/