Abal’s big decision ahead

Commentary By Yehiura Hriehwazi

WHEN Parliament recently voted to allow Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare special leave of absence, it also did something else. It confirmed Deputy Prime Minister Mr Sam Abal as Acting Prime Minister until such time as Sir Michael returns to office.
While there appears to a breach of the Standing Orders of Parliament in not giving a specific time frame of the PM’s leave of absence, Abal is acting PM and has all the powers of the Prime Minister. 
He wielded those powers yesterday and did the inevitable – he announced the sacking of his fellow Enga MP and strong NA partyman Don Polye who is suspected of having had talks with Opposition factions in the past about the possible overthrow of the Somare regime.
The other one he sacked was William Duma, the MP for Hagen Open and leader of the United Resources Party (URP) who recently courted Queensland’s richest man Clive Palmer and raised K1 million at the party’s fund raising dinner. There’s nothing wrong with that. Palmer is the third richest man in Australian through his iron ore business and has extensive business interests with the Chinese and is floating his company shares in Asian stock exchanges. I’m sure he also has eyes on the PNG resources as well and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has third-party interests in one or two oil and gas fields as well, although he is minerals man. PNG has plenty of that too. He only needs to send his geologists in to go look for it. 
Duma was NOT sacked for courting Clive Palmer. He was sacked because there are far too many landownership problems affecting the PNG LNG project and Abal wants someone else to go and fix the problems. Abal was directed by PM Somare to do it early this year, but he has too much on his hands now as Acting PM.
The LNG project is supposed to transform the economic landscape of this country and with landowner issues in the way, it could force the project to stall and so Abal decided yesterday, it’s time to act.
With Polye and Duma, out, Abal is considering who to put in their place. Those decisions will have to be made this week and he was consulting widely among the coalition partners yesterday and over the weekend in Madang.
He also has NA Mamose strongman Patrick Pruaitch on the sidelines pestering and eagerly waiting to get back to the Finance and Treasury portfolio. It’s every politicians dream to sit in this particular chair in the lead-up to the general elections! There seems to be an unwritten NA party tradition that the Finance ministry always stays with the party – that is not the case now as it’s with Peter O’Neill, the leader of People’s National Congress, another coalition party.
Pruaitch showed up at the airport yesterday when Polye and Duma arrived from Brisbane and showed his support to them. He already knew they were sacked but they all put up a strong face and tried to show government solidarity. It’s obvious, Pruaitch will be siding with Polye in the event of any eventualities as the Mamose bloc of NA had met with Polye in January this year and assured him of that support.
But that was when Polye had the support of all 12 NA Highlands MPs and ministers. That has now changed and the Highlanders have signed an oath of allegiance with Abal. This means Polye will have to relinquish the deputy leadership of NA Highlands to Abal. 
Word from within the NA camp is that Abal had previously offered Polye the Works, Transport and Civil Aviation Ministry in exchange for the deputy leadership. But Polye declined and this did not go down well with Abal and he put Polye on the chopping block.
Pruaitch is likely to get a ministerial portfolio, but not Finance and Treasury as according to sources in government, O’Neill is a “good performing” minister.
One issue that concerns Abal greatly is the K125 million loan from Nasfund to the Kokopo electorate which was made by the so-called “kitchen cabinet”. This was signed by Pruaitch as then Finance and Treasury minister and outside of the normal Central Bank and Treasury bills regulatory regime. And no matter how much Nasfund’s Rod Mitchell tries to make it sound it’s all well and good, there are still so many questions that remain unanswered and only a commission of inquiry can put the minds of contributors at ease. If it was all above board and done with NEC approval then why was PM’s signature forged for a newspaper advertisement? This was a criminal act. That issue is still outstanding, or have we conveniently forgotten?
Whatever happens, Pruaitch will have to be entertained in a cabinet portfolio, if not he will be causing trouble from outside. Maybe the Petroleum and Energy ministry is being considered by him or better still a split in the Finance and Treasury would be a better compromise and he can manage the Treasury and O’Neill who is a highly skilled accountant could manage Finance.
Abal has a number of options including his own Works Ministry could be given away to appease the disgruntled URP party because its party leader (Duma) had been stripped off the ministry and Anderson Agiru, the founder of URP, could be rewarded with one portfolio as well. I would imagine Agiru already talking to Abal for some action in the corridors of power in Waigani.
Abal has big decisions to make over the next couple of days and we wish him well in his deliberations.


source: http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20110607/news03.htm