Pundari’s Gun Excuse: Thirty-Four Years of Neglect Masked as a Law-and-Order Crusade

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Sir John Pundari, the newly appointed Police Minister of Papua New Guinea, has spent the opening months of 2026 barnstorming Enga Province with a message of disarmament. In February he launched the national firearms amnesty and buy-back scheme, promising cash payments of up to K30,000 for illegal weapons and warning that “the gun must not rule.” Photo opportunities show him shaking hands with surrendering clansmen in Wabag and Lakolam, declaring the exercise “a national movement for peace.” It is a compelling performance statesman in uniform, senior MP turned saviour. Yet for the people of Kompiam-Ambum Open, the rhetoric rings hollow. Pundari has represented their district continuously since 1992. Thirty-four years. Longer than most of his constituents have been alive. He has held every major office Speaker of Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Finance and Rural Development and now, at the peak of his career, he uses the very crisis he failed to prevent as the platform to restore his tattered credibility.

The facts are damning. When Pundari first entered Parliament in 1992, Kompiam-Ambum was already remote and underdeveloped. Today, after six parliamentary terms and billions of kina in district and national grants, the situation is virtually unchanged. There are still no sealed roads linking the major valleys. Health centres operate as shells, lacking medicine, staff, and equipment. Schools remain dilapidated, understaffed, and overcrowded. Clean water and reliable electricity are distant dreams. Local Facebook forums Kompiam Ambum Development Forum and others are flooded with raw testimony: “After 33 years of neglect, abuse, and displacement,” one post reads, “our MP has destroyed the district into war debris.” Another bluntly states: “Our MP has failed to deliver tangible services and developments.” These are not isolated gripes. They reflect a pattern of chronic under-delivery that has left Kompiam-Ambum among the most backward districts in a province already notorious for under-development.

Pundari’s defenders will, of course, invoke the “gun excuse.” Tribal conflict, they argue, has made progress impossible. High-powered weapons have flooded the Highlands, villages have burned, and fear has paralysed investment. The violence is undeniably real and tragic. Yet who has been the elected voice of Kompiam-Ambum throughout the entire escalation of this crisis? Sir John Pundari. For more than three decades he has controlled the microphone, the budget lines, and the political connections necessary to tackle root causes: youth unemployment, unresolved land disputes, weak local policing, and the illegal arms trade itself. Instead of building resilience, he watched and in the eyes of many constituents, profited while the guns multiplied. Now, elevated to Police Minister precisely because Enga is “rife with gun violence,” he positions himself as the hero who will fix what he allowed to fester. It is political sleight of hand at its most cynical.

The credibility gap is enormous. Pundari has risen to knighthood and multiple cabinet posts while his electorate stagnated. He has spoken eloquently in Port Moresby about national development, yet the Highlands Highway corridor the economic lifeline his district sits upon remains vulnerable to the very tribal fighting he now claims to solve. Court records and election petitions from years past have repeatedly questioned the management of district funds. Projects are announced with fanfare during campaign seasons, only to vanish once the votes are secured. Meanwhile, other Enga districts and provinces have made incremental gains in roads, education, and health services. Kompiam-Ambum has not. The ratio of service delivery, as one frustrated local analysis put it, stands at “99.9% lower than the state average.”

Even Pundari’s current gun-amnesty drive is being met with scepticism at home. Critics on social media demand he “lead by example” and surrender any firearms allegedly supplied to his own networks. They point out that a cash-for-guns scheme is meaningless without the development that removes the incentive to arm. Peace without jobs, roads, or hope is temporary; development without peace is impossible. Pundari had the power, the longevity, and the resources to pursue both. He chose neither.

The hard truth is that Sir John Pundari is not a victim of the gun problem he is one of its longest-serving enablers. For thirty-four years he has treated Kompiam-Ambum as a political fiefdom rather than a constituency in need of genuine service. His sudden transformation into the face of law and order is not redemption; it is damage control. While he lectures warlords in front of the cameras, the people who elected him six times over are still walking hours for basic medical care, still watching their children study under leaking roofs, and still burying relatives killed in conflicts that have persisted on his watch.

Kompiam-Ambum deserves more than excuses dressed up as crusades. After more than three decades, the electorate has earned the right to demand accountability, not another round of rhetoric. The guns may eventually fall silent under Pundari’s national policy, but until he accounts for his own record of inaction and neglect, respect will remain in short supply. The people are watching. History is watching. And thirty-four years is a very long time to have nothing to show for it.