The Justice Minister's "stability" law protects the Prime Minister, not the country

by MICHAEL J. PASSINGAN

The Minister for Justice used the grievance debate on 16 October to celebrate a law. Parliament, he said, has amended section 145 of the Constitution with new subsections so that, after a no-confidence motion fails, the Prime Minister is protected for up to 18 months. Of James Marape, he said: "Nobody will do it. He did it."

The Minister's explanation was so confused that a member rose on a point of order to ask what law he meant. Was he saying Parliament had passed a law letting a government rule a full five years? The member could not remember passing any such law. The Minister tried again, talking of stability, five-year terms and voters passing judgment at elections.

That a member of the House could not identify the law the Justice Minister was praising tells its own story. A constitutional change of this kind should be understood by everyone who voted on it. If the Justice Minister cannot explain it in the House, the public has little chance.

The substance is worse than the confusion. The Constitution already bars no-confidence motions in a new Prime Minister's first 18 months and in the final year before an election. Add a further 18-month shield after every failed motion, and a Prime Minister who survives one vote can be untouchable for most of a term. The windows in which Parliament can remove him shrink to almost nothing.

The no-confidence motion is Parliament's ultimate check on the executive. In PNG it has been abused, and instability has real costs. The answer to abuse is to tighten the procedure, not to switch the check off. Stability bought by removing accountability is the stability of an unchallengeable Government.

The Minister's argument was that voters judge governments at elections, so governments deserve five uninterrupted years. That might hold in a system with disciplined parties, strong independent agencies and a press that reaches every village. In PNG, voters judge individual members, not governments, and the agencies meant to check ministers answer to them. Parliament's power to remove a Prime Minister is often the only real constraint left.

The gold report tabled the day before showed what happens when the executive faces no consequences: agencies that ignore 2,000 intelligence reports, a licence that survives two years of known fraud, and no officer held to account. This Government's answer has not been to rebuild those checks. It has been to remove one of the few that still bind the Prime Minister himself.

The Justice Minister's sense of priority was on display. He spoke immediately after a governor described the cost and delay of election petitions, and said nothing about them. He said nothing about electoral integrity, the backlog in the courts, or the rule of law in the gold trade. He spent his time praising a shield for his leader.

The law, whatever its exact wording, should be brought back to the House and explained: what it says, when it was passed, by what vote, and whether it faces a constitutional challenge. A change to the rules on removing a Prime Minister that the Justice Minister cannot describe, and a member cannot remember, should not be allowed to settle quietly into the Constitution.

Voters will get their judgment in 2027, as the Minister said. They should cast it knowing that this Government's signature political reform was to make itself harder to remove.