“Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between
the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those
determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall
around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould
it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our
eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [...] and those who
wish to lull us into closing our eyes”
― Facebook Post by (arguably one of Africa's greatest living writers)
(An extract of this article was published by Keith Jackson on PNG Attitude blog)
From 2012, he was one of the legendary 'little helpers', fighting tirelessly from for access to better education, and accountable and transparent university governance.
There are so many stories about him, which we keep telling. We will never forget his wonderful personality, energy and intelligence but most of all his ability to bridge old and new, non-western and western worlds, based on shared humanity. We must find a way together to keep his memory alive.
My start as vice-chancellor in 2012 in Papua New Guinea was far from auspicious, and due to political conflicts in 2013 and my ban to enter the country, I spent a year in exile in Australia. A few Council member perceived their personal interests would be affected by my leadership, they started a politically motivated persecution in my regard, apparently not concerned with the long-term reputation of the University and the country, and with total disregard for logic, or their own dignity. They accused me of not having a doctorate, which is a common tactic when attachking a vice-chancellor. For some people, actively undermining authority is their favourite past time.
As a consequence in 2013, the government instituted an official investigation led by a former supreme court judge - the Sevua Report - which lasted over 6 months confirmed the legality of my appointment, and fully exonerated me of any wrong doing. It was very easy for me to defend me from these allegations, since my doctorate is demonstrably authentic.
Nevertheless, two class boycotts lasting several weeks in 2013 and 2014, and a massive student movement were required to assure a new University Council was institute, and assure my return as vice-chancellor. In a country like PNG, with 80+% of the population living in rural areas and barely educated, the students understandably feel they have to act as the "conscience of the nation", whenever grand corruption and bad government occurs. Even if there were a free press, the population can not know what is really going on.
Oddly, and totally unexpectedly, this same political witch hunt resumed in 2018. At the end of my second term in 2017, the new Chancellor Jean Kekedo and several Council members decided to publish a series of false allegations in my regard, which they had copied quite literally from the initial trumped up charges made in 2012. They did not even have the imagination to make up new ones. As a consequence, when returning home already as a tourist, I was charged and arrested for false pretense supposedly for having presented a false doctorate. In reality, my doctorate is recognized in all European Union Countries, Costa Rica and recently also in the United States. My current job is with a US based university, on army bases, so they carried out rigorous checks of my background and academic achievements.
Anybody who still believes this whole saga had anything to do with my academic credentials, my achievements as vice-chancellor, or that "Schram should prove his innocence" should familiairize him or herself with the facts. You can check the official record here, or you can give the renowned European University Institute a call, as some journalists did. They speak English.
When this ludicrous charge was finally dismissed by the courts in January 2019 for lack of any evidence, however, no apologies were issued in my regard, nor were the false allegations published on their internet pages taken down.For this reason, and although I do not like to assess other people's behaviour, I do not feel I need to hold back in the description of the behaviour of my former colleagues, and take their delicate sensibilities into account. Not after they have shown so much incompetence, spite and greed.
Knowing exactly what these people did, will be helpful for the younger generations to learn how politics should be about purpose, not who has what position, and access to money and resources. They will understand why institution building in PNG is so painfully slow. The small politics of over-inflated ego's and greed is what brought about the demise of UNITECH. As to their motives, I leave it to the reader to decide, and to ask them to explain themselves.
Meanwhile, my life moved on, while my former colleagues have no career and will never work anywhere else. I went back home to Italy, and exercise my old trade. Currently, work as Professor at the University of Maryland University College - Europe, teaching history and management course on US army bases in Northern Italy.
In last month's second blog post in this series, we noted how PNG universities fall short in this sense. They can not credibly demonstrate their graduates actually acquire necessary and expected graduate competences. After all, the only way to do this is by way of an international, independent professional accreditation process. I am not optimistic the current management is supporting the engineering departments sufficiently in this effort. In the past they never did.
Any vice-chancellor can state his or her university is contributing to nation building, but if its graduates do not have the expected competences, you are not really doing this, are you? Universities should at the very least produce employable graduates, otherwise they are part of the problem, and not part of the solution. Graduates might look "good on paper" but in the end international companies hire just as many graduates straight from high school. The labour market teaches us that PNG universities add little, or maybe even negative value.
As institutions, PNG universities in 2014 failed to comply with the 13 quality criteria of the National Quality Framework, and are not even monitoring progress towards this goal. In particular, the 10th criterium regarding security and wellness of the students, required major attention. DVC Dr. Ora Renagi was responsible for following this through, but he never did anything. Soon there will be a new audit, and I doubt the university will do much better.
In last month's post, we focused on the first key dimension of university purpose and relevance: to deliver a modern, competence focused curriculum, so that universities produce highly employable, work ready graduates. This is a technical, educational dimension.
This month we will focus on the second dimension of the purpose or relevance of universities: active citizenship, producing graduates who can be responsible leaders in democratic societies. This is a more complex dimension, which involves creating a university culture of transparency, truth seeking (rigorous distinction between falsehoods and truth), and the ability of speaking truth to power.
Evidently, if we can not root out the old mindset associated with corruption, whisper campaigns, tribal fights, political witch hunts and chief killings in universities, they will fail to produce active citizens and democratic leaders, who respect the rule of law. As my experience show, this is easier said than done.
It was the combination of a corrupt government, and greedy and selfish staff, that led to my hasty separation from UNITECH. In the second blogpost in this series, we saw how today negative internal dynamics at UNITECH have led again to a complete disregard for the key mission of the University of assuring students learn necessary competences in a positive learning environment. Currently, only a few staff and Council members are able to extract all benefits from the university budget and assets, at the expense of all other stakeholder who are powerless, and to the detriment of the education of the students.
Although I presented the vision and set off the process to create transparent, accountable and student-centre university, it was the leadership of others who made it possible to get things done. Elsewhere I have written about the contribution of those law abiding citizens, who played a key role in the great clean up of the former Council and management. There was hope same quality leadership would be exhibit by those in charge of reconstructing the governance and transform the culture of the University. Alas, it was not to be, because it was easier to cling to the toxic, but familiar institutional politics of old.
In this third blogpost of the series, we will see how the current Council and management strongly oppose the University producing active citizens, which led to the indefinite suspension of the SRC. We will reflect on the political role of civil society in developing countries in general and the particular relevant of the student movement in the context of the creation of rule-based, inclusive institutions. Corruption in PNG is systemic and enters in almost every transaction. Students understand that they are the only group in civil society to force the government to clean up its act, and prevent them from completely destroying state institutions by appointing political cronies, ignoring constitutional rights, and the rule of law.
It turns out that the reasons why states fail, is the failure of civil society to fight for the creation of inclusive, democratic institutions, to replace the extractive institutions, which only serve a country's elite. Country's do not only fail due to an uncontrollable spiral of violence or civil war.
The implosion of PNG is Australia's worst nightmare, as it is obsessed by fully controlling and limiting it migration inflow. Rather then preparing a military response and detailed evacuation plans, Australia would be wise if they supported civil society in the slow process of creating democratic, effective, rule-based state institutions, that are inclusive and provide services for the majority of the population.
Dacemoglu and Richardson book describes how economic prosperity depends above all on the inclusiveness of economic and political institutions. Institutions are "inclusive" when many people have a say in political decision-making, as opposed to cases where a small group of people control political institutions and are unwilling to change.
Only a functioning democratic and pluralistic state guarantees the rule of law, and avoids arbitrary application of rules, and politicization of institutions. Inclusive institutions promote economic prosperity because they provide an incentive structure that allows talents and creative ideas to be rewarded, or in other words societies were competences of graduates are valued.
Let's first observe that viable and sustainable societies are not ones frozen in time, but those that adapt to their environment and respect the decisions and preferences of it citizens. We can admire for example the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party in reducing poverty and developing the country, but it comes at the expense of having Xi Jinping proclaim himself as life-time president.
From history we know that when too much power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, things will turn sour pretty soon. Or as Lord Acton, a famous 19th century British diplomat said "Power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely".
In Papua New Guinea corruption is systemic. The people engaged in corruption don't do this once, but they keep doing it. This leads to destruction of state institutions, which no longer try to fulfill their mission, but act in a manner to maximize bribe revenue. The costs of corruption are enormous and all infrastructure projects will cost not twice but 10 times as much as would be justifiable.
There are consequences for organizations as well. When you don't accept bribes, you are a threat to all the others. As a consequence, whole organizations, like UNITECH, start to behave like joint criminal enterprises. I never accepted or paid a bribe in my life, so it was clear that I had to fight the system constantly.
PNG has the questionable honour of being one of the top scoring countries on the Corruption Perception Index: number 138th of 175 countries (higher ranking means more corruption). Because of the lack of cash of its citizens, this corruption takes the shape of direct extraction of funds - which economists call rents - from the state in large quantities. Corruption in PNG is not about extracting small payments from the citizens, simply because they are not cash rich enough.
Evidently, this means state institutions, including universities, can not provide the services they are supposed to. Even in most rural areas in Africa, for example, schools have desks and chairs, but not so in many PNG rural schools. The astonishing fact in PNG is that the "elected leaders" often tradition chiefs of "big men", who extract these rents, do not even feel the need to keep up appearances and give something back to their electorate. In other corrupt countries, the population will not put up with a corrupt leader who does not give back.
Instead PNG elected traditional leaders or "big men" (there are not women in Parliament) siphon off the money and spend it abroad. They are therefore strongly committed to a strong Kina which buys them many US or Australian dollars to the detriment of for example the local exporters of coffee who gets few Kinas for the goods, which are quoted in dollars in international markets.
In a recent article in The Guardian, for example, Brian Kramer describes the kind of pressures people who stand up against corruption and thievery in PNG face, saying he is sure he will eventually be killed. The reasons is that there is a whole economy around corruption, which involves not millions but billions of Kina or dollars. Let's hope this won't happen, but Hon. Kramer's point is taken. If they can seriously threaten to kill an MP, what can they do with a foreigner who has no strong family alliances in the country?
For corruption to thrive, you always find a buyer (corruptor) and seller (corruptee). The third fundamental ingredients, however, are impunity and tolerance by the general public. You can breed this impunity assuring no indictments are made, or the police refuses to carry them out. Tolerance is maintained by keeping the general public confused by launching whisper campaigns, and spreading misinformation or slanderous lies. The complicity of the people is required, and their silence must be bought or produce by terrorizing them.
As a result of corruption, universities state institutions will not serve the interest of the citizens but exclusively the interests of the political class. The mafia state is born and keeps itself alive when terrorized citizens dare not speak out. As a result of corruption, universities will not serve the students or produce employable graduates. Universities start to act as joint criminal enterprises, and genuine academics and professionals will likely be expelled, because their very existence is a threat for all the others.
None of the facts mentioned here are new or unknown. The Sevua Investigation report was published in 2013, and recounts many of the episodes. Among the University staff the exploits of the old regime of Misty Baloiloi were well known, but after the violent repression of the strike in 2007, they had learned to bite their tongues. The students knew a lot too. We must not forget they are someones son or daughter, and pick up a lot of information through the extensive family and tribal networks. Not all details are always correct of what they learn in this manner, but they get the big picture right.
Both anger about the fanastic levels of corruption the government of Peter O'Neill engendered and their lack of respect for the rule of law, and the general mismanagent of UNITECH formed the root cause of students' dissatisfaction. The combination of atrocious state of the learning environment, with the generally gloomy economic situation after 2012 with high unemployment, was too much for the students and their families. The low revenue from coffee harvest in the highlands - from which more than half of the students hail - due to overvalued Kina, and the drought in 2014, which meant almost a quarter million people in the highlands were displaced and depended on food from the World Food Program. In other worse, it was so bad, there was a famine.
Focusing on UNITECH now, in 2012 when I came in as Vice Chancellor I noticed that all contracts with suppliers were biased against the university. It was well known how the Vice Chancellor Misty Baloiloi, Registrar Alan Sako, Chancellor Phillip Staff and Pro Chancellor Ralph Saulep at the time, used the funds they extracted from the University to run their mostly unsuccessful political campaigns. These strong suspicions were later confirmed by the exhaustive Sevua Investigation, and should have been referred to the police.
In my first year, therefore, I had to cancel all contracts, and find new suppliers. The first contract which I did not sign was a retainer for Misty Baloiloi for 3 months after he stood down. For this fee, he refused to offer any service to the University in return. This was blatantly to pay for his electoral campaign.
Another inflated contract for about K1 million per year, for example, was with the Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church for which Misty Baloiloi acted as reverend. The same Church has been involved in the ill-fated Jubilee University, which has raised so many issues around corruption and academic quality. This church were to host all male second and third year students about half an hour from campus, but the university was to ferry them back and forth five times per day. The rooms were tiny and inadequate, and the students always arrived late, and transport was costing another K1 million per year.
Later after my return from exile in 2014, I had to set up processes in order to assure contracts were honest, and did not contain padding for kickbacks. One of the most effective measures, for example, was to lower the financial mandates of the heads of departments and colleges so that overpriced quotes for supplies could be stopped. In this manner from 2015 onwards I achieved millions of Kina in savings, which we spent on spend on teaching resources for students and staff.
The Old Regime had completely dismantled the committee system which give staff a voice. As per the Act of the University the principle of shared governance requires decisions to be made collegially in numerous committees of Council and Academic Board. The library had a hole in the roof. There was no internet.t. None of the apparatus in the laboratories was working. It was a total shambles.
Apart from shady finances, and irregular governance, there were strange cult aspects to Misty Baloiloi rule, comparable to Papa Doc Duvalier. Papa Doc was an infamous life time president in Haiti, who had gone mad, and ruled by fear. He installed his son Baby Doc as life time president.
At UNITECH, Narayan Gehlot, an Indian-American con man, who had been appointed as Professor and Head of Electrical Engineering Department by Chancellor Phillip Stagg played a key role in assuring succession. Misty Baloiloi, had agreed with Mr. Gehlot that his son, Wayne Baloilio would obtain a Masters degree in 1 year (normally two) and a PhD in the next year. We were unable to stop the conferral of the Masters degree, but this can always be withdrawn if it can be shown he did not comply with the academic requirements. In order to stop the second part of the plan from happening, however, the Academic Board, which I chaired, cancelled the PhD program, with great protest from Chancellor Phillip Stagg.
The rot went even further. Through a foreign lecturer, I quickly became aware of another very shady affair involving Narayan Gehlot. He would organize "parties" at his house, where at a price you would be introduced to a prostitute. At these parties, Stagg, Saulep and Baloiloi were frequently present. Later we found out that Gehlot had installed video camera's in his whole house, so that he had material to extort them.
The foreign lecture had shown interest in being hooked up with one of the prostitutes, but after he gave her the money, she left. When he complained about this to Gehlot, he gave him the money back. Oddly, the lecturer concluded that Gehlot was a "real gentleman". His words not mine.
Before the Sevua Investigation team did its exhaustive report in 2014 about the abuses of the former University Council and management, we did the internal Sengi Investigation. This revealed among other things how Narayan Gehlot, an Indian-American conman got himself appointed professor and then started to extract money from the university which he shared with the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. We strongly suspected he committed identity theft, because he never exhibited the competences of an electrical engineer. In the USA identity theft is much easier than in Europe, where all citizens have a citizen number and a birth certificate.
For 19 years under Misty Baloiloi some University Council and management team members had stolen millions from the University, but there was never any hard evidence of this. The smoking gun for Misty Baloiloi was a personal cheque for Mr. Gehlot from 2011 of about K675.000 of infrastructure PIP funds, signed by the himself, and endorsed by the Registrar Alan Sako and Bursar Jimmy Imbok at the time. Gehlot flew to the USA first class for K30,000 ("because this was cheaper " ???), and went on a shopping spree. Part of this money he used to fly to Canada (first class) to buy spy equipment which is outlawed in the USA.
I gave the excellent and factual Sengi report to David Arore, the Minister of Higher Education at the time. Minister Arore's response when he learned about this was telling: "I am a big government Minister, and even I don't get a personal cheque like that". This was not a critique, but a praise on a fellow conman. It comes as no surprise that this Minister of the Moresby Night clubs, later became intimate friends with Gehlot. It took his successor, the good Hon. Malakai Tabar almost a year to settle more than K500,000 debt that David Arore had accred at various clubs in Port Moresby. I was unfortunate that the terrible David Arore was the first of 7 Ministers of Higher Education I worked with. Or maybe it was good because the others in comparison were geniuses and angels.
Instead of taking action, Arore took it as a manual to plan further mischief, and associated himself closely with this Indian American conman in trying to get rid of me and take over the University Council. Meanwhile, I pressured the Registrar to bring the matter to attention of the police, who concluded there was sufficient prima facie evidence to indict the suspects. It was the Registrar then who allowed several of her staff members. such as Naomi Wilkins, to refuse to sign the affidavits, so that the investigation would stall.
Gehlot was later hired as "consultant" for PNG power, where he also underperformed. Thanks to the introductions of his friend Arore, however, he was able to socialize with key members of the government, including PM Peter O'Neill. His habit of taking compromising pictures continued, and in the end Gehlot circulating a picture of Peter O'Neill in swimming trunks, made them finally realize Gehlot is bonkers and they revoked his visa.
It comes as no surprise that it was Gehlot who compiled the infamous dossier with false allegations about my doctorate. He thought he was very clever and asked questions about every comma, logo, name etc. The Sevua Investigation had set all this material aside in 2013.
It was therefore very disappointing that Council Sam Koim in 2018 took all Gehlot's material at face value, and at some point started to send me emails threatening me with criminal cases etc. When I advised the Australian authorities about these threats, he lost all credibility and opportunity for lucrative contracts and appointments.
Another disappointment with Sam Koim was that when he took over the chairmanship of the notorious University Development and Consultancy Ltd (UDC), he failed to sort out the accounts, and take action to deal with the consequences of the corrupt land deal with Customs. Previous UDC Council and management had managed to steal over K3 million through this fake land deal.
Although Sam Koim only briefly exercised the function of Director of Task Force Sweep, and failed to achieve any major convictions, he built a reputation as "corruption fighter". In fact, he lacks court practice and he does not practice as a lawyer. When Koim was interviewed by ABC it was clear he had never tried to gather any credible, primary evidence for the trumped allegation in my regard that my doctorate was not genuine. A true corruption fighter, however, fights his cases in court transparently, based on truthful evidence, not on the basis of false allegations made up by mad man Gehlot. In a country where corruption is part of the system, it may not surprise us that a "corruption fighter" is actually covering up corruption.
Now Sam Koim has been appointed as director at the IRC - position formerly held by Sir Nagora Bogan -, so I hope he will explain to the public how he earned his living and paid taxes from 2012 to 2018 when he was unemployed, and did not practice as a lawyer. Some have said he probably worked for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), which would explain why he would take trips with then Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop in a private jet. It is clear that Koim is not transparent operator, and will need to explain himself.
In 2012, it was obviously the Old Regime saw me as a transient figure, and Papa Doc Misty Baloloi, was going to establish a hereditary vice-chancellorship by having Baby Doc Wayne Baloiloi take over, after I had been kicked out of the country. Meanwhile Misty Baloiloi believed he could continue to fool everybody acting as reverend, while in reality stealing from the university coffers, and leading a far from holy life-style.
From this account it is clear that UNITECH was operating as what is called a "joint criminal enterprise", meaning a conspiracy of those with access to power to extract rents and resources from the University. Because the leaders of this conspiracy, the former Vice Chancellor, the Registrar, the Bursar and the Chancellor were never indicted, it remained a possibilty that the old regime would be restored, and the stealing would resume, and this is in fact what happened.
Personally, it cost me 1 year in exile in 2013, but with the support of the students and some staff, I was able to push Chancellor Staff, Pro-Chancellor Saulep, Registrar Sako and Vice-Chancellor Baloiloi out. Little could I suspect that their replacements would only pretend to work with me on the academic quality and student employment agenda, but rather would cover for the Old Regime, and allow the statute of limitations to run out. With hindsight we can say that was their principal role.
At the end in 2018, in the period before APEC meeting, they panicked and started a whisper campaign and a political witchhunt based on falsehoods and allegations which had already been set aside by the Sevua Investigation. The dishonest Deputy Vice Chancellor was so eager to take the Vice Chancellor's place despite being eminently unsuitable and totally ineffective in all his undertaking. He could count on the support on the infamous and corrupt Puka Temu, his uncle, who continued the destruction of the health care system in PNG. The always suspicious and power hungry Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, and some of his underlings, were all too eager to believe these lies in my regard, and got me arrested and expelled, as well as the other European Vice-Chancellor Prof. John Warren at UNRE.
I was arrested at the airport, my passport was taken from me, but I was not charge for about a week. When the honorary consult Stan Joyce came to protest and ask my passport back, the officer in charge fled and stayed in hiding.
Eventually I was charged for "false pretense" and brought to the police jail, where I was held somewhere between the waiting room, and the places for crooked politicians. I met several young people some of whom had commited a crime, and others who were completely innocent. Since I was much older, I talked to them as a father or uncle and comforted them.
Among the politicians, I met Tobias Kulang there, the son of Registrar Thomas, who had been indicted for murder. In a moment of electoral madness in Kundiawa in 2017 he shot his pistol into the crowd, and killed somebody. He had not been condemned yet, but was being held for a series of other made up charges his political opponents had filed with the police.
The evening before I was taken to the police court, the prosecutor came to sollicit a bribe for "going soft on me". I of course refused, but it was clear the police court in Waigani was utterly corrupt. Fortunately, the judge in the national court was clear thinking and not corrupt, and noted that in 6 years Ralph Saulep and his people had not produced a single bit of primary evidence for false pretence. This could have been, for example, a statement from the European University Institute that there was something wrong with me or my doctoral degree. Of course, they couldn't because my degree is genuine, and I worked hard for it. In another blogpost I have quoted the judges sentence, in which he calls Sauleps allegations "ridiculous".
In fact, Saulep had been thrown out of the law society numerous times. We know that he was trained in Australia as a pilot, but he is not flying either. In his case too, it is unclear how he makes a living.
My early separation from UNITECH give me ample time to write my memoires, and to take steps to get an indictment for the violation of our human rights (malicious prosecution and unlawful arrest) from the European courts by the PNG police, and the UNITECH Council members (wrongful dismissal). Since the State of PNG has not been able to protect my fundamental rights (presumption of innocence), and I have exhausted all means internally to get justice, supra-national bodies can now take over.
In the following sections, we will highlight the role of a few key student leaders, UNITECH's true and incorruptible SRC presidents Richard Mabiria (2015) Eddy Nagual (2014) and Joe Kaowai (2012). Below in the picture we can see them, when we invited them together for a lunch discussing the future of the PNG student movement. The two other members of the management team hide their displeasure behind frowns or fake smiles.
UPNG SRC president Emmanuel Isaac (2012) also played an important role supporting UNITECH, and later as a practicing lawyer in keeping me out of jail when I was unlawfully arrested at Jackson's Airport in Port Moresby while on my way home. Heled the successful protest against the "judicial conduct act", another of these attempts at power abuse by Peter O'Neill.
We must remember that these SRC presidents were support by a team of fellow executives who at times played an equally important role. In particular the role of the female UNITECH Vice Presidents Grace Winka (2012), Diane Mapiso (2015), and Michelle Banga (2016) played an important role in putting the voice of the female students on an equal footing with the males. Grace did work to improve the situation in the female dormitory which had become a disgrace.
Michelle Banga held a speech during the SRC forum on Queen's day in 2016 urging the students to stop fighting and put their education first. After she finished, it was discovered some SHP students had come to the forum armed with bush knifes, and a fight broke out. She tried, but was unable to stop them, while SRC president David Kelma ran away.
For these excellent leaders, unfortunately there were a few Livingstone Hosea (UNITECH SRC 2013) and David Kelma (UNITECH SRC 2016), who allegedly accepted cars, houses and jobs in return for betraying the student movement. Regrettably, in PNG society the corrupt ones are still doing well, while many of the true student leaders are struggling working in small companies or are self-employed. Meanwhile, the good ones suffer harassment in the work place and subsist running their own small activities, or work in remote areas.
We apologize to all those civic minded UNITECH students we can not mention. Many sacrificed their only chance to get a higher education, which in PNG is your only ticket out of the village, for creating well governed, true universities that produce competent and employable graduates. To them my eternal admiration and gratitude.
Before I came to UNITECH, the student body was thoroughly fed up with the Old Regime of Misty Baloiloi, which treated the students as the enemy, and refused to dialogue with them or anyone else for that matter. The year before a student had been shot and killed in an incident with a security guard.
A few years earlier in 2007, there had been a class boycott by the students and a massive strike by the staff, which was violently repressed by the police of the task force. During the class boycott and strike of 2007, Chancellor Phillip Stagg was kidnapped for a few days.
In order to stop commotion, the then Minister for Higher Education Don Polye decided to dismiss the Council. He appointed Sir Nagora Bogan as Chancellor and a few others as Council members, but they exercised their function only for a few days. Regrettably, Stagg and Saulep got a court order restraining the Minister. In 2012, they were still hiding behind this court order, refusing to vacate their seats, and getting themselves re-appointed time and again.
At some point all Vice Chancellors were called for a meeting with the Chief Secretary, the late Sir Manasupe Zurenuoc. This highly intelligent man, and hard working public servant, in his inimitable way found a way to make me feel welcome. Without saying it, he also made clear he would supported me and the students in our fight to weed out the corruption at UNITECH and get rid of the Old Regime. Of all the smart, honest and hard working civil servants I met in PNG, for me he was the most impressive.
At the hand-over, take-over ceremony on 7 February 2011, Chancellor Phillip Stagg held a rambling speech, half in English half in Pidgin, which I still did not understand at the time. One of the things he said was that UNITECH was a large, leaky ship, and he would try to keep it afloat. I found this rather uninspiring for an audience of eager, fresh first year students.
In my speech, I referred to this ship analogy, but replaced it with an airplane en route to new and exciting destinations. Here I spoke the words "Let's make UNITECH Fly!", which later became the motto of the values campaing I led.
Joe Kaowai, the SRC president spoke after me. He immediately understood the power of a positive image, and repeated many times "Let's make UNITECH Fly". Though not a great orator, Joe is extremely smart, strategic and courageous. Sadly, the Old Regime blames him and me for their demise, and he has suffered harassment in his place of work.
After the hand-over, I started to draft my plan for the first 90 days and my report to Council. At the April meeting of Council, I presented my findings about the state of the University, as I had found it in the reports which had been presented to Council earlier, and I had validated by interviewing a horizontal and vertical cross section of staff. Of course it was not pretty. Council did not like and refused to take responsibility for this state of affairs.
At that point, while I was only 2 months into the job, Chancellor Phillip Stagg decided it was time to get rid of me. By that time, they also had figured their chances of winning the elections in their home districts were not very large. Registrar Alan Sako, organized a political dinner, after which he called Joe Kaowai aside, and offered him money for "staying out of Council business". Fortunately, Joe called me and said without saying it that Stagg was going to try to dismiss me. By trying to bribe the students, however, they had tipped them off, which gave the students time to spread the word.
The next Monday Stagg barged into my office, but did not find me there. The next day he made an appointment and told me bluntly I was dismissed. When I asked for the ground of dismissal, he could not explain himself, but said something about me being "arrogant".
What happened afterwards, I will never forget. When Stagg left the building, one student warned his mates at the main gate, and they closed it. When Stagg arrived there they did not let him through. Stagg then proceeded to the back gate, which he tried to ram. Mairen Manub, then only a first year student, was one of the students who ran after Stagg's vehicle, and told Stagg to go explain himself to the students. Stagg chose to jump over the fence and into a PMV. I called him at that point, and he seemed unphased, not knowing that his vehicle had been set on fire. The image of the burnt out vehicle quickly hit the social media, and the first UNITECH student revolution had begun.
Joe Kaowai, meanwhile, kept talking with the students, urging them to keep the gates closed for their own safety. They had taken possession of all university vehicles and were driving around like crazy. The Acting CSO at the time, managed to convince them gently to give the keys back, and promised them they would be driven around by university drivers.
Later, one evening, Joe called me saying he could no longer control the students. I could not really find out what was going on, and university staff advise me to wait until morning until talking with the students. This was a mistake. It turned out a few hotheads had filled up several 25 seaters with barrels of diesel fuel with the intent of setting fire to th port of Lae. Fortunately, Joe by himself stopped them at the gate and convinced them they would all be shot if they tried this.
Of course there were many more students involved in this In order for me not to expose them, the code name was "little helpers". They were fanastic activists, highly effective, focused and extremely smart.
Elsewhere I have told how a new Chancellor was appointed in November 2012, Sir Nagora Bogan, who with the help of the Attorney General at the time, Hon. Kerenga Kua engineered the appointment of a new Council and my return as vice-chancellor. Based on the Sevua Investigation, they cleared me of all baseless allegations.
I would receive many messages, and I am sure I never asked the students to sacrifice their studies and strongly condemned any violence. I am sure of this because I did not know who was writing me, and they could easily have been people working for the other side.
The boycott lasted about 3 weeks, after which SRC President 2013, Livingstone Hosea oddly called it off. Later we learned he received a house, vehicle and a job in return. He got very cross with me, when in 2014 I refused to give him the Vice Chancellor's leadership reward. He only has himself to blame.
Behind the screens though he continued to undermine my authority and credibility, and apparently found a willing ear in then Minister Richard Maru. When Chancellor Jean Kekedo started to desauthorize me, and spread the gossip, Richard Maru was the first to assert his authority over the university, and start making promises. None of those of course are fulfilled until this day, and recently he was stripped of his Ministerial position for actively plotting against the new Prime Minister James Marape.
My triumphant return were my "15 minutes of fame". Nevertheless, I did not enjoy much, since I found myself completely alone rebuilding the governance and administration of the University. For this reason on 7th of May, I chose some internal candidates, who had committed to support me in transforming the University. I promised them to support their transition from the lecture room to the board room with coaching and training by external advisors.
While I was in Australia, I had contacts with several lecturers who had influence with their student. There was no large organization or network, rather a series of autonomously operating cells. I had told them however that something need to be done in 2013, otherwise I would be unable to come back.
Elsewhere I have recounted how the UNITECH SRC president 2014
Eddy Nagual played an exemplary leadership role in all this. At the time, he wanted to expand the student movement against the government, but I advised him to focus on his education. In fact, he graduated the same year.
Another examplary leader among the staff was Ken Polin, who held a "one man forum" with a loud hailer, thus making students aware something fishy was going on. It all led to awesome welcome by extacti student, and a very successful academic year 2014 and 2015, without any conspiracies and political interference. My adversaries, however, would never stop.
In terms of my personal agenda, I was able to make good progress since in 2015 the Council supported our actions, and the politicians were not interferings. On 1st of June, for example, we opened the O3B installation, which allowed the students for the first time to experience broadband internet.
In 2016, the demands of the students were for Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to present himself for the courts after serious and credible allegations had been made over corruption. This had nothing to do with the university, so we decided to stay out of it, and allow the SRC to hold a referendum, as stipulated by their constitution.
As long as the teaching time lost with the class boycott could be addresed by rescheduling, it was a matter for the Academic Board. The moment there were major financial implication for allowing the University to stay open extra weeks, it became a Council matter. In the end, because of the closing down of operation after the burning down of the dining hall, Council had to get involved. Nevertheless, we managed to finish an abridged version of academic year on 31 August 2016, for which we were often praised.
After the traumatic shooting of hundreds of life rounds at peacefully protesting students on the UPNG campus on 8 June 2016, the students were successfully side tracked by the government, and their attention was diverted from the student movements' principal goals to court action at UPNG, and to tribal differences at UNITECH. The shooting incidents broke something in the social fabric of PNG: the student voice was silenced, the press had already been muzzled, who would stand up for the common people?
During the class boycott, there was extensive interference from outside. University students were made to believe that their traditional leaders would assure them life time positions in the state. In particular the SRC president David Kelma, who hails from Southern Highland Province, the same as Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, pretended unconvincingly to lead the protests against the same PM. In reality, he was looking for ways to derail the whole process.
The political interference consisted in threatening the Vice Chancellor of UPNG and UNITECH to take this measure or other, favouring the groups that supported the government, especially the SHP students. It also consisted in buying "bush knifes" (machetes) for those student groups favourable to the government, and taking measures against the protesting students and their sponsors who demanded Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to resign in order to submit himself to justice for very serious accusation of grand corruption.
The arming of the students of course made matters much worse, and in turn let to a reaction of the protesting students. Subsequently, on the UNITECH campus led to a true tribal war on campus, in which one student was seriously wounded and one tragically died. In addition, the dining hall and 3 other buildings went up in flames, which led to temporary closure of the University.
Despite being unable to prevent these tragedies, in general at UNITECH it is generally agreed, the management and Council handled the conflict - in which after all the University was not a party- as well as we possibly could. In fact, the cooperation of the Lae Metropolitan Superintendent Anthony Wagambie Jr., and good coordination with the University's Chief Security Officer Alex Warren (who since then has left UNITECH due to continuous conflict with the Registar) allowed us to have fully deployed police presence on campus a few days before the fateful night of 24 and 25 June, when violence broke out and 4 buildings were lost to fire.
The same MetSup had convinced the students earlier, when they responded to the infamous shooting at peacefuly demonstrating students on the UPNG campus on 8 June 2019, to stay on the UNITECH campus to prevent worse from happening. As you can see on the video, none of my colleauges were there when I went out to get bring him on to campus, only our executive assistant Lemuel and driver Pelly. My contuous calls - here on an ABC interview - for a full investigation into these incident, was ignored by Peter O'Neill's government.
Thanks to their personal interventions, we managed to re-open the University on 31 August, and finish the academic year successfully. It is lamentable that Alex Warren, who single-handedly saved the administration building from going up in flames was forced to leave due to lack of support and continual harassment from the current university management, and in particular the Registrar Veronica Thomas, and some of her entourage.
The main purpose of the current Council, management and senior staff is to reach the statute of limitation for these crimes (6 years) to assure their former colleagues and friends are never indicted. It is also intent on keeping students outside the governance structure, and not allow a functioning Student Representative Council. Nothing else really matters. This approach has created a toxic culture, and pushed out so many good people. By forcing foreign academics like myself out, they ruined the reputation of the University as a credible academic partner.
It is clear that as an outsider, and profesional university administrator, I came with many new ideas and initiatives. My hope was that if out of the 20 only 15 fail, there would be 5 successful changes, which benefit the students and the University at large, as opposed to particular elites. This in turn would slowly transform the organizational culture from that of a small sect, into that of a true university. By creating a structure, and improving processes, culture would change. It was not to be. It felt so much safer to go back to the ways things always were done.
In 2012, we had such high hopes for the Papua New Guinea University system and for UNITECH. The government had decided to reform university governance, principally by slimming down council from 32 to 12 members, and support the academic quality and employability agenda, using the funds from the LNG project. None of these things happened, because of active undermining by members of the old regime, and my colleagues still supporting the most corrupt and dishonest ones.
In another blogpost I have warned against derailing the governance reform, with the higher education act of 2014 instead focusing on the national government control over the universities. The content of my invited lecture at the Australian National University on 18 May 2016 gives the same message. The government's pressure made sure that nobody read and understood, or heard this message.
Today we continue see a shameful spectacle of some childish members of an unreformed Council, gossipping and at odds with themselves, in the end finding it easier to destroy the universities than to build them up. They don't have to bear the burden of presenting fake degrees of pretend universities when seeking employment. The politicization of the universites is at the clear expense of the students' only.
Of course, students feel cheated. One could argue that only in this field PNG universities offer competence-based training involving active learning given the almost yearly student protest against government's excesses or attacks on democratic institutions. The professional accreditation is progressing too slowly, and all the laboratoris and computers are still not operational.
These annual protests engage the student body, and provide an excellent opportunity for students to learn about active citizenship. Traditionally student movement was seen as the prodiving a leadership role to other civil society actors, and in fact always provided this leadership until the O'Neill government shut it down in 2016, with full cooperation from universities councils and management. Now who is left in the country as custodians of democratic values?
My calculation in 2014, however, was contingent on the assumption that my leadership team was committed to putting the University on a financially sustainble footing, assuring its graduates were employable, and in general creating a rule-based, mission focused organization. I was wrong.
The senior management team played along with me for a while it was convenient, because the circumstances of my return with massive support from the students had scared them. When they were able to suspend the student representative council indefinitely, they saw their chance and were able to go back to their mediocre, customary and comfortable situation, where a small group obtain all the benefits from being associated with the university through direct or indirect extraction, while the large majority and in particular the students perceive none.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can not make it drink. It is the job of those Council members, management team members and senior staff who receive a formal university education (this excludes Chancellor Jean Kekedo who never got a degree) to take their responsibility, and create a university system where learning is assured, competences are built, and finances are accounted for.
Instead they have run down the campus again, refusing to assure broadband internet connections, to deliver wholesome food in the student dining hall, to provide adequate services on campus (Faculty restaurant, functioning ATM, decent shop) or monthly fumigation against malaria. Examinations and graduation are still held in a tent. We are back to square one.
Nobody who has worked at a world class university want to work in such a place. The transformation I was pushing for is necessary. My approach in which IT, industry partnerships and industrialization played key roles, was well known. Even the bulletin of the Association of Commonwealth University published my article about it. The current management will never deliver it, however, because it requires hard work and they can't be bothered. I have tried to train and work with them for 4 year, but they seem unable to develop the necessary competences.
As vice-chancellor I knew very well I was not part of the student movement. I had learned however to manage student groups, having worked 20+ years as a an academic and professor in Latin America and Europe, of which 5+ years as and Academic Director and Director in leading universities in the Netherlands. By creating a student-centred university, where rules are respected, and expectations met, I would have broken the boycott culture and there would be no need any longer for annual student demonstrations. Without transformation, of course there will be revolution again.
Although misguided detractors continue to see me as a political threat, I only came to Papua New Guinea to do my job as Vice Chancellor, and train the senior management team members and staff to operate a true, rule based university. They refused to support the necessary transformation, however, and now they will have to live with the consequences, and the guilt of their lies and betrayal of their responsibilies for their country's education.
My career will continue, but sadly most UNITECH graduates' professional careers will never take off. They will be hired as technicians but never as engineers. We could have made UNITECH fly, instead you collectively preferred a pilot and a crew who are driving it right back into the swamp of favoritism, elitism, and corrupt extraction of rents.
The learning environment at UNITECH is again getting worse, there is no consultation, and their issues are not being addressed. Library, laboratories, internet, nothing is working well. Lecture halls, dormitories, dining hall, are all still sub-standard.
If UNITECH students want their representation back through the Students' Representative Council, there is no time to waste. They will have to demand elections, take action, and formulate their demands on the basis of the existing University Act.
From world history we learn that inclusive institutions are not given to one on a platter, but we have to struggle, and fight for them. I hope the fight this time will be smart and non-violent. It is inevitable, and although fighting sometimes against impossible odds, the country and the University can still be changed for the better.
References
Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2013). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227, free audiobook at https://hotaudiobooks.com/why-nations-fail/
Lyons, K. (2019). 'I will eventually get killed': Meet Bryan Kramer, Papua New Guinea's anti-corruption tsar. the Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/11/i-will-eventually-get-killed-meet-bryan-kramer-papua-new-guineas-anti-corruption-tsar
― Facebook Post by (arguably one of Africa's greatest living writers)
(An extract of this article was published by Keith Jackson on PNG Attitude blog)
In Memoriam Mairen Manub
This words and this blog is dedicated to Mairen Manub who passed away on 8 August 2019, after a short battle with cancer in Port Moresby General hospital, which did not carry the principal medicines he needed. |
| Mairen Manub - UNITECH student 2012-2015 |
There are so many stories about him, which we keep telling. We will never forget his wonderful personality, energy and intelligence but most of all his ability to bridge old and new, non-western and western worlds, based on shared humanity. We must find a way together to keep his memory alive.
Introduction
We continue our detailed account of my experiences as vice-chancellor for two terms of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (commonly called UNITECH) from 2012 to 2018 after publishing the first ("A Childhood Dream"), and second ("Employable Graduates") blogposts.My start as vice-chancellor in 2012 in Papua New Guinea was far from auspicious, and due to political conflicts in 2013 and my ban to enter the country, I spent a year in exile in Australia. A few Council member perceived their personal interests would be affected by my leadership, they started a politically motivated persecution in my regard, apparently not concerned with the long-term reputation of the University and the country, and with total disregard for logic, or their own dignity. They accused me of not having a doctorate, which is a common tactic when attachking a vice-chancellor. For some people, actively undermining authority is their favourite past time.
As a consequence in 2013, the government instituted an official investigation led by a former supreme court judge - the Sevua Report - which lasted over 6 months confirmed the legality of my appointment, and fully exonerated me of any wrong doing. It was very easy for me to defend me from these allegations, since my doctorate is demonstrably authentic.
Nevertheless, two class boycotts lasting several weeks in 2013 and 2014, and a massive student movement were required to assure a new University Council was institute, and assure my return as vice-chancellor. In a country like PNG, with 80+% of the population living in rural areas and barely educated, the students understandably feel they have to act as the "conscience of the nation", whenever grand corruption and bad government occurs. Even if there were a free press, the population can not know what is really going on.
Oddly, and totally unexpectedly, this same political witch hunt resumed in 2018. At the end of my second term in 2017, the new Chancellor Jean Kekedo and several Council members decided to publish a series of false allegations in my regard, which they had copied quite literally from the initial trumped up charges made in 2012. They did not even have the imagination to make up new ones. As a consequence, when returning home already as a tourist, I was charged and arrested for false pretense supposedly for having presented a false doctorate. In reality, my doctorate is recognized in all European Union Countries, Costa Rica and recently also in the United States. My current job is with a US based university, on army bases, so they carried out rigorous checks of my background and academic achievements.
Anybody who still believes this whole saga had anything to do with my academic credentials, my achievements as vice-chancellor, or that "Schram should prove his innocence" should familiairize him or herself with the facts. You can check the official record here, or you can give the renowned European University Institute a call, as some journalists did. They speak English.
When this ludicrous charge was finally dismissed by the courts in January 2019 for lack of any evidence, however, no apologies were issued in my regard, nor were the false allegations published on their internet pages taken down.For this reason, and although I do not like to assess other people's behaviour, I do not feel I need to hold back in the description of the behaviour of my former colleagues, and take their delicate sensibilities into account. Not after they have shown so much incompetence, spite and greed.
Knowing exactly what these people did, will be helpful for the younger generations to learn how politics should be about purpose, not who has what position, and access to money and resources. They will understand why institution building in PNG is so painfully slow. The small politics of over-inflated ego's and greed is what brought about the demise of UNITECH. As to their motives, I leave it to the reader to decide, and to ask them to explain themselves.
Meanwhile, my life moved on, while my former colleagues have no career and will never work anywhere else. I went back home to Italy, and exercise my old trade. Currently, work as Professor at the University of Maryland University College - Europe, teaching history and management course on US army bases in Northern Italy.
In last month's second blog post in this series, we noted how PNG universities fall short in this sense. They can not credibly demonstrate their graduates actually acquire necessary and expected graduate competences. After all, the only way to do this is by way of an international, independent professional accreditation process. I am not optimistic the current management is supporting the engineering departments sufficiently in this effort. In the past they never did.
Any vice-chancellor can state his or her university is contributing to nation building, but if its graduates do not have the expected competences, you are not really doing this, are you? Universities should at the very least produce employable graduates, otherwise they are part of the problem, and not part of the solution. Graduates might look "good on paper" but in the end international companies hire just as many graduates straight from high school. The labour market teaches us that PNG universities add little, or maybe even negative value.
As institutions, PNG universities in 2014 failed to comply with the 13 quality criteria of the National Quality Framework, and are not even monitoring progress towards this goal. In particular, the 10th criterium regarding security and wellness of the students, required major attention. DVC Dr. Ora Renagi was responsible for following this through, but he never did anything. Soon there will be a new audit, and I doubt the university will do much better.
In last month's post, we focused on the first key dimension of university purpose and relevance: to deliver a modern, competence focused curriculum, so that universities produce highly employable, work ready graduates. This is a technical, educational dimension.
This month we will focus on the second dimension of the purpose or relevance of universities: active citizenship, producing graduates who can be responsible leaders in democratic societies. This is a more complex dimension, which involves creating a university culture of transparency, truth seeking (rigorous distinction between falsehoods and truth), and the ability of speaking truth to power.
Evidently, if we can not root out the old mindset associated with corruption, whisper campaigns, tribal fights, political witch hunts and chief killings in universities, they will fail to produce active citizens and democratic leaders, who respect the rule of law. As my experience show, this is easier said than done.
It was the combination of a corrupt government, and greedy and selfish staff, that led to my hasty separation from UNITECH. In the second blogpost in this series, we saw how today negative internal dynamics at UNITECH have led again to a complete disregard for the key mission of the University of assuring students learn necessary competences in a positive learning environment. Currently, only a few staff and Council members are able to extract all benefits from the university budget and assets, at the expense of all other stakeholder who are powerless, and to the detriment of the education of the students.
Although I presented the vision and set off the process to create transparent, accountable and student-centre university, it was the leadership of others who made it possible to get things done. Elsewhere I have written about the contribution of those law abiding citizens, who played a key role in the great clean up of the former Council and management. There was hope same quality leadership would be exhibit by those in charge of reconstructing the governance and transform the culture of the University. Alas, it was not to be, because it was easier to cling to the toxic, but familiar institutional politics of old.
In this third blogpost of the series, we will see how the current Council and management strongly oppose the University producing active citizens, which led to the indefinite suspension of the SRC. We will reflect on the political role of civil society in developing countries in general and the particular relevant of the student movement in the context of the creation of rule-based, inclusive institutions. Corruption in PNG is systemic and enters in almost every transaction. Students understand that they are the only group in civil society to force the government to clean up its act, and prevent them from completely destroying state institutions by appointing political cronies, ignoring constitutional rights, and the rule of law.
Systemic Corruption and Failure to Develop Inclusive Institutions
In each blogpost, I like to present a theoretical framework, which helps to interpret my experiences and stories. The book "Why Nations Fail" published in 2013 by economists Daron Acemoglu (MIT) and James Robison (U Chicago) provides a productive framework for analyzing the importance of civil society movements in the context of national development in developing countries.It turns out that the reasons why states fail, is the failure of civil society to fight for the creation of inclusive, democratic institutions, to replace the extractive institutions, which only serve a country's elite. Country's do not only fail due to an uncontrollable spiral of violence or civil war.
The implosion of PNG is Australia's worst nightmare, as it is obsessed by fully controlling and limiting it migration inflow. Rather then preparing a military response and detailed evacuation plans, Australia would be wise if they supported civil society in the slow process of creating democratic, effective, rule-based state institutions, that are inclusive and provide services for the majority of the population.
Dacemoglu and Richardson book describes how economic prosperity depends above all on the inclusiveness of economic and political institutions. Institutions are "inclusive" when many people have a say in political decision-making, as opposed to cases where a small group of people control political institutions and are unwilling to change.
Only a functioning democratic and pluralistic state guarantees the rule of law, and avoids arbitrary application of rules, and politicization of institutions. Inclusive institutions promote economic prosperity because they provide an incentive structure that allows talents and creative ideas to be rewarded, or in other words societies were competences of graduates are valued.
Let's first observe that viable and sustainable societies are not ones frozen in time, but those that adapt to their environment and respect the decisions and preferences of it citizens. We can admire for example the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party in reducing poverty and developing the country, but it comes at the expense of having Xi Jinping proclaim himself as life-time president.
From history we know that when too much power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, things will turn sour pretty soon. Or as Lord Acton, a famous 19th century British diplomat said "Power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely".
In Papua New Guinea corruption is systemic. The people engaged in corruption don't do this once, but they keep doing it. This leads to destruction of state institutions, which no longer try to fulfill their mission, but act in a manner to maximize bribe revenue. The costs of corruption are enormous and all infrastructure projects will cost not twice but 10 times as much as would be justifiable.
There are consequences for organizations as well. When you don't accept bribes, you are a threat to all the others. As a consequence, whole organizations, like UNITECH, start to behave like joint criminal enterprises. I never accepted or paid a bribe in my life, so it was clear that I had to fight the system constantly.
PNG has the questionable honour of being one of the top scoring countries on the Corruption Perception Index: number 138th of 175 countries (higher ranking means more corruption). Because of the lack of cash of its citizens, this corruption takes the shape of direct extraction of funds - which economists call rents - from the state in large quantities. Corruption in PNG is not about extracting small payments from the citizens, simply because they are not cash rich enough.
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| The 2014 Student Protests motto |
Evidently, this means state institutions, including universities, can not provide the services they are supposed to. Even in most rural areas in Africa, for example, schools have desks and chairs, but not so in many PNG rural schools. The astonishing fact in PNG is that the "elected leaders" often tradition chiefs of "big men", who extract these rents, do not even feel the need to keep up appearances and give something back to their electorate. In other corrupt countries, the population will not put up with a corrupt leader who does not give back.
Instead PNG elected traditional leaders or "big men" (there are not women in Parliament) siphon off the money and spend it abroad. They are therefore strongly committed to a strong Kina which buys them many US or Australian dollars to the detriment of for example the local exporters of coffee who gets few Kinas for the goods, which are quoted in dollars in international markets.
In a recent article in The Guardian, for example, Brian Kramer describes the kind of pressures people who stand up against corruption and thievery in PNG face, saying he is sure he will eventually be killed. The reasons is that there is a whole economy around corruption, which involves not millions but billions of Kina or dollars. Let's hope this won't happen, but Hon. Kramer's point is taken. If they can seriously threaten to kill an MP, what can they do with a foreigner who has no strong family alliances in the country?
For corruption to thrive, you always find a buyer (corruptor) and seller (corruptee). The third fundamental ingredients, however, are impunity and tolerance by the general public. You can breed this impunity assuring no indictments are made, or the police refuses to carry them out. Tolerance is maintained by keeping the general public confused by launching whisper campaigns, and spreading misinformation or slanderous lies. The complicity of the people is required, and their silence must be bought or produce by terrorizing them.
As a result of corruption, universities state institutions will not serve the interest of the citizens but exclusively the interests of the political class. The mafia state is born and keeps itself alive when terrorized citizens dare not speak out. As a result of corruption, universities will not serve the students or produce employable graduates. Universities start to act as joint criminal enterprises, and genuine academics and professionals will likely be expelled, because their very existence is a threat for all the others.
UNITECH's Un-Holy Old Regime
Before we tell the story of the four student revolutions against UNITECH's Old Regime and the Government, which supported it, we need to describe the extent of general corruption in PNG, and the toxic situation I found at UNITECH in 2012.None of the facts mentioned here are new or unknown. The Sevua Investigation report was published in 2013, and recounts many of the episodes. Among the University staff the exploits of the old regime of Misty Baloiloi were well known, but after the violent repression of the strike in 2007, they had learned to bite their tongues. The students knew a lot too. We must not forget they are someones son or daughter, and pick up a lot of information through the extensive family and tribal networks. Not all details are always correct of what they learn in this manner, but they get the big picture right.
Both anger about the fanastic levels of corruption the government of Peter O'Neill engendered and their lack of respect for the rule of law, and the general mismanagent of UNITECH formed the root cause of students' dissatisfaction. The combination of atrocious state of the learning environment, with the generally gloomy economic situation after 2012 with high unemployment, was too much for the students and their families. The low revenue from coffee harvest in the highlands - from which more than half of the students hail - due to overvalued Kina, and the drought in 2014, which meant almost a quarter million people in the highlands were displaced and depended on food from the World Food Program. In other worse, it was so bad, there was a famine.
Focusing on UNITECH now, in 2012 when I came in as Vice Chancellor I noticed that all contracts with suppliers were biased against the university. It was well known how the Vice Chancellor Misty Baloiloi, Registrar Alan Sako, Chancellor Phillip Staff and Pro Chancellor Ralph Saulep at the time, used the funds they extracted from the University to run their mostly unsuccessful political campaigns. These strong suspicions were later confirmed by the exhaustive Sevua Investigation, and should have been referred to the police.
In my first year, therefore, I had to cancel all contracts, and find new suppliers. The first contract which I did not sign was a retainer for Misty Baloiloi for 3 months after he stood down. For this fee, he refused to offer any service to the University in return. This was blatantly to pay for his electoral campaign.
Another inflated contract for about K1 million per year, for example, was with the Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church for which Misty Baloiloi acted as reverend. The same Church has been involved in the ill-fated Jubilee University, which has raised so many issues around corruption and academic quality. This church were to host all male second and third year students about half an hour from campus, but the university was to ferry them back and forth five times per day. The rooms were tiny and inadequate, and the students always arrived late, and transport was costing another K1 million per year.
Later after my return from exile in 2014, I had to set up processes in order to assure contracts were honest, and did not contain padding for kickbacks. One of the most effective measures, for example, was to lower the financial mandates of the heads of departments and colleges so that overpriced quotes for supplies could be stopped. In this manner from 2015 onwards I achieved millions of Kina in savings, which we spent on spend on teaching resources for students and staff.
The Old Regime had completely dismantled the committee system which give staff a voice. As per the Act of the University the principle of shared governance requires decisions to be made collegially in numerous committees of Council and Academic Board. The library had a hole in the roof. There was no internet.t. None of the apparatus in the laboratories was working. It was a total shambles.
Apart from shady finances, and irregular governance, there were strange cult aspects to Misty Baloiloi rule, comparable to Papa Doc Duvalier. Papa Doc was an infamous life time president in Haiti, who had gone mad, and ruled by fear. He installed his son Baby Doc as life time president.
At UNITECH, Narayan Gehlot, an Indian-American con man, who had been appointed as Professor and Head of Electrical Engineering Department by Chancellor Phillip Stagg played a key role in assuring succession. Misty Baloiloi, had agreed with Mr. Gehlot that his son, Wayne Baloilio would obtain a Masters degree in 1 year (normally two) and a PhD in the next year. We were unable to stop the conferral of the Masters degree, but this can always be withdrawn if it can be shown he did not comply with the academic requirements. In order to stop the second part of the plan from happening, however, the Academic Board, which I chaired, cancelled the PhD program, with great protest from Chancellor Phillip Stagg.
The rot went even further. Through a foreign lecturer, I quickly became aware of another very shady affair involving Narayan Gehlot. He would organize "parties" at his house, where at a price you would be introduced to a prostitute. At these parties, Stagg, Saulep and Baloiloi were frequently present. Later we found out that Gehlot had installed video camera's in his whole house, so that he had material to extort them.
The foreign lecture had shown interest in being hooked up with one of the prostitutes, but after he gave her the money, she left. When he complained about this to Gehlot, he gave him the money back. Oddly, the lecturer concluded that Gehlot was a "real gentleman". His words not mine.
Before the Sevua Investigation team did its exhaustive report in 2014 about the abuses of the former University Council and management, we did the internal Sengi Investigation. This revealed among other things how Narayan Gehlot, an Indian-American conman got himself appointed professor and then started to extract money from the university which he shared with the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor. We strongly suspected he committed identity theft, because he never exhibited the competences of an electrical engineer. In the USA identity theft is much easier than in Europe, where all citizens have a citizen number and a birth certificate.
For 19 years under Misty Baloiloi some University Council and management team members had stolen millions from the University, but there was never any hard evidence of this. The smoking gun for Misty Baloiloi was a personal cheque for Mr. Gehlot from 2011 of about K675.000 of infrastructure PIP funds, signed by the himself, and endorsed by the Registrar Alan Sako and Bursar Jimmy Imbok at the time. Gehlot flew to the USA first class for K30,000 ("because this was cheaper " ???), and went on a shopping spree. Part of this money he used to fly to Canada (first class) to buy spy equipment which is outlawed in the USA.
I gave the excellent and factual Sengi report to David Arore, the Minister of Higher Education at the time. Minister Arore's response when he learned about this was telling: "I am a big government Minister, and even I don't get a personal cheque like that". This was not a critique, but a praise on a fellow conman. It comes as no surprise that this Minister of the Moresby Night clubs, later became intimate friends with Gehlot. It took his successor, the good Hon. Malakai Tabar almost a year to settle more than K500,000 debt that David Arore had accred at various clubs in Port Moresby. I was unfortunate that the terrible David Arore was the first of 7 Ministers of Higher Education I worked with. Or maybe it was good because the others in comparison were geniuses and angels.
Instead of taking action, Arore took it as a manual to plan further mischief, and associated himself closely with this Indian American conman in trying to get rid of me and take over the University Council. Meanwhile, I pressured the Registrar to bring the matter to attention of the police, who concluded there was sufficient prima facie evidence to indict the suspects. It was the Registrar then who allowed several of her staff members. such as Naomi Wilkins, to refuse to sign the affidavits, so that the investigation would stall.
Gehlot was later hired as "consultant" for PNG power, where he also underperformed. Thanks to the introductions of his friend Arore, however, he was able to socialize with key members of the government, including PM Peter O'Neill. His habit of taking compromising pictures continued, and in the end Gehlot circulating a picture of Peter O'Neill in swimming trunks, made them finally realize Gehlot is bonkers and they revoked his visa.
It comes as no surprise that it was Gehlot who compiled the infamous dossier with false allegations about my doctorate. He thought he was very clever and asked questions about every comma, logo, name etc. The Sevua Investigation had set all this material aside in 2013.
It was therefore very disappointing that Council Sam Koim in 2018 took all Gehlot's material at face value, and at some point started to send me emails threatening me with criminal cases etc. When I advised the Australian authorities about these threats, he lost all credibility and opportunity for lucrative contracts and appointments.
Another disappointment with Sam Koim was that when he took over the chairmanship of the notorious University Development and Consultancy Ltd (UDC), he failed to sort out the accounts, and take action to deal with the consequences of the corrupt land deal with Customs. Previous UDC Council and management had managed to steal over K3 million through this fake land deal.
Although Sam Koim only briefly exercised the function of Director of Task Force Sweep, and failed to achieve any major convictions, he built a reputation as "corruption fighter". In fact, he lacks court practice and he does not practice as a lawyer. When Koim was interviewed by ABC it was clear he had never tried to gather any credible, primary evidence for the trumped allegation in my regard that my doctorate was not genuine. A true corruption fighter, however, fights his cases in court transparently, based on truthful evidence, not on the basis of false allegations made up by mad man Gehlot. In a country where corruption is part of the system, it may not surprise us that a "corruption fighter" is actually covering up corruption.
Now Sam Koim has been appointed as director at the IRC - position formerly held by Sir Nagora Bogan -, so I hope he will explain to the public how he earned his living and paid taxes from 2012 to 2018 when he was unemployed, and did not practice as a lawyer. Some have said he probably worked for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), which would explain why he would take trips with then Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop in a private jet. It is clear that Koim is not transparent operator, and will need to explain himself.
In 2012, it was obviously the Old Regime saw me as a transient figure, and Papa Doc Misty Baloloi, was going to establish a hereditary vice-chancellorship by having Baby Doc Wayne Baloiloi take over, after I had been kicked out of the country. Meanwhile Misty Baloiloi believed he could continue to fool everybody acting as reverend, while in reality stealing from the university coffers, and leading a far from holy life-style.
From this account it is clear that UNITECH was operating as what is called a "joint criminal enterprise", meaning a conspiracy of those with access to power to extract rents and resources from the University. Because the leaders of this conspiracy, the former Vice Chancellor, the Registrar, the Bursar and the Chancellor were never indicted, it remained a possibilty that the old regime would be restored, and the stealing would resume, and this is in fact what happened.
Personally, it cost me 1 year in exile in 2013, but with the support of the students and some staff, I was able to push Chancellor Staff, Pro-Chancellor Saulep, Registrar Sako and Vice-Chancellor Baloiloi out. Little could I suspect that their replacements would only pretend to work with me on the academic quality and student employment agenda, but rather would cover for the Old Regime, and allow the statute of limitations to run out. With hindsight we can say that was their principal role.
At the end in 2018, in the period before APEC meeting, they panicked and started a whisper campaign and a political witchhunt based on falsehoods and allegations which had already been set aside by the Sevua Investigation. The dishonest Deputy Vice Chancellor was so eager to take the Vice Chancellor's place despite being eminently unsuitable and totally ineffective in all his undertaking. He could count on the support on the infamous and corrupt Puka Temu, his uncle, who continued the destruction of the health care system in PNG. The always suspicious and power hungry Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, and some of his underlings, were all too eager to believe these lies in my regard, and got me arrested and expelled, as well as the other European Vice-Chancellor Prof. John Warren at UNRE.
I was arrested at the airport, my passport was taken from me, but I was not charge for about a week. When the honorary consult Stan Joyce came to protest and ask my passport back, the officer in charge fled and stayed in hiding.
Eventually I was charged for "false pretense" and brought to the police jail, where I was held somewhere between the waiting room, and the places for crooked politicians. I met several young people some of whom had commited a crime, and others who were completely innocent. Since I was much older, I talked to them as a father or uncle and comforted them.
Among the politicians, I met Tobias Kulang there, the son of Registrar Thomas, who had been indicted for murder. In a moment of electoral madness in Kundiawa in 2017 he shot his pistol into the crowd, and killed somebody. He had not been condemned yet, but was being held for a series of other made up charges his political opponents had filed with the police.
The evening before I was taken to the police court, the prosecutor came to sollicit a bribe for "going soft on me". I of course refused, but it was clear the police court in Waigani was utterly corrupt. Fortunately, the judge in the national court was clear thinking and not corrupt, and noted that in 6 years Ralph Saulep and his people had not produced a single bit of primary evidence for false pretence. This could have been, for example, a statement from the European University Institute that there was something wrong with me or my doctoral degree. Of course, they couldn't because my degree is genuine, and I worked hard for it. In another blogpost I have quoted the judges sentence, in which he calls Sauleps allegations "ridiculous".
In fact, Saulep had been thrown out of the law society numerous times. We know that he was trained in Australia as a pilot, but he is not flying either. In his case too, it is unclear how he makes a living.
My early separation from UNITECH give me ample time to write my memoires, and to take steps to get an indictment for the violation of our human rights (malicious prosecution and unlawful arrest) from the European courts by the PNG police, and the UNITECH Council members (wrongful dismissal). Since the State of PNG has not been able to protect my fundamental rights (presumption of innocence), and I have exhausted all means internally to get justice, supra-national bodies can now take over.
Students Fighting & Struggling for the Nation
In the following sections, we will highlight the role of a few key student leaders, UNITECH's true and incorruptible SRC presidents Richard Mabiria (2015) Eddy Nagual (2014) and Joe Kaowai (2012). Below in the picture we can see them, when we invited them together for a lunch discussing the future of the PNG student movement. The two other members of the management team hide their displeasure behind frowns or fake smiles.
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| Top row L to R: Richard Mabiria (2015), Eddy Nagual (2014), Joe Kaowai (2012) |
UPNG SRC president Emmanuel Isaac (2012) also played an important role supporting UNITECH, and later as a practicing lawyer in keeping me out of jail when I was unlawfully arrested at Jackson's Airport in Port Moresby while on my way home. Heled the successful protest against the "judicial conduct act", another of these attempts at power abuse by Peter O'Neill.
We must remember that these SRC presidents were support by a team of fellow executives who at times played an equally important role. In particular the role of the female UNITECH Vice Presidents Grace Winka (2012), Diane Mapiso (2015), and Michelle Banga (2016) played an important role in putting the voice of the female students on an equal footing with the males. Grace did work to improve the situation in the female dormitory which had become a disgrace.
Michelle Banga held a speech during the SRC forum on Queen's day in 2016 urging the students to stop fighting and put their education first. After she finished, it was discovered some SHP students had come to the forum armed with bush knifes, and a fight broke out. She tried, but was unable to stop them, while SRC president David Kelma ran away.
For these excellent leaders, unfortunately there were a few Livingstone Hosea (UNITECH SRC 2013) and David Kelma (UNITECH SRC 2016), who allegedly accepted cars, houses and jobs in return for betraying the student movement. Regrettably, in PNG society the corrupt ones are still doing well, while many of the true student leaders are struggling working in small companies or are self-employed. Meanwhile, the good ones suffer harassment in the work place and subsist running their own small activities, or work in remote areas.
We apologize to all those civic minded UNITECH students we can not mention. Many sacrificed their only chance to get a higher education, which in PNG is your only ticket out of the village, for creating well governed, true universities that produce competent and employable graduates. To them my eternal admiration and gratitude.
1- UNITECH's First Boycott of Classes & Revolution, 2012
In the sections above a picture emerge of a cult-like and corrupt university leadership, which had turned the university into a joint criminal enterprise. One thing people sometimes forget is that students are somebody's sons and daughters, and therefore they know what their fathers, mothers, uncles and aunties are up to.Before I came to UNITECH, the student body was thoroughly fed up with the Old Regime of Misty Baloiloi, which treated the students as the enemy, and refused to dialogue with them or anyone else for that matter. The year before a student had been shot and killed in an incident with a security guard.
A few years earlier in 2007, there had been a class boycott by the students and a massive strike by the staff, which was violently repressed by the police of the task force. During the class boycott and strike of 2007, Chancellor Phillip Stagg was kidnapped for a few days.
In order to stop commotion, the then Minister for Higher Education Don Polye decided to dismiss the Council. He appointed Sir Nagora Bogan as Chancellor and a few others as Council members, but they exercised their function only for a few days. Regrettably, Stagg and Saulep got a court order restraining the Minister. In 2012, they were still hiding behind this court order, refusing to vacate their seats, and getting themselves re-appointed time and again.
At some point all Vice Chancellors were called for a meeting with the Chief Secretary, the late Sir Manasupe Zurenuoc. This highly intelligent man, and hard working public servant, in his inimitable way found a way to make me feel welcome. Without saying it, he also made clear he would supported me and the students in our fight to weed out the corruption at UNITECH and get rid of the Old Regime. Of all the smart, honest and hard working civil servants I met in PNG, for me he was the most impressive.
At the hand-over, take-over ceremony on 7 February 2011, Chancellor Phillip Stagg held a rambling speech, half in English half in Pidgin, which I still did not understand at the time. One of the things he said was that UNITECH was a large, leaky ship, and he would try to keep it afloat. I found this rather uninspiring for an audience of eager, fresh first year students.
In my speech, I referred to this ship analogy, but replaced it with an airplane en route to new and exciting destinations. Here I spoke the words "Let's make UNITECH Fly!", which later became the motto of the values campaing I led.
Joe Kaowai, the SRC president spoke after me. He immediately understood the power of a positive image, and repeated many times "Let's make UNITECH Fly". Though not a great orator, Joe is extremely smart, strategic and courageous. Sadly, the Old Regime blames him and me for their demise, and he has suffered harassment in his place of work.
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| SRC President Joe Kaowai "We will make UNITECH Fly!" |
At that point, while I was only 2 months into the job, Chancellor Phillip Stagg decided it was time to get rid of me. By that time, they also had figured their chances of winning the elections in their home districts were not very large. Registrar Alan Sako, organized a political dinner, after which he called Joe Kaowai aside, and offered him money for "staying out of Council business". Fortunately, Joe called me and said without saying it that Stagg was going to try to dismiss me. By trying to bribe the students, however, they had tipped them off, which gave the students time to spread the word.
The next Monday Stagg barged into my office, but did not find me there. The next day he made an appointment and told me bluntly I was dismissed. When I asked for the ground of dismissal, he could not explain himself, but said something about me being "arrogant".
What happened afterwards, I will never forget. When Stagg left the building, one student warned his mates at the main gate, and they closed it. When Stagg arrived there they did not let him through. Stagg then proceeded to the back gate, which he tried to ram. Mairen Manub, then only a first year student, was one of the students who ran after Stagg's vehicle, and told Stagg to go explain himself to the students. Stagg chose to jump over the fence and into a PMV. I called him at that point, and he seemed unphased, not knowing that his vehicle had been set on fire. The image of the burnt out vehicle quickly hit the social media, and the first UNITECH student revolution had begun.
Joe Kaowai, meanwhile, kept talking with the students, urging them to keep the gates closed for their own safety. They had taken possession of all university vehicles and were driving around like crazy. The Acting CSO at the time, managed to convince them gently to give the keys back, and promised them they would be driven around by university drivers.
Later, one evening, Joe called me saying he could no longer control the students. I could not really find out what was going on, and university staff advise me to wait until morning until talking with the students. This was a mistake. It turned out a few hotheads had filled up several 25 seaters with barrels of diesel fuel with the intent of setting fire to th port of Lae. Fortunately, Joe by himself stopped them at the gate and convinced them they would all be shot if they tried this.
Of course there were many more students involved in this In order for me not to expose them, the code name was "little helpers". They were fanastic activists, highly effective, focused and extremely smart.
Elsewhere I have told how a new Chancellor was appointed in November 2012, Sir Nagora Bogan, who with the help of the Attorney General at the time, Hon. Kerenga Kua engineered the appointment of a new Council and my return as vice-chancellor. Based on the Sevua Investigation, they cleared me of all baseless allegations.
2- UNITECH's Second Boycott of Classes, 2013
The second boycott, I was already in exile, and I follow mostly through social media. The students demand was to allow me to come back as Vice Chancellor. Though I had never been legally dismissed, by not letting me into the country I was unable to lead the University.I would receive many messages, and I am sure I never asked the students to sacrifice their studies and strongly condemned any violence. I am sure of this because I did not know who was writing me, and they could easily have been people working for the other side.
The boycott lasted about 3 weeks, after which SRC President 2013, Livingstone Hosea oddly called it off. Later we learned he received a house, vehicle and a job in return. He got very cross with me, when in 2014 I refused to give him the Vice Chancellor's leadership reward. He only has himself to blame.
Behind the screens though he continued to undermine my authority and credibility, and apparently found a willing ear in then Minister Richard Maru. When Chancellor Jean Kekedo started to desauthorize me, and spread the gossip, Richard Maru was the first to assert his authority over the university, and start making promises. None of those of course are fulfilled until this day, and recently he was stripped of his Ministerial position for actively plotting against the new Prime Minister James Marape.
3- UNITECH's Third Class Boycott of Classes and Revolution, 2014
During this class boycott, I was still in exile in Australia, but no the 4th of April I was able to return. Elsewhere I have reconstructed the story of this successful boycott, but I was not on campus in those days. A thorough analysis of why it was successful, I published here. |
| My return after exile 4 April 2014 Mairen Manub was one of those carrying me |
While I was in Australia, I had contacts with several lecturers who had influence with their student. There was no large organization or network, rather a series of autonomously operating cells. I had told them however that something need to be done in 2013, otherwise I would be unable to come back.
Elsewhere I have recounted how the UNITECH SRC president 2014
Eddy Nagual played an exemplary leadership role in all this. At the time, he wanted to expand the student movement against the government, but I advised him to focus on his education. In fact, he graduated the same year.
Another examplary leader among the staff was Ken Polin, who held a "one man forum" with a loud hailer, thus making students aware something fishy was going on. It all led to awesome welcome by extacti student, and a very successful academic year 2014 and 2015, without any conspiracies and political interference. My adversaries, however, would never stop.
4- UNITECH's Fourth Boycott of Classes, 2016
In 2015, there was no class boycott, and it was by far the best years in term of having a positive learning environment. Finally, the anger was gone, and the students behaved like students again, engaged with their classes and learning activities, and having fun at the same time. The SRC 2015 President Richard Mabiria and his team, organized a large number of activities, which allowed students to developed their team working and leadership skills.In terms of my personal agenda, I was able to make good progress since in 2015 the Council supported our actions, and the politicians were not interferings. On 1st of June, for example, we opened the O3B installation, which allowed the students for the first time to experience broadband internet.
In 2016, the demands of the students were for Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to present himself for the courts after serious and credible allegations had been made over corruption. This had nothing to do with the university, so we decided to stay out of it, and allow the SRC to hold a referendum, as stipulated by their constitution.
As long as the teaching time lost with the class boycott could be addresed by rescheduling, it was a matter for the Academic Board. The moment there were major financial implication for allowing the University to stay open extra weeks, it became a Council matter. In the end, because of the closing down of operation after the burning down of the dining hall, Council had to get involved. Nevertheless, we managed to finish an abridged version of academic year on 31 August 2016, for which we were often praised.
After the traumatic shooting of hundreds of life rounds at peacefully protesting students on the UPNG campus on 8 June 2016, the students were successfully side tracked by the government, and their attention was diverted from the student movements' principal goals to court action at UPNG, and to tribal differences at UNITECH. The shooting incidents broke something in the social fabric of PNG: the student voice was silenced, the press had already been muzzled, who would stand up for the common people?
During the class boycott, there was extensive interference from outside. University students were made to believe that their traditional leaders would assure them life time positions in the state. In particular the SRC president David Kelma, who hails from Southern Highland Province, the same as Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, pretended unconvincingly to lead the protests against the same PM. In reality, he was looking for ways to derail the whole process.
The political interference consisted in threatening the Vice Chancellor of UPNG and UNITECH to take this measure or other, favouring the groups that supported the government, especially the SHP students. It also consisted in buying "bush knifes" (machetes) for those student groups favourable to the government, and taking measures against the protesting students and their sponsors who demanded Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to resign in order to submit himself to justice for very serious accusation of grand corruption.
The arming of the students of course made matters much worse, and in turn let to a reaction of the protesting students. Subsequently, on the UNITECH campus led to a true tribal war on campus, in which one student was seriously wounded and one tragically died. In addition, the dining hall and 3 other buildings went up in flames, which led to temporary closure of the University.
Despite being unable to prevent these tragedies, in general at UNITECH it is generally agreed, the management and Council handled the conflict - in which after all the University was not a party- as well as we possibly could. In fact, the cooperation of the Lae Metropolitan Superintendent Anthony Wagambie Jr., and good coordination with the University's Chief Security Officer Alex Warren (who since then has left UNITECH due to continuous conflict with the Registar) allowed us to have fully deployed police presence on campus a few days before the fateful night of 24 and 25 June, when violence broke out and 4 buildings were lost to fire.
The same MetSup had convinced the students earlier, when they responded to the infamous shooting at peacefuly demonstrating students on the UPNG campus on 8 June 2019, to stay on the UNITECH campus to prevent worse from happening. As you can see on the video, none of my colleauges were there when I went out to get bring him on to campus, only our executive assistant Lemuel and driver Pelly. My contuous calls - here on an ABC interview - for a full investigation into these incident, was ignored by Peter O'Neill's government.
Thanks to their personal interventions, we managed to re-open the University on 31 August, and finish the academic year successfully. It is lamentable that Alex Warren, who single-handedly saved the administration building from going up in flames was forced to leave due to lack of support and continual harassment from the current university management, and in particular the Registrar Veronica Thomas, and some of her entourage.
Final Remarks
The conclusion is inescapable. They used me to clean up the corrupt mess at UNITECH, which had turned into a cult-like joint criminal enterprise. Nobody else had dared to stand up against the old regime of Phillip Stagg, Ralph Saulep and Misty Baloiloi. Then the university council threw me under the bus.The main purpose of the current Council, management and senior staff is to reach the statute of limitation for these crimes (6 years) to assure their former colleagues and friends are never indicted. It is also intent on keeping students outside the governance structure, and not allow a functioning Student Representative Council. Nothing else really matters. This approach has created a toxic culture, and pushed out so many good people. By forcing foreign academics like myself out, they ruined the reputation of the University as a credible academic partner.
It is clear that as an outsider, and profesional university administrator, I came with many new ideas and initiatives. My hope was that if out of the 20 only 15 fail, there would be 5 successful changes, which benefit the students and the University at large, as opposed to particular elites. This in turn would slowly transform the organizational culture from that of a small sect, into that of a true university. By creating a structure, and improving processes, culture would change. It was not to be. It felt so much safer to go back to the ways things always were done.
In 2012, we had such high hopes for the Papua New Guinea University system and for UNITECH. The government had decided to reform university governance, principally by slimming down council from 32 to 12 members, and support the academic quality and employability agenda, using the funds from the LNG project. None of these things happened, because of active undermining by members of the old regime, and my colleagues still supporting the most corrupt and dishonest ones.
In another blogpost I have warned against derailing the governance reform, with the higher education act of 2014 instead focusing on the national government control over the universities. The content of my invited lecture at the Australian National University on 18 May 2016 gives the same message. The government's pressure made sure that nobody read and understood, or heard this message.
Today we continue see a shameful spectacle of some childish members of an unreformed Council, gossipping and at odds with themselves, in the end finding it easier to destroy the universities than to build them up. They don't have to bear the burden of presenting fake degrees of pretend universities when seeking employment. The politicization of the universites is at the clear expense of the students' only.
Of course, students feel cheated. One could argue that only in this field PNG universities offer competence-based training involving active learning given the almost yearly student protest against government's excesses or attacks on democratic institutions. The professional accreditation is progressing too slowly, and all the laboratoris and computers are still not operational.
These annual protests engage the student body, and provide an excellent opportunity for students to learn about active citizenship. Traditionally student movement was seen as the prodiving a leadership role to other civil society actors, and in fact always provided this leadership until the O'Neill government shut it down in 2016, with full cooperation from universities councils and management. Now who is left in the country as custodians of democratic values?
My calculation in 2014, however, was contingent on the assumption that my leadership team was committed to putting the University on a financially sustainble footing, assuring its graduates were employable, and in general creating a rule-based, mission focused organization. I was wrong.
The senior management team played along with me for a while it was convenient, because the circumstances of my return with massive support from the students had scared them. When they were able to suspend the student representative council indefinitely, they saw their chance and were able to go back to their mediocre, customary and comfortable situation, where a small group obtain all the benefits from being associated with the university through direct or indirect extraction, while the large majority and in particular the students perceive none.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can not make it drink. It is the job of those Council members, management team members and senior staff who receive a formal university education (this excludes Chancellor Jean Kekedo who never got a degree) to take their responsibility, and create a university system where learning is assured, competences are built, and finances are accounted for.
Instead they have run down the campus again, refusing to assure broadband internet connections, to deliver wholesome food in the student dining hall, to provide adequate services on campus (Faculty restaurant, functioning ATM, decent shop) or monthly fumigation against malaria. Examinations and graduation are still held in a tent. We are back to square one.
Nobody who has worked at a world class university want to work in such a place. The transformation I was pushing for is necessary. My approach in which IT, industry partnerships and industrialization played key roles, was well known. Even the bulletin of the Association of Commonwealth University published my article about it. The current management will never deliver it, however, because it requires hard work and they can't be bothered. I have tried to train and work with them for 4 year, but they seem unable to develop the necessary competences.
As vice-chancellor I knew very well I was not part of the student movement. I had learned however to manage student groups, having worked 20+ years as a an academic and professor in Latin America and Europe, of which 5+ years as and Academic Director and Director in leading universities in the Netherlands. By creating a student-centred university, where rules are respected, and expectations met, I would have broken the boycott culture and there would be no need any longer for annual student demonstrations. Without transformation, of course there will be revolution again.
Although misguided detractors continue to see me as a political threat, I only came to Papua New Guinea to do my job as Vice Chancellor, and train the senior management team members and staff to operate a true, rule based university. They refused to support the necessary transformation, however, and now they will have to live with the consequences, and the guilt of their lies and betrayal of their responsibilies for their country's education.
My career will continue, but sadly most UNITECH graduates' professional careers will never take off. They will be hired as technicians but never as engineers. We could have made UNITECH fly, instead you collectively preferred a pilot and a crew who are driving it right back into the swamp of favoritism, elitism, and corrupt extraction of rents.
The learning environment at UNITECH is again getting worse, there is no consultation, and their issues are not being addressed. Library, laboratories, internet, nothing is working well. Lecture halls, dormitories, dining hall, are all still sub-standard.
If UNITECH students want their representation back through the Students' Representative Council, there is no time to waste. They will have to demand elections, take action, and formulate their demands on the basis of the existing University Act.
From world history we learn that inclusive institutions are not given to one on a platter, but we have to struggle, and fight for them. I hope the fight this time will be smart and non-violent. It is inevitable, and although fighting sometimes against impossible odds, the country and the University can still be changed for the better.
References
Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2013). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227, free audiobook at https://hotaudiobooks.com/why-nations-fail/
Lyons, K. (2019). 'I will eventually get killed': Meet Bryan Kramer, Papua New Guinea's anti-corruption tsar. the Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/11/i-will-eventually-get-killed-meet-bryan-kramer-papua-new-guineas-anti-corruption-tsar
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