The Opportunity Cost of Navel Gazing: a case study of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology - Experiences of a Vice Chancellor in Papua New Guinea (5)

(Published as extract in PNG attitude "How Peter O'Neill screwed up PNG's universities" on 23 October)

Previous blog posts in this series:
Part 1 - A Childhood Dream. Experiences of a Vice Chancellor in Papua New Guinea (1)
Part 2 - Employable Graduates. Experiences of a Vice Chancellor in Papua New Guinea (2)
Part 3 - The Student Movement. Experiences of a Vice Chancellor in Papua New Guinea (3)
Part 4 - The Staff Organizations. Experiences of a Vice Chancellor in Papua New Guinea (4)

Executive Summary

🔑 Outlines the challenges and missed opportunities encountered as the Vice-Chancellor of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (PNGUT)
🔍 Describes efforts to modernize the university through digital infrastructure, industry partnerships, and international academic collaborations.
🚫 Highlights how these initiatives were undermined by political interference, lack of Council leadership, and a focus on self-interest over institutional progress
🔮 Emphasizes the opportunity cost of the university's current "navel-gazing" and primacy of national politics approach, which has halted important reforms and partnerships

Background

Although we published earlier on the internationalization efforts which I led as Vice Chancellor at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (PNGUoT), in this article we wish to give a more complete overview of how the transformative, outward-looking strategy was developed, executed, and finally discontinued and replaced by a inward looking, navel gazing approach by the current university council and management.

While as Vice Chancellor I signed over 25 agreements directly beneficial to the PNGUoT from 2014 to 2017 (3 years), in the 2 years from 2018 until today the current management has not undertaken any significant, new initiative, rather claiming my achievements as their own. Nor have they apologized for throwing me under the bus for no reason whatsoever as part of a political witchhunt against foreign Vice Chancellors, instigated by the government of Peter O'Neill

In my approach, internationalization was a cross-cutting theme across the three legs on which the University's strategy rested: first, digital technologies, and secondly successful industry parternships, and thirdly, international academic partnerships. When you can say in one sentence what your strategy is, you have something you can work with. Because my deputies refused to file extensive reports or keep an agenda, I can not always report with a high degree of certainty about the matters that were delegated to them.

By turning the clock backin 2017, the PNGUoT went back to being an organization ruled by whim and favouritism, and serving exclusively the interests of long-term staff, rather than that of the students or the country. In other words, back to how it was before I joined.

Here we will outline the opportunity cost of this navel gazing approach of not engaging widely and transparently with industry and academic partners, in terms of lack of training and education opportunities for students and staff, not carrying out joint research projects, and no longer receiving visiting lectures from leading universities in Australia, India or Europe. Opportunity costs simply mean the costs of not-doing something in terms of benefits sacrificed, because of the choice you made to do something else.

The Disastrous Legacy of the Peter O'Neill's Years

(A summary of this article was published on the PNG Attitude blog: https://www.pngattitude.com/2019/10/how-peter-oneill-screwed-pngs-universities.html)

Introduction

On Friday, 11 October 2020 apparently another arrest warrant for Peter O'Neill, the former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG), was issued, which caught him by surprise. Since then, he has locked himself up in the Crown Plaza hotel in the capital, refusing to cooperate with the courts. The latest is that he got bail but also restraining order. Surprise, surprise. It is Ali Baba abandoned by his 40 robbers, who are all now conveniently trying to hide their complicity or participation in his crimes. Meanwhile, Peter O'Neill will again use his expensive Australian lawyers to confuse the police and stay out of jail.

When I was Vice-Chancellor of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (short: UNITECH) from 2012 to 2018, I met Peter O'Neill only a few times and always in passing. During these meetings, I tried to convey that I came to Papua New Guinea only to contribute to University development and was not at all interested in politics, Pacific Games, APEC or any other of the white elephants he loved to herd.

My Role as Vice-Chancellor 

According to the Council of Europe, which consists of 47 European countries, in a democracy a University has four essential roles, which define its purpose and relevance:

• to create and maintain a body of knowledge useful for society, 
• to assure sustainable employment for its graduates, 
• to contribute to their personal development and leadership potential, and 
• to promote active citizenship

In Papua New Guinea universities were conceived to fulfill all these roles. This was however not the view of Peter O'Neill's regime. In fact, they enacted the Higher Education Act of 2014, of which the only purpose is to gain political control over the universities by making the government the appointing authority of the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, contrary to the University Acts, current practice, 

As per the Papua New Guinea University of Technology Act 1986, the main responsibility of the Vice-Chancellor is to uphold the provisions of the Act, its status and by-laws (including the SRC constitution), which codify important principles such as shared governance - or rule by committees representing a community of scholars -, and dual governance between a corporate and an academic Council, as well as institutional autonomy. This governance structure exists to protect academic freedom and therefore support the quality of democratic debate in society.

In 2012 and 2013 I had had my run-ins with Peter O'Neill's government, in particular with the scoundrel Minister of Higher Education. I never criticized any Minister, but this case was so extreme I could not keep silent. He set the bar so low that all his successors were much better. His name best be forgotten. In the end, however, the University Council with support from the staff organizations and the SRC decided I needed to return to exercise my profession, which occurred on 4 April 2014.

Because of this episode, my political enemies have always tried to paint me as somebody using student power against the government. How an educator would ask students to forsake their only opportunity to get a higher education, for getting involved in issues that a responsible government or university council should have solved, is beyond me. I have my integrity as an academic, and if I had wanted to enter politics of any kind, I would have done so a long time ago.

The truth is, I have never done told the students privately or publicly to boycott classes or undertake any such action. How could I? My adversaries were always looking for an opportunity to catch me, and I therefore rightly feared entrapment. I never took the bait, and never said publicly or privately that I supported a class boycott or any other political protest. I believe the adults in the government and university council should solve the issues, without the students wasting their precious time and forsaking their education.

Corruption and the Magically Shrinking Economy

Peter O'Neill loved to talk big, steal big and then lie about it to cover it up. The only purpose of the large events such as Pacific Games or APEC, was to assure sufficient kick-backs on the building contracts for the infrastructure, which inevitably had to be built for the occasion in Port Moresby. Afterwards the management of the events was so weak, that an all-you-can-steal buffet occurred for him and his associates. Evidently in the process he wrecked the economy, with economic growth for the non-mining sectors declining every single year from 2012 to 2018 when he was in power.

From: https://devpolicy.org/pngs-faltering-economic-recovery-20190808/

I am sure he was not happy when I pointed out in a lecture at James Cook University the in order to achieve the goals of Vision 2050 economic growth must be kept above 5%, a goal he never achieved.

Who can forget how Peter O'Neill literally barged into the supreme court and took power in 2012? How he rigged the 2017 elections? How he tried to curtail the judges by proposing a ludicrous "Judicial Conduct Act", and how this was only stopped by a protest of the UPNG students? His regime was never legitimate and a total disgrace.

Peter O'Neill become PM by storming the supreme court

I am afraid I was unsuccessful in convincing Peter O'Neill of my intentions not to be involved in PNG politics. In his paranoia before APEC decided to get me, as well as the other foreign Vice Chancellor, dismissed and in my case arrested. Corruption has a way of turning things upside down: the guilty roam around freely, and the innocent go to jail. My accusers,  in the courts and in the newspapers, all loyal to Peter O'Neill - Ralph Saulep, Dr. Ora Renagi, Veronica Thomas, Jean Kekedo and Sam Koim - continue to spread lies and found a willing ear in the O'Neill government. They never apologized or took down the published allegations. Needless to say, all allegations in my regard were thrown out by the courts for lack of any evidence.

The last time I saw Peter O'Neill at the end of 2017, he insisted that I should "keep the students out of politics". Although I do not share this idea (see below), I assured him that we would revise the SRC constitution in order to introduce some checks and balances, which would make it harder for students to call an indefinite boycott every time they saw something they did not like in the university administration or the government.

After all, nobody including the students wants to prolong the boycott culture. Of the 6 years I spent in PNG, there was only 1 year in 2015 that there was not a class boycott at the universities, often lasting 2 weeks or longer. As a result, many students dropped out and missed their only chance to get a higher education. Evidently, he did not share my approach, deciding instead to suspend the SRCs, in the case of UNITECH indefinitely. That is not a sensible approach.

Countless boycotts of classes by university students

The 2015 Allegations regarding Peter O'Neill

To be frank, there were so many serious and substantiated allegations made in his regard, I forgot which is which. Nevertheless, O'Neill always managed NOT to submit himself to any interrogation by having a lawyer deft at finding any legal loophole and delay possible, and by appointing a loyal Chief Commissioner of Police, who would simply not carry out an arrest warrant. No need to remember their names either.

The students at the main universities University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in the capital and UNITECH in Lae, were indignant about this state of affairs. From May 2016 started a class boycott demanding Peter O'Neill submit himself to justice. We forget that many students are sons and daughters of the ruling political class, and know very well what is going on.

Of course, at the time most in the UNITECH Council and management sympathized with the students. We were however also aware that an arrest was not going to happen, and we cautioned the students in this sense. At UNITECH we took the line that this was a national issue and that as long as the students followed the constitution of the Student Representative Council they had a right to boycott.

This approach allowed us at UNITECH to slowly coax the students back to the lecture rooms. It did not help that Peter O'Neill decided on 8 June 2016 to have the task force shoot hundreds of life rounds at peacefully protesting students. At first, it was rumoured one student was killed, which fortunately proved to be untrue. Several were wounded, and the student leaders were never rehabilitated.

At UNITECH the students immediately responded, but thanks to the quick and peaceful intervention of the MetSup Anthony Wagambie Jr., we convinced them to stay on campus and not to march town.

Afterwards when outsiders instigated conflict among the students at UNITECH, the situation got out of hand. The afternoon of 13th of June 2016 one group seriously wounded one student after an SRC forum, and on the night of the 25th of June one group butchered a student from the other group in an act of apparent revenge. On this last night, previously expelled students and other outsiders joined a delirious mob in setting fire to University buildings, and only by the quick intervention of the Chief Security Officer Alex Warren was the administration building spared. Four buildings however were lost to arsonists. Mr.. Warren transformed the UNITECH security forces, but to no avail. He has since left the university tired of the harassment by the management and senior staff, and lack of support for creating an effective security force.

After this tragic episode, it took all my negotiating skills to convince staff to return to work, and a lot of support in particular from the national catering company iPi to re-open the dining hall. Unlike UPNG, UNITECH was able to open its gates again on 31 August 2016 and finish the academic year. This achievement nor any of my other achievements as Vice-Chancellor, however, did not stop my detractors from trying to blame me for the whole episode, and much else. In true mafia-like fashion, hoping that if you repeat a lie long enough, it magically becomes the truth.

Peter O'Neill's Legacy

Peter O'Neill loves to steal and to lie big. There are credible reports he and his associates would transfer funds abroad directly from the coffers of the Central Bank. After an independent audit of the International Monetary Fund, an international organization part of the United Nations system of which PNG is a member, the current Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey has revealed the true size of the state's debts, and in order to avoid a default on loans, has instructed all government departments to stop all operational spending for the last 3 months of the year.

Because of O'Neill's thievery and lying, that is the only policy this government can carry out at this time. It will take the country years, if not decades to recover from this. We will not forget him, unfortunately.

For the Papua New Guinea universities it may be too late. Their autonomy has been curtailed politically by having Peter O'Neill appoint the Chancellors and the Vice-Chancellors. In their economic autonomy as well, UNITECH was stopped in diversifying its revenue base, as was the objective of the Masterplan (http://www.pngunitech.com), initially approved by Council but never acted upon. In terms of engaging with partners and other stakeholders, no foreign visitors lecturers will come any longer for extended periods of time, and  all international agreements I worked so hard for are left without execution.

If in 2016, UNITECH administration building was almost burned down, because students were fighting among themselves, it is not hard to predict what will happen when they will be justifiably angry with an immobile, ineffective and deaf University administration. Maybe it is best to shut it down in any case, since it continues to fail to produce sufficiently competent employable graduates, and the current management has given up any attempt to do so, or to be held accountable for its actions.

All those who knew what was going on, concluded that Peter O'Neill could end in only in one of two ways: in jail, or in exile. This is a logical conclusion after so many credible reports of blatant stealing, corruption and cover-ups, and serious allegations made in his regard since 2015.

This is however not how things may play out in PNG, which has a weak judicial system and weak enforcement. My bet is that in a few weeks or months, Peter O'Neill will get special leave to receive medical treatment somewhere abroad. The man who never missed a day when in power, will suddenly use his health to stay out of jail. He will then stay abroad, never to return. I hope I am wrong because the good people of PNG deserve clarity and closure on the O'Neill years.

If in this process of finding closure, all students, professionals, journalists and academics, who spoke up or stood up against Peter O'Neill could be acknowledged and rehabilitated it would be extremely helpful. For those of us abroad, if we could be rehabilitated, and would be allowed to visit the country again, our families and ourselves would be deeply grateful. We would turn into positive ambassadors of the good people of Papua New Guinea, a role we can now not publicly play.