Why bother, given that the people - not the courts or the politicians - will soon resolve the Constitutional conundrum of who has the legitimate mandate to govern?
The answer was graphically illustrated in events engineered by the rival political supremos yesterday. In PNG the posturing of the Big Men and the perks of incumbency (the power to win favour through popular policy; access to Government coffers to bankroll campaigns) are critical to securing control of the next Parliament, and with it control of the vast riches anticipated to flow from the resources boom.
Scene One: Belden Namah, acting Defence Minister and deputy to Prime Minister Peter O'Neill - who has clung to power through his strong majority on the floor and the support of military, police and public service chiefs - sweeps through the barricades of Taurama Barracks in a police cavalcade bristling with weaponry aboard the shiniest 4WD in Port Moresby.
The day before the nation's "other" acting Defence Minister - Mr Andrew Kumbakor, appointed by deposed but unyielding former Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare - had declared the barracks contained 200 soldiers loyal to the Somare side's chosen military commander, Retired Colonel Yaura Sasa. It was he who led the short-lived military mutiny last Thursday, but was now locked up in a maximum security cell.
Mr Namah was there to show who was really in control of the soldiers.
Before a rain-soaked media pack he addressed about 200 troops and promised the 30 or so in their ranks who were part of the mutiny that they would be pardoned. The paperwork would go before the Governor-General that afternoon. "I don't just say, I do," he declared.
In return, the erstwhile rebels stepped forward to surrender about 50 guns.
A couple of hours later, the Somare "Government" held a press conference in their National Alliance headquarters, which occupy a handful of grimey rooms above a Chinese Restaurant in a muddy suburban mall.
Grand Chief Sir Michael, frail but undaunted, presided, again declaring himself the nation's legitimate Prime Minister - a claim which has the endorsement of a Supreme Court judgement in December which found his removal from office back in August was illegal.
He left most of the talking to his son Arthur Somare, who passionately and articulately again asserted that the law and the Constitution required that the Grand Chief be immediately allowed to return to his rightful place in the Parliament.
The Somare side had that morning delivered eight boxes of documents to the Supreme Court, summonsing every member of the O'Neill cabinet for contempt of court, and asking the courts to issue warrants for their arrest and detention of every.
Somewhere in the rush along the capital's deeply fractured roads, scuttling from the barracks to the Chinese Restaurant, a handful of journalists in the dropped in for a press conference by the self-declared new Leader of the Opposition, Dame Carol Kidu, the nation's only female MP. She offered sandwiches and waited for stragglers.
"That's the problem of being the only woman in PNG politics - you can't compete with the big boys and their guns," she sighed.
On Saturday Dame Carol, a long-time loyal Somare minister, disassociated herself from the Somare side, declaring herself horrified at it's support of the mutiny.
Now she wants recognition as the Opposition Leader - a claim assisted by the fact that she is at this time the only person aspiring to sit on the Opposition benches - and proposes to use the role to bolster her efforts to get 22 women into the Parliament in reserved seats.
Legislation allowing it got stuck half-way through in the current crisis, but she now as the support of a powerful quorum of political and constitutional experts, among them respected former Speaker Sir Barry Holloway, who argue that there is a precedent which would allow the seats to be active by the poll in June.
Sir Barry argues that the current impasse is symptomatic of a dysfunctional political culture, and that ushering women into it will change that and provide new energy for the delivery of basic services to impoverished communities.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, the citizens of PNG wait to see whether a promise by the O'Neill Government to provide free education to their children will be honored. For many of the mostly rural subsistence farmers who make up the population of almost 7 million, having their fees paid would be the only practical evidence that there is a functional government serving them. The money is due now.
What mutiny?
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