Students wait on PM's response to calls for his resignation

Transcript

Protesting students at the University of Papua New Guinea are today waiting on an official response from the Prime Minister to a petition calling for him to resign by 3:00pm this afternoon local time.

Peter O'Neill has acknowledged receiving the petition, thanking students for the mature manner in which the UPNG Student Representative Council presented it to a government delegation on campus yesterday.  

In the statement Mr O'Neill said he was preparing a response for several assertions by the students about the state of PNG's economy but also said that some of the student concerns involved matters which where currently before the courts.

Koroi Hawkins spoke with Johnny Blades who has been following developments in Port Moresby.

JOHNNY BLADES: So the prime minister has been adamant that people, protestors, should just wait for this whole court process around the alleged fraud to play out. But that is part of the problem for people protesting because they accuse him and his lawyers of mounting so many legal roadblocks that it's holding up the natural process. And of course it all came back to the fact that the fraud squad had secured an arrest warrant for him (in 2014) believing there was enough evidence to take this thing to court, but he has sort of frustrated that process, so people feel he hasn't played fair with the law.

KOROI HAWKINS: And do these protests represent a real pressure on him, does it reflect widespread discontent with him and the government?

JB: IN some ways it's just confiend to the urban-based and educated population, whereas out in the rural areas, where the vast majority of the population live, people don;t neccessarily know about this fraud case. And in the prime minister's own province, Southern highlands, I've been hearing that people are happy with him, his performance as prime minister. So in a way it hasn;t sort of spread out there yet.

KH: Is O'Neill likely to meet the students' demands, will he step down?

JB: I can't see it. This is a lot of pressure being brought to bear on him. But he's such a savvy politician; he has supporters in all the right places, all through the parliament, his government's very solid, or it appears to be; and he's got the support of the police. I think he might well call the students' bluff. One way or another he will have to respond to that but stepping down, I can't see it. He's looking to see through to next year's election, which is about a year away, and he'll be doing his best in the meantime to discredit the protestors, discredit the fraud squad's efforts to probe this fraud case as being politically motivated. He'll just be saynig let the polls decide on my performance as prime minister.

KH: But the students don't look like they're backing down either and they're getting more and more support from different parts of society.

JB: Yeah you're right and the students have been very solid. They've been peaceful and they've shown great unity. So I think it's a real force to be reckoned with. But there are divisive elements emerging and some of them are quite understandable. As we've seen there are parents of some of the students worried about... look, my son or my daughter is protesting (and boycotting classes), shouldn't they be back in class studying for their future which means so much to the home community back in the bush. The earnings these students will potentially earn are quite pivotal to the people back in the village. So these pressures will be brought to bear on the students themselves. O'Neill knows that so he'll probably play for time. But another factor is that the students are signalling that if they don't get what they want - as well as withdrawing from class and their courses - they will spread the message back in their own home districts that O'Neill hasn't responded to their demands and is not playing fair, so that could be damaging. We'll have to see.