WUNRN
PAPUA NEW GUINEA - DAME CAROL KIDU
BIDS FAREWELL AS ONLY WOMAN IN PARLIAMENT - TRIBUTES FOR ADVOCACY OF WOMEN
& CHILDREN
Carol Kidu, a lone woman in the parliament of Papua New
Guinea. Photo: Jason South http://www.theage.com.au/world/grassskirts-revolution-20111125-1nyzf.html
As Dame Carol Kidu - the long-serving and lonely female of the 109
member Papua New Guinea Parliament - gave her farewell speech at yesterday's
final sitting ahead of next month's scheduled election, the nation's burgeoning
social media commentariate lit up with tributes.
''Kidu gets applause! Sir
Buri Kidu would have been proud of you Dame,'' tweeted Tarurvur - one of PNG's
most influential (albeit anonymous) political bloggers - summoning up the
revered memory of Dame Carol's long-dead husband, the nation's first national
Chief Justice.
Sir Buri Kidu and Lady
Carol Kidu celebrate PNG's 10th anniversary of independence, 1985. The Age.
Photo supplied by Carol Kidu via Jo Chandler
''Who would have thought
a white woman from QLD would impact PNG as you have?''
Mind you, other tweeters
observed that the applause from fellow MPs was a bit muted - perhaps as a
result of her passing swipe at some of them having one or two wives too many.
The feisty Dame is rarely accused of failing to speak her mind.
Dame Carol was one of two
lauded figures on the PNG political landscape farewelled as the Parliament
dissolved yesterday - the other was former Prime Minister and noted political reformer
Sir Mekere Morauta, who said he was moving aside to make way for a new
generation.
Dame Carol's impact on
PNG politics goes back 15 years as the Member for Moresby South and a minister
under the Somare Government, and includes a raft of social development policy,
from provisions recognising the rights of the street traders who make up the
informal economy; to laws protecting vulnerable children; to a determined and
ultimately thwarted campaign to introduce special measures to usher more women
into the Parliament.
With her Women's Bill -
which would have introduced 22 reserved seats for women - failing to complete
its journey into law in time for this election, the odds are stacked high
against a single woman taking a seat when the Haus Tambaran in the capital of
Waigani next convenes. Social and political culture - and the money politics
which underwrites campaigns - remain formidable obstacles to womens' candidacy.
PNG politics is the
poorer for the lack of female influence, Dame Carol argues, with the agendas of
critical social indicators - maternal deaths, child health, violence against
women - failing to achieve the priority they deserve in the Haus.
Though she has lived in
PNG for more than 40 years, arriving as a bride and raising her family according
to her husband's tribal tradition, Dame Carol once told the Parliament in
championing her Bill that ''I don't pretend to understand the complexities [of
PNG culture]. The men were the warriors. But remember, the women were the
peacemakers.''
Dame Carol's voice and
influence has amplified through the past nine months of volatile political
power plays. Distancing herself from the Somare camp to take on the role of
Leader of the Opposition (for a while there, the only member of the
Opposition), she has repeatedly urged the warring Big Men of PNG politics to be
accountable to the Constitution and the citizens as the manouevreing for power
deteriorated into dirty and dangerous tactics.
This past week, her
fearlessness and commitment were captured on a piece of footage widely shared
across PNG.
It shows the 63-year-old
grandmother - on Mother's Day - confronting heavily armed police and bulldozers
at Paga Hill, a site above Port Moresby where a shanty settlement was being
razed in preparation for a controversial hotel development, one where questions
loom over process and legitimacy.
''This is not an
eviction, it's a demolition,'' she snaps at the police, instructing them to
stop the bulldozers and allow the settlers to dismantle their homes themselves.
''I feel sorry for you. You're in the middle of this,'' she says to one
officer. ''One day it might be your houses being bulldozed.''
Plainly distressed, the
event echoed a theme Dame Carol explored in a memoir she wrote back in 2002,
reflecting on the transformation she had witnessed in her own adopted home
village of Pari, a collection of shanties perched on stilts above the sea. ''As
the bulldozers of modernisation slowly pushed further and further into the
heart and soul of the village, some physical improvements occurred, but much
was lost as well.''
In this latest skirmish,
after intervening to free an old man from the grip of a policeman, she is
filmed - by a visiting Sydney university student trailing her - being
manhandled and removed by a couple of burly officers.
Shaken, bruised and
angry, she later said she had watched ''women being dragged from their homes
screaming while bulldozers were ordered to move in - but succeeded in stopping
the demolition until a stay order was put in place on humanitarian grounds.
The images provoked
outrage and admiration across PNG's busy social media sites - ''Brought tears
to my eyes .... On behalf of other PNGeans, big apologies and thanks to the
brave Dame - We Salute you'' - and pleas by some for Dame Carol to rethink her
retirement plans.
But Dame Carol is
determined to move into a new realm. ''Perhaps I can achieve more from
outside,'' she told me in Port Moresby late last year. The tumult of recent
months has only underwritten that resolve.
''I despair in many ways.
I'm worried about this country, I don't deny it,'' she told me during a series
of interviews late last year as I prepared a profile of her and her Women's
Bill campaign for Good Weekend. ''Buri would be shocked at what has happened,
if he came back now.''
She rests her hopes for
the future on the great resilience of the country she married into, and to
which she paid tribute in her final address to the Parliament yesterday.
''The political impasse
of the past nine months has been a trying time for all, but we must thank the
people of Papua New Guinea for their peaceful patience with their leaders.
''After much public
anxiety and international scrutiny ... I think we can tell the world very
proudly that we are a young, volatile, democratic nation.''
When she entered the
Parliament, Dame Carol put a ring on her finger - a golden Bird of Paradise -
to remind herself that she was now wedded to her constituency.
While the Parliament has
now dissolved, her duties as Opposition Leader and local member are not yet
done. This morning she was continuing legal negotiations over the Paga Hill
development.
She says the ring will
come off at the end of July, when the writs are returned, and a new Parliament
convenes.