Tom Olga - How well did he serve the people of WHP?

Tom Olga is a Papua New Guinea politician and my high school classmate at Kombolopa High School (1988 -1991) in the Mul/Baiyer electorate of Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. He has been the independent Governor of Western Highlands Province and the member for Western Highlands Provincial in the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea since July 2007.

He cited this as his reason for running for parliament when, in 2007, he challenged former Prime Minister Paias Wingti in his seat of Western Highlands Provincial.

He was supported in his campaign by the Millennium Pack 2000, a group of provincial leaders supporting pro-development and anti-corruption initiatives, and more than thirty local councillors.

( Left, Gov. Tom Olga appears at one of his court hearings in Port Moresby)

Olga, who comes from the Mul Baiyer area, was a student leader at the University of Papua New Guinea during protests against government privatisation and land mobilisation policies in 2001 in which four students were killed in a police crackdown.

Olga campaigned on a platform of fighting government corruption and mismanagement and stemming the exploitation of the country's resources. He also made an issue of the need for a new generation of leaders, contrasting his age of 32 with Wingti's advancing years. The final result was extremely close, with Wingti leading for most of the count, but ultimately losing to Olga on preferences in the final stage of counting.

It was the last electorate to be declared, with Olga being eventually announced as the winner on August 6. The result was widely considered an upset, with the potential to end Wingti's thirty-year career in national politics. The result enraged some of Wingti's supporters, who retaliated by blocking roads in the region and digging up a major road into the city of Mount Hagen. Wingti subsequently filed a petition challenging the result with the Court of Disputed Returns on August 17. This challenge has not yet been resolved.

He was sworn in as the provincial governor on August 22, 2007. Olga's first act as governor was to advertise all acting public service positions in the province, including that of the provincial administrator. He also pledged to increase government services to remote areas of the province.

***Olga served for more than two years as governor of Western Highlands Province. Now; you, the people of Western Highlands know and have seen his actions during this short stint. Today is your only chance to vote him back or vote another person to lead the province. I think Western Highlands had suffered enough at the hands of leaders who had hidden motives not to serve the people of the province but themselves and their cohorts. I think we need a overhaul in changing of the leadership in Western Highlands Province. Over to you, THE PEOPLE OF WHP!