The Yegiora Files

By Bernard Yegiora  The appointment of Dr Nicole Haley as Papua New Guinea’s Electoral Commissioner should not be reduced to a personal debate about her academic credentials. Dr Haley is a respected scholar who has studied Papua New Guinea’s elections and political system for many years. Her expertise is not in question. The real concern is institutional and national. I teach in an Area Studies program that focuses on Papua New Guinea. Every year, we train students to study PNG politics, governance, foreign policy, development, law, society, and public institutions. We encourage them to take their country seriously as a field of knowledge and as a national responsibility. One day, I would like to see one of my students become Electoral Commissioner of Papua New Guinea. That is why this appointment worries me. If Papua New Guineans are being trained to understand their own country, if they are being educated in governance, public policy, political studies, and administration, then ...

 By Bernard Yegiora The second PG428 Foreign Policy in PNG Zoom meeting for the week focused on preparing students for Assessment Task 3: Case Study. The session brought together Communication Arts students and PNG Studies students in a fully online learning environment, as provided for in the Program Specification Document. Mr. Lahui Ako and I worked with the students to form seven case study groups based on key implementation priorities drawn from the Papua New Guinea Foreign Policy White Paper 2025. The purpose of the exercise was to help students move beyond simply reading policy documents and begin thinking about how foreign policy can be translated into practical action through PNG’s public service machinery. The central message of the session was clear: foreign policy is not only about statements, speeches, diplomatic visits, and international agreements. The real test is implementation. For PNG, this means asking how government departments, statutory agencies, diplomatic mi...