Belden Namah

Namah originates from Vanimo near the border of Indonesia.[1] He joined the military and graduated from Australia’s Royal Military College Duntroon. He received training for a Special Forces Unit. During the Sandline affair he played a major role as one of the five PNG Defence Force officers who captured Tom Spicer, the leader of the mercenaries. (Sandline company) being hired by the PNG government to recapture the Panguna mine on Bougainville island and quell the insurrection there.[2] The SFU refused to collaborate with the mercenaries and this refusal was crucial in the failure of the intervention by mercenaries to come off.[3] Namah and his companions were afterwards sentenced to six years imprisonment for mutiny despite a political outcome vindicating Namah and the SFU.[4][5][6][7] Namah was paroled in 2003 and pardoned in 2005.[8]

In 2007, he entered parliament and became minister of forestry and natural resources in the Somare/Temu cabinet as a member of the National Alliance Party. In 2010 he resigned and joined Mekere Morauta and the Papua New Guinea Party. He became a major participant in opposition leading to the overthrow of the Somare government. He was Deputy Prime minister and Minister of Forestry and National Resources during the constitutional crisis of 2011-2012, in the O’Neill/Namah cabinet. After the Supreme Court declared the O’Neill/Namah cabinet illegal, Namah and his colleagues stormed the Supreme Court in 2011 and accused the Chief Justice of sedition.[10] As a consequence he was referred to the Ombudsman Commission and brought before a leadership tribunal for misconduct in office. The tribunal found him guilty in 2018 and recommended dismissal from office.[11] In the meantime he retained his seat in the 2012 and 2017 elections. He was leader of the opposition from 2012 to 2014. In 2012 he became interim governor of Sandaun province after the election of Amkat Mai was nullified. He was elected Governor for West Sepik Province in April 2015, then relinquished in September 2015 following return of Amkat Mai as provincial member. Namah decided not to contest the seat in the coming election in 2016.[12] He became leader of the opposition in 2019 and challenged the legitimacy of the Marape/Steven government when they deposed the O’Neill/Abel government in 2019. The Supreme Court rejected this challenge in November 2020.[13] Namah then fronted a campaign to mount a vote of no confidence to replace Marape with Patrick Pruaitch. This failed. Namah turned to the Supreme Court with a complaint that the procedure had not been correct, However, Pruaitch rejoined the government camp and the vote of no confidence became irrelevant. Namah proceeded with the attempt to mount a vote of no confidence and proposed Peter O’Neill as designated prime minister.[14] His role in the storming of Supreme and National Court on in 2012 to demand resignation of Chief Justice (Sir Salamo) was in the background of his parliamentary career for eight years. It led to a complaint at the Ombudsman Commission, which referred it to the Public Prosecutor which led to a Leadership Tribunal in October 2017. The tribunal found him guilty in 2018 and recommended dismissal from office.[15] Namah asked for a judicial review of the recommendation to dismiss him from office. In 2020 the National Court permanently stay leadership tribunal decision to dismiss Namah from office, It allowed him to take up his position as leader of the opposition which he had occupied from 2012 to 2014, The incident revived again when Marape[16] Namah has apologised to former prime minister Michael Somare as well as to former Chief Justice Salamo Injia for his behaviour during the 2011-2012 parliamentary crisis stressing that it was a political protest and not against the person.[17] The incident revived again when Prime Minister James Marape opened a case on the same issue in November 2020 at the time when Namah was leading an attempt to unseat Marape.[18]

His appointment as Minister of Forestry and Natural Resources has been queried because of possible conflicts of interest. There are two cases where a conflict of interest has been signalled. First, he arranged the sale of prime vacant land in central Port Moresby that belonged to the Telikom public enterprise. The land was bought by a company where he was one of the shareholders and it was headed by his close business associate Jimmy Tse. The sale was criticised by Peter O’Neill after Namah left the government. It was sold for 4.3 million kina and according to O’Neill it was worth 45 million kina. Namah claims that he merely executed a sale that had been agreed long ago. He claims that he could not do otherwise.[19] Namah was Minister of Forestry and Natural Resources when the possibility for Special Agricultural Business Licenses was legislated. This offers light regulation if a community makes an agreement with the logger. In return the logger should plow back money in the community with the intention to leave sustainable economic activity in the area. SABL are meant to facilitate logging concessions and use the proceeds to stimulate economic and social development that will last after the concession is exhausted. In practice it has resulted in large tracts of land taken over by foreign companies who do not give in return.[20] Bewani SABL was established on land that Belden Namah claimed to own privately and sold to his business partner Jimmy Tse. It is difficult to establish exactly what happened in complicated share deals involving big conflicts. After the SABL was formed Tse’s ownership was refined as a sub lease to the company of Jimmy Tse. This company was sold to Singapore and came in foreign hands. Tse and Namah fell out with the Malaysian logging company who had paid A$50 million for the concession. However they employed another Malaysian company in their place. Namah made deals with so called Integrated Landowning Groups consisting of community leaders that did not consult the communities.[21][22] The SABL was supposed to lead to the establishment of a large oil palm plantation, That has not been effectuated. Belden Namah blames the Malaysian company.[23] However, in 2020 Namah reported that there is a 18,000 hectare oil palm plantation producing in a normal year 600,000 tons of palm oil. The management and actual harvesting on the plantation is however dependent upon Indonesian partners.[24] Logging interests appeared as well in a story about the interception of the government’s Falcon jet by Indonesian fighter jets. The Falcon was on a journey from Sabah to Port Moresby and had onboard not only Belden Namah but a number of political VIPs, Malaysian loggers and an apocryphal US$250 million in cash.[25] Namah does not hide his opulence but even so his behavior raises questions, A disciplinary issue in an Australian casino revealed that Belden Namah was ejected from a casino in Sydney because of misbehaviour but was readmitted immediately as a so-called high roller. Three punters -among whom was Belden Namah had deposited A$800,000 to play with.[26] In 2009, it emerged that he had bought "prime properties, worth more than K4 million", in Samoa. Namah "initially denied the story, but after the Samoan Central Bank announced it was launching an inquiry into possible money laundering offenses, he admitted making the purchases", saying he had done so for "business associates”.[27] Very soon after the 2012 elections accusations of corruption emerged. Namah was accused of taking the money from a export level development level trust fund (US$4.5 million) meant for the construction of the Pasir-Krisha road project in West Sepik. Belden Namah mentioned this road project later as one of his successes,[28] Namah’s access to money was for Peter O’Neill in his capacity as Prime Minister reason to suggest that the Ombudsman Commission should investigate where 50 million PNG Kina that he used in the 2017 election originated from. Namah said he spent the K50 million in campaigning for 91 candidates for PNG Party in the 2012 general elections.[29] The Ombudsman Commission declared in 2015 that the commission would open cases against Namah because of failure to declare his election expenses as well as a failure to acquit public funds. These were however only two of 16 cases of misconduct that were opened against Namah. The cases were however not specified and no follow up has been reported.[30]

When Namah became deputy prime minister in 2011 he declared his stance on policy issues: any government he might lead would aim to provide free universal education (noting that education was "a right guaranteed under the constitution") and healthcare, and "fix the law and order problem in this country". In that regard, discipline would be instilled by compelling prospective students to undergo a two-year military service before entering university. There would be support for Papua New Guinean scientists working on climate change. He also said he supported the Somare government's bill on introducing reserved seats for women in Parliament.[31]