Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

December began for me with the ambivalence resulting from seeing too many traffic accidents almost every week in our city. It is a sad reminder that people are careless with their own lives. It is also a sad reminder that the irresponsible actions of careless or drunk drivers can lead to the deaths of innocent men, women, and child. The reminder we need to take heed of is that with so many drivers without proper education of traffic rules on the road anything can go wrong. We also prepare ourselves as Christians to celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ. We prepare ourselves both mentally and physically. Mentally we prepare ourselves to rejoice in the birth of our saviour as man to live among us. Physically we slow down or wind down in our activities or take a break from what we do every day of the year. Christmas is a time to celebrate, sing, praise, and dance to the new born King two thousand years ago in the Holy Land. It is also a time to say thank you to God who guided us on our jo...

As this week’s political drama unfolded we asked ourselves if Shakespeare’s play Julius Caeser had a broader appeal to democracies outside of the Greek-Roman empires. Indeed, the answer lies in our interpretations of the thematic concerns of the play as well as the associations we make from the characterization, plot, and dialogic encounters in the play. Shakespeare’s intention in Julius Caeser is to present a genuine piece of Roman history to the English audience. “Roman history offered some of the most impressive themes available to the Renaissance, an era when political lessons were ardently sought in antiquity—themes such as despotism and republicanism, strong rule good and bad, stable and unstable realm, scrupulous and unscrupulous motives, the relations between rules and subjects (particularly the populace), and so on,” says Arthur Humphreys, an eminent Shakespearean scholar. So what are the political lessons that we can learn from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser? What ass...

In this year’s Media Awards, the judges dropped several categories of awards. The main reason is that in those categories only one entry or no entries at all were submitted. This does say a lot about the organizations and media companies’ obligation to those hard working media personnel such as journalists, broadcasters, and TV reporters, programmers, and producers. For a start we don’t have a crowded media industry as illustrated by two dailies, one weekly, two TV stations, and a handful of radio stations. Nominating media personals and programs from these media organizations should be an important responsibility of a responsible media industry. The people who work so hard and with tireless commitment to achieve excellence in their respective media should be rewarded and encouraged to set the standard for excellence. It is also fulfilling to see some of the students I had a part in their formative education at UPNG receive award in this year’s Media Awards night. Congratulations to t...

The government has done well as a responsible government in this year’s budgetary allocation in investing in the human resource capital of the country. The education sector received the highest budgetary allocation this year, which in itself is a political statement of the government’s medium term development policy. By allocating the highest funding to our education system the government has reinvested the earnings from the country’s natural resources and from the taxes it collects from its citizens. The government has also considered the legal education of our people to be of utmost importance. Its budgetary allocation for the construction of a new law school at the University of Papua New Guinea is major investment in the education of our legal experts. With the construction of a new law school the government is well assured in producing a steady supply of graduates who can meet the expectations of the government and people of Papua New Guinea. This new School of Law will need add...