PNG Parliament adjourns for four months
PORT MORESBY: Papua New Guinea’s parliament has adjourned for almost four months.
The adjournment will allow Prime Minister James Marape to avoid a no confidence vote.
Earlier, the Opposition had tabled a motion of no confidence against Marape.
The opposition listed former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill as its nominee for alternate prime minister.
However, PNG’s constitution does not allow confidence votes against a sitting prime minister in the 12 months before an election. The country is due to go to the polls in July next year.
The Opposition is expected to challenge the adjournment in court, with O’Neill alleging it was in breach of rules around parliament’s minimum number of sitting days. But the adjournment was deemed necessary by the Government after the announcement of figures indicating a quarter of staff at parliament were infected with Covid19.
Parliament’s speaker, Job Pomat, told MPs that from preliminary sampling of 167 people within the parliament precinct, 42, or 25% of them, tested positive for the virus.
Most of those infected were staff rather than MPs, but several MPs tested positive earlier this year, and Pomat said the situation was serious.