When the Law Bows to the Powerful: PNG's Justice System and the Politics of Impunity

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

On 16 June 2026, the District Court at Waigani cleared ousted Kandep MP Don Polye of all three fraud and corruption charges, ruling that the evidence brought against him was insufficient to proceed. Polye — once the first sitting politician ever arrested and charged by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) — walked out a free man, his bail money refunded. Under the law, that outcome is entirely proper. A person is innocent until proven guilty, and a magistrate who finds the evidence wanting is doing exactly his job. Polye is entitled to his vindication.

And yet the case lands like a familiar punchline. ICAC was sold to Papua New Guineans as the instrument that would finally hold the big men to account. Its very first prosecution of a politician the case meant to prove the new agency had teeth collapsed at the committal stage for want of evidence. Ordinary citizens are forgiven for asking a blunt question: if the state cannot assemble a case against the first politician it charges, who exactly is this system built to catch?

The numbers tell their own story. In February 2026 Transparency International scored PNG 26 out of 100 on its Corruption Perceptions Index a five-point collapse from the year before, the worst result in the Pacific and a fifteen-place slide down the global table. ICAC itself, the great hope of the Marape reforms, imploded within two years of opening its doors. Its three inaugural commissioners were suspended in mid-2025 amid mutual allegations of corrupt conduct and abuse of power. An anti-corruption commission that cannot police itself is hardly positioned to police the powerful.

This is the quiet scandal at the heart of PNG governance. The justice system does, in a sense, "work" but it works most reliably for those with the resources, the lawyers and the connections to bend it to their advantage. Cases against the well-connected stall, files go cold, witnesses fall silent, and charges quietly evaporate on technicalities. Meanwhile the wantok at the bottom the man who steals to eat, the unemployed youth swept up in a police raid meets the full, swift and unforgiving weight of the law. One system for the rich, another for the poor: the very definition of judicial failure that watchdogs warn corrodes the rule of law wherever it takes root.

None of this is an accident of bad luck. PNG's politics has long run on patronage, leaders judged by the wealth they distribute and the power they wield, the lines between business and public office deliberately blurred. In such a system, prosecution is not merely a legal contest; it is a political one, and the powerful rarely fight on even ground. Underfunded investigators, overstretched courts and an entrenched culture of impunity ensure that accountability is the exception, never the rule.

To be clear, Don Polye is not the villain of this story. He was cleared, and that must be respected. The villain is a system that promises equal justice and delivers it selectively. Every collapsed case against a powerful figure chips away at public faith, and a citizenry that no longer believes the courts will hold leaders to account will, in the end, stop believing in the courts at all.

With the 2027 election approaching, PNG cannot afford that erosion. Real reform means an ICAC that is independent and properly resourced, prosecutors who can build cases that survive scrutiny, and courts insulated from political pressure. Until then, the law will keep working beautifully — for those who least need its protection.