Papua New Guinea bought 40 Maseratis to transport dignitaries at last year's Apec summit. Photo/File
COMMENT:
There should be a global prize called the "What Were They Thinking? Award".
An award open to all the leaders of the lands which are spread out across the planet.
For many of the drivers (the leaders) of quite a good number of these lands are capable of making some, shall we say, "interesting" decisions.
Decisions which so often create ripple effects across the country they lead, and across into many other lands it has to be said.
The ripples are powered by a fuel called politics.
Which refines the decisions and choices and directions those leaders, and their assistants, choose to take.
They rule and run the place.
If they want to they can start a war.
They don't have to stage a referendum to ask the people they allegedly serve what they think about punishing a neighbouring land, or halting exports to a faraway country they don't like.
The people who pay the taxes and run the businesses (who effectively pay the wages of the rulers) don't go out and start the wars, although they will inevitably suffer the most if there is one.
They simply just have to go along with what is being decreed at leadership levels.
Which in the case of several politically dodgy lands down Central and South America way, and few across Africa and the Middle East, and Europe (the list goes on) are not pleasant declarations.
Too many big guns of rulership are not in it for gaining a better landscape for their people, it's more monetary gain for themselves.
Which, as we see pretty well every night on the news, leads to people packing what little they have and crossing borders into another land which they hope can settle them.
In many cases they cannot, because there is only a certain amount of jobs, homes, food and whatever out there for their own occupants.
Having thousands more appearing on the doorstep every week isn't something anyone can really prepare for.
And it all comes down to leadership.
The leadership of the lands where these people are effectively forced to get out of because inflation is rampant and there's not enough food and fuel or wages to keep them going.
Go back 40 years and most of these places were running along okay...until some self-besotted lunatic often wearing a colourful military hat comes along and wants everything done "my way".
It's crazy and unpleasant in too many places out there but it just seems to be the terrible script these days.
A script agencies like the United Nations pretty much reads, shakes its head but allows to screen anyway.
However (yes, time for a "however") occasionally there is a slightly comical edge to the pursuit of the "What Were They Thinking? Award" where the leadership of a land does something so daft you can only shake your head, but more in bewilderment and bemusement than anguish and concern.
So then, I nominate the government of Papua New Guinea as the latest contenders for the award in the wake of its staging the Apec summit there seven months ago.
A most important summit I'm sure, and for leaders from all parts of the world it would have been a most invigorating get-together.
Lots of fine food and some sight-seeing and a time to chat about whatever people at an Apec gathering chat about.
And of course they needed to be ferried about the place from meeting to meeting, site to site, restaurant to restaurant so a fleet of cars needed to be organised.
Right then, what shall we line up in the parking spots?
One would assume something reasonably spacious, comfortable, visually satisfying and not too harsh on the budget.
Okay, they decreed, let's get 40 Maseratis.
Yep, 40 Maseratis.
Now they are a fine automobile but the least expensive model goes for about $68,000, which means the purchase bill would have been around $2,720,000.
The Gran Turismo however sells for $145,740 so if they grabbed them the cost would have been $5,829,000.
Both sums could have sorted a few pressing issues within the community of the people who voted for the people who like Italian cars...given 39 per cent of the population live beneath the national poverty line.
Here's the rub though...the Government believed they could flog the luxury cars off no worries after the summit.
So how many have they sold after seven months?
One.
There are still 39 left.
What were they thinking?