Sam Basil chose a difficult path.
He was an outspoken critic of the Somare and later the O’Neill Government. A government he helped form before moving to the opposition in protest.
In the five years in opposition, he spent most of time in Bulolo District where he challenged the long held narrative that you had to be in government in order to have the money to deliver services.
In hindsight, Basil’s innovation in rural development was legendary. He experimented with road building material, he borrowed ideas and built infrastructure on credit.
When he found that rural solar power kits sold by PNG power were too expensive, he ordered the same kits from China at a fraction of the price. He then had a core team from PNG Power seconded to the Bulolo District to build the rural electrification project from scratch.
The simple kits allowed for three florescent lights and a power point.
In his heavy Buang accent, he joked in tok pisin: “The first light is for the children to use to study. The second is for the mother and father to be able see themselves at night and the third is for people who fly at night to see that Buang exists.”
A lot of his critics argued against the rural electrification program. They said roads were more important than a power project.
But Basil’s stand was that roads would take longer to build. He could not do that in five years and the uncertainty of funding was the biggest obstacle to roadbuilding.
The rural power project transformed lives. The impact was immediate.
Each household saw an increase in income. Mothers were able to use electrical appliances in the mornings when they were preparing their kids for school and people could repair vehicles in the villages.
Basil reached out to border regions of the Bulolo district. In many instances, trekking on foot to the edge of the Central and Oro provinces where he brought VSAT kits and payphones.
Within the decade, new communication options become available through Digicel and BMobile and he initiated programs that saw the establishment of 4G networks in hard to reach areas giving rural students and teachers internet access.
During those trips, he took medical workers who identified people with sight problems. Then, through a district eye care program, he brought volunteer doctors to treat elderly patients and children who would have otherwise not have been able to receive treatment and glasses.
In theory, service delivery is the job of the district and Local Level Government (LLG) but the lack of capacity in the third tier of government made it difficult.
In his second term of parliament, he applied all the lessons the learned from the first five years. He said on many occasions that in Papua New Guinea, the rural district MP has to drive service delivery if he wants the lives of his people to improve.
Sam Basil was always on the move dressed in jeans and boots. He was never one to appear at a public gathering in an a suit.
In 2017, there was no doubt who would win the Bulolo seat. After the first few boxes, Sam Basil’s vote count was within the 5000 mark while his nearest rival was on trailing at 40.
The biggest lessons from his life as a political leader are the templates for rural development. These are lessons that should be studied and applied.
