Buri Kidu - Termination of Appointment

Termination of Appointment

In August 1993 Sir Buri's term of office, which had by that point extended three years beyond the statutory ten years, was not renewed by the Wingti Government (when he was two years short of the age qualification to receive a pension, leaving him without an income). Sir Buri was not advised that he was to be replaced, a default which had become standard practice in the Papua New Guinea public service but which Sir Buri had laboured to ensure would not be the case in the National Judicial Staff Services — Sir Buri had sought to keep the NJSS free of political influence — and he was left to infer it from the news that a new Chief Justice other than himself had been appointed.

It has been alleged that Sir Buri — who had come to office in the midst of a crisis as to the independence of the judiciary — was perceived as demanding more independence for the judiciary vis-à-vis the executive than the Wingti Government would have preferred, and that this was the reason his term as Chief Justice was not extended, at least to the point where he would have qualified for a pension. He died four months later of a heart attack. His widow, Lady Buri Kidu (now Dame Carol Kidu), now herself a political person of some note in Papua New Guinea, has suggested that political motivations during the premiership of Paias Wingti, then in office, as to the independence of the judiciary were brought to bear on Sir Buri's ouster as Chief Justice, and such matters bore considerably on her own decision to enter politics.