Milestones

While his friends Michael Somare and Mekere Morauta became prime ministers of Papua New Guinea, lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner SIR ANTHONY SIAGURU spent most of his career working on the sidelines of public life. There - courtly, charming, endlessly energetic - he often seemed to be everywhere at once. In a country increasingly distrustful of its leaders, Siaguru's civic-mindedness and stubborn integrity earned him vast respect.

One of the first Papua New Guineans to attend university, he repaid the opportunity with 35 years of public service in which he fought tirelessly, if with limited success, to ensure that P.N.G.'s leaders served the people, not themselves. After a career as a rugby union captain, diplomat, reformist government minister and company director, Siaguru founded the P.N.G. chapter of Transparency International. From its helm and in his weekly newspaper column, he skewered high-placed crooks and urged his fellow citizens to demand fair play in business and politics. Two weeks before he died of cancer in Brisbane aged 57, he wrote to friends that P.N.G. needed people with the courage "to stand up for what they believe to be right when confronted with a sea of silence and quiet consent." On April 16, the country lost just such a man.