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Ensuring democracy
prevails
By HAIVETA KIVIA
I had the
opportunity to participate in the 2007 National Election as an
election official.
My participation gave me an inside view of the emotions that
election officials felt, the critcism and anger from voters they
deal with and how they performed their duties.
I was selected as a polling official for team nine that
conducted polling at Wagan village on June 30. We were one of 54
other teams to conduct polling for the Lae Open seat. Wagan is
better known as Sipaia, just outside the city perimeters.
Nawaeb and Huon also conducted polling in the urban areas
attached to their electorates.
My team under presiding officer Jonah Kama was one of the team
sent to the Ahi village along with team eight. There were 12
teams assigned to 12 Ahi LLG wards while 43 teams were assigned
to the six wards of Lae Urban LLG.
Team 9 did not encounter much problems, but there were few
instances were names were incorrectly typed and others shifted
from their ward to another ward through error. There are two
council wards in Wagan village which are East Wagan and West
Wagan. Team nine conducted polling at East Wagan.
The polling period also deprived some election officials from
casting their votes.
My team was one of the lucky few that were able to vote but it
was difficult for many others who missed out because they just
could not leave their polling stations to get to their wards to
cast their votes.
Lae Open returning officer Roy Kamen did make allowances for
vehicles to be on the stand by to ferry officials to their
respective wards to vote but due to the busyness of some polling
places, the officials were unable to come out.
Election officials also copped a lot of flak from the public
when they found that their names were not on the common roll.
There were two common procedures applied when checking names on
the common roll. One was a roll call which turned nasty for some
stations when the wrong person turned up to vote. The other was,
for the voters to give their names and officials to check
whether they were on the common roll.
Our team employed the latter and this irked a certain man in the
village who tried to start an argument with me but I refused to
be talked into it, and asked him vote and leave the booth, which
he did with much grumbling and mumbling.
Team 9 wrapped up polling at 6pm in the afternoon and were
escorted by police back to the counting centre at the Sir
Ignatius Kilagi stadium were the ballot boxes were locked in the
container.
It wasn't smooth sailing for some polling teams. Finec Kevengu,
a polling official was sent to West Taraka and he reported that
it was chaos.
"When we started, it was orderly as the Police Mobile squad and
Defence Force soldiers were around but when they left, the
people who were standing in an orderly line swamped us to check
if their names were on the common roll," he said.
"They would have done anything to us but we were fortunate that
some of the officials are also residents of West Taraka and they
took control of the situation, and at the sight of mobile police
and soldiers, all was back into orderly lines and waiting for
names to be called," he added.
One of the teams for the Nawaeb urban area, had to have its lone
female official escorted out from that polling station to safety
of the Bumbu Police barracks, because the people were rowdy and
threatening.
These people threatened to harm the official, they made eye
contact and signaled to her that she would be harmed. It was
unacceptable behaviour towards the woman who was performing her
duty.
It was no fault of hers that names were not on the common roll.
That responsibility lies with a voter to ensure that his or her
name is the roll.
One of the intimidators was not so lucky when he chased by the
police and given a good hiding.
We were simply, instruments of the State, conducting the States
business to the best of our abilities.
Despite fears and predictions that the elections would be
chaotic, election officials with assistance from security forces
did a tremendous job to conduct the elections using the LPV
system.
 
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