’17 roll OK for ’22: Sinai

ELECTORAL Commissioner Simon Sinai has assured people who voted in General Election 2017 that their names are still on the common roll.
“In 2022 we did not make a new roll,” Sinai told a radio talkback show last week.
“We maintained the existing one we used in 2017.
“If you voted in 2017, your name is still on the common roll.
“People might misunderstand that we made a new roll and people who voted last election will miss out this time.
“We did not do a new roll.
“We only maintained the existing one.
“We maintained it by sending a copy to the council wards to check and maintain.”
Sinai said they used the target of a three per cent growth rate to include people who had turned 18 over the last five years who were eligible to vote. “Last election, it was five million people, now it’s (additional) 750,000 eligible (voters),” he said.
“So now we looking at close to 5.7 million eligible voters.”
Sinai said the common roll with other materials to be used in the election were sent to the provinces since last week.
People, he said, could go to the Electoral Commission Office to check if their name is on the common roll before polling begins on July 4.
However, Sinai said the enrolment of new names onto the common roll closed last month when the writs were issued.
“The maintained roll is updated and ready and has already been sent to the provinces to be used during the polling,” he said.
Sinai added that polling teams would be sent to the provinces on July 2 in preparation for polling.

More than 500,000 to use updated roll: Kaupa

MORE than 500,000 eligible voters in Eastern Highlands are expected to use the updated electoral roll on July 9, provincial election manager Gore Kaupa says.
Kaupa expressed confidence that updating of electoral roll for Eastern Highlands was accurately done, listing males and females separately.
He said every polling place would have separate polling booths for male and female voters.
Kaupa said separate voting was trialled in the Goroka by-election and a few Local Level Government (LLG) by-elections and proved successful.
He said the updated electoral roll for 2022 was ready.
“Ballot papers are not money, ballot papers are not guns even ballot papers cannot start a fight, it is the behaviour and attitude of candidates and supporters that will fail elections,”Kaupa said.
“I urge every candidate, supporter and voter to vote peacefully, it is each and everyone’s democratic right to vote for their own choices, voters rights must be respected,” Kaupa said.
He said campaigning would stop on July 8.
However, Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai stated on a radio talkback show that the updated electoral roll for 2017 would be used in this election.

Single mum runs for provincial seat

SINGLE mum of six Martha Kupul says lack of service delivery over the past 10 years prompted her to contest the Jiwaka regional seat.
Martha, a senior political scientist and geologist by profession, is one of the 28 candidates vying for the seat and is the only woman to do so in General Election 2022 (GE22).
She is running as an Independent candidate
The 46-year-old researcher from Banz, North Waghi, said she was tired of seeing how there was no development taking place at the new Kurumul provincial headquarters.
“I have travelled the length and breadth of most of the rural areas in my province and have witnessed first-hand the suffering of the people,” she said.
“I have seen and experienced the challenges imposed by a lack of basic social, economic and infrastructural services in the most remote parts of the province, driving increased rates of poverty, morbidity and mortality,” she said.
She previously worked as a senior social scientist and project coordinator with the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Institute of Medical Research for Sexual and Reproductive Health as a researcher for 15 years.
She believes that it is because of a gross misuse of public funds at the provincial level over the past 10 years, in the provinces’ young history, that there is hardly any tangible development on the ground to show for the money invested by the Government.