2nd term for PM Marape – The National

**Marape, Finschhafen MP Rainbo Paita (middle) and Rachael Marape leaving Parliament. – Nationalpic by KENNEDY BANI**

By STAFF REPORTERS
PRIME Minister James Marape, elected for a second term yesterday, plans to conduct a reform of the electoral system and an audit of the General Election 2022 (GE22).
He is expected to name a caretaker Cabinet from MPs in his coalition government as he sets in motion his plans over the next five years.
“The review will be the basis for us to reform the electoral processes to make sure that one citizen gets one vote,” he said.
“We must build a strong governance oversight arrangement for the Electoral Commission.
“We must adopt a systemised way of updating the common roll and deploy every means necessary to have reliable identification systems.
“We must seriously discuss biometric identification system and electronic voting and counting system.”
Marape said the Government was looking at adopting a biometric system and related options to strengthen polling and counting in future elections.
“One of the options we are looking at, is adopting India’s electronic voting machine (EVM) system from the state of Karnataka and if we consider technology to be an option going forward then we can use the biometric (BRV) for voter registration and verification, and electronic voting machine (EVM) for polling and counting.”
He said Karnataka with 50.6 million voters was able to complete polling using the electronic voting machine (EVM) in one day.

Governor General Grand Chief Sir Bob Dadae (left) with Parliament speaker Job Pomat at Government House in Port Moresby yesterday. Pomat was sworn in at Government House after he was elected as Speaker for the 11th Parliament. – Nationalpic by NICKY BERNARD

He said the national census and the electoral reform would be conducted next year.
Marape told Parliament after being sworn in that an audit of the GE22 would be conducted.
He also said earlier this week there would be no reserved seats for women in Parliament.
Instead, the electoral process will be improved to allow more women to contest future general elections.
Two women have so far been elected.
Rufina Peter was elected the Central Governor.
Kessy Sawang was declared the Rai Coast MP yesterday. Peter, who contested under the People’s National Congress (PNC) party banner, unseated Robert Agarobe.
Just before Parliament convened yesterday, Sawang was celebrating her victory as “a win for Rai Coast”, a huge accomplishment by women, and a just reward for five years of hard work and proper planning.
“Rai Coast has huge potential which had not been fully realised in the past 47 years,” she said.
Peter and Sawang finished third in their seats during the 2017 general election.