80 MPs challenged

By ELIAS NANAU
PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill, Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare and opposition leader Belden Namah are among 31 politicians who have escaped the court of disputed returns.
An unprecedented two-thirds of parliament, or 80 MPs, have had their election wins challenged.
As the deadline for filing disputes lapsed this week, there were a record 105 election petitions registered with the Court of Disputed Returns, challenging 80 members of parliament. A few elections have been challenged a number of times by different petitioners, hence the higher number of disputes than the MPs challenged.
Bougainville ranks as the only province where all its four MPs have had no challenge and Community Development Minister Loujaya Toni is the only female out of the three who won whose election had also not been challenged.
Election petition rules state that a losing candidate can file election disputes within 40 days after the official declaration of the result by the returning officer.In this year’s elections, the National Capital District regional seat was the last to be declared  on Aug 7. The 40 days lapsed on Monday.
A lawyer engaged to represent the Electoral Commission said this was an unprecedented figure for any general election since Independence.
Losing NCD regional candidates Aiwa Olmi, Michael Kandiu and Wari Vele were the last petitioners to file disputes against Powes Parkop last week.
The Electoral Commission, the Court of Disputed Returns and lawyers are now time-pressed to dispense the matters within three months.
A senior legal officer engaged by the Electoral Commission, who asked not to be identified, said it should cost the commission a “substantial amount of money” to have the cases heard.
“It should be K50,000 or upwards for a case,” he said.
If that figure is realistic, the state would pay, at the very least, K5.25 million to dispense of all 105 cases.
The lawyer admitted that the high registration of petitions would put a strain on lawyers and, already, there appeared to be a shortage of experts in litigating election petitions.
“We have a lot of lawyers, but we do not have enough lawyers to deal with election petitions.”