Changes in electoral process

EVERY five years beginning in 1977, Papua New Guinea has had general elections and this period has been among the most anticipated events on the national calendar – for obvious reasons.
While not a perfect system, the electoral process has delivered adequately enough on its main objective which is to give the nation its leaders for the Westminster style of parliamentary democracy adopted at Independence.
There have been nine general elections so far with the 2022 to be the ninth edition.
Although the state has not tinkered too much with the system over the years, there have been some major changes to how the elections are conducted in this country.
One of those big changes took place prior to the 2012 general election was the introduction of the limited preferential voting system.
While there was some resistance to this change initially, many, if not all voters now see this as an improvement on the first-past-the-post system that had been used since the late 1970s.
There were some areas that could be looked into in order to achieve certain aims.
There was a proposal to increase in the nomination fee from K1,000 to K10,000 with the justification being that it would have sorted out the so-called serious candidates from the fly-by-nighters; it would have drastically reduced the number of candidates for each electorate (who could afford K10,000 to nominate?) and, thus, help lessen the workload of the Electoral Commission.
However, the glaring issue with such a proposal was that it impinged on a person’s right to stand for office by putting the means of contesting beyond that of the ordinary folk – and once you start that you run the very real risk of moving away from a democracy to something different.
Another change that could be looked is for the political parties to have websites in order to better disseminate their policies to the public, especially those in the urban areas.
Some might say, that since the majority of the voting population are in the rural areas, it would not be practical but the point here is that of adding to the accessibility of a party and how it can set about its agenda on a platform that allows more people to access and read what they stand for.
Social media also comes into the frame with parties also having Facebook pages as some MPs and political parties already do.
These sites can provide useful and needed information on the party and who they are nominating and what their policies are and what their philosophy is and where they stand on issues of national importance.
Do we have to go to a rally or a dinner to find out about a party?
Why not just put the information on a website?
One of the biggest problems that faces authorities in election season is the instances of violence in electorates.
There were election fatalities already recorded in the 2017 general election (G2017) and the 2022 general election is underway.
In the GE2017, eight weeks was the campaign period.
It should be shortened to a month.
If the campaign period in most Western countries is two to three weeks then why can’t it be the same here in PNG?
The electoral process in this country is far from being perfect.
The process of refining it will continue over the coming years and the PNG Electoral Commission will no doubt play a significant role in enabling that.