Bird plans to implement observers’ recommendations from GE22

By LULU MAGINDE
CHAIRMAN of the Election Review Committee and East Sepik Governor Allan Bird says he wants to implement recommendations from observer reports as soon as possible.
He said that there would not have been a review committee for General Election 2022 (GE22), if Prime Minister James Marape did not share the same level of interest in reviewing the electoral process.
He talked about the country’s plans for the first Parliamentary Election Review Committee at the GE22 election observation seminar at the National Research Institute (NRI) on Tuesday, naming NRI as the Secretariat of the committee.
“We all know the problems, every election that comes and have reports produced, they will speak to the same thing,” Bird said.
The problems start with the common roll and the total lack of transparency around that piece of work which should not be a problem because we are a democracy, where there should be transparency and accountability, he said.
“The highest level of incompetency that we all entertain is the fact that we don’t ask about the common roll. We know very well that double, triple voting is normal and yet we don’t do anything to prevent it from happening. Once you prevent that, suddenly the people’s voices become clear.”
“People who want to disrupt the system are allowed to do it because there’s no mechanism preventing the disruptions from coming in. So we’ve got to look at the entire process and this is where the terms of reference come in.”
Bird said they would be looking at the role of the Electoral Commission, the police and everybody that participated in GE22, looking at how they spent the money on top of trying to fix the system.
“First of all, there’s going to be a coalition of all the studies and findings, then we’ll summon all the agencies involved so that we’re given an account of this particular election so that the entire country knows what happened,” he said.