Bougainville regional seat by-election underway
THE Government has allocated K8million for the Bougainville regional seat by-election with the writ issued by Governor-General Grand Chief Sir Bob Dadae yesterday.
Acting Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai said they had made a submission for K15 million but allocated only K8 million to start the by-election.
The seat was vacated by Joe Lera when he contested the seat of President in the Autonomous Bougainville Government elections in July.
He said candidates should now file their nominations.
“We have seen the success of having separate voting queues for men and women during the by-elections in Menyamya and Goroka,” he said.
“We will do the same for the Bougainville regional seat by-election. Voting would be for one day for the entire region. About 200,000 eligible voters would participate.”
There are 410 polling teams: South Bougainville 120, North Bougainville 172 and Central Bougainville 118. Polling will be done in the 13 LLGs and 442 wards of the three electorates of Bougainville.
Nominations close on Thursday, Dec 10. Polling starts on Saturday, Jan 16 and ends on Friday, Jan 29.
The return of the writ will be on or before Friday, Feb 19.
4 comments
I fail to understand why a fully autonomous province or region continues to have a regional member when they have a President with full powers to run the region. Its a total waste of money and duplication of certain functions that really shouldn’t happen. The Marape government must look into this and amend laws to do away with such seats when a province becomes fully autonomous with a President as its head with full powers!
Bougainville is an extra mouth to feed just like PNG was to Australia before independence so Australia had to offload PNG. When Australia was facing depression it did not have enough resources to maintain itself and PNG so when the call for independence was put through to the United Nations Australia willingly passed the resolution in Canberra.
If Bougainville wants to live as a country, why go through all the trouble to offload it. They can have a president and a regional MP at their own cost well away from our system. PNG will move on with or without Bougainville and the many red skins who died there in the revolution are statistics now.
Bougainville have 2 sets of Open and MPs and Regional MPs: 1 for PNGs National Parliament and 1 set for Bougainville Parliament. The set of Open and Regional MPs for National Parliameny will be removed when Bougaiville becomes independence and the numbers of seats in PNGs Parliament will be reduced accordingly.
Is this a Joke? A regional seat as governor of the province to PNG government, and a President of another country but still still feeds from PNG.
Waste of time money and resources……they want to be independent and vote for it so please save this money for better use.
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