Commission needs funding

THE Electoral Boundaries Commission is required to review the electoral boundaries regularly.
Commission chairman and acting Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai recently announced that the commission would need K14 million to carry out a review of the electoral boundaries in preparation for the next election.
It is now about 12 months to the issue of writs for next year’s election and the review is imperative.
Section 102(5) of the Constitution states that an alteration to the number of electorates or to the boundaries of an electorate takes effect for the purposes of the next general election and of succeeding elections.
The rationale is understandably to ensure a consistently fair representation of Papua New Guineans in their parliament and by extending an equitable distribution of national wealth.
Such fairness has been the dream of those who crafted the constitution, which gave birth to the modern state of Papua New Guinea, in the face of some inconvenient realities on the ground.
Geography and sparse population density in some parts of PNG have been a huge obstacle to achieving equitable distribution.
Over the years, the founding fathers’ idealism and reality have been gradually drifting further apart and we now have huge disparities that need correcting quickly somehow.
Prime Minister James Marape in last April’s Parliament sitting acknowledged this disparity and gave an undertaking that a review of the electoral boundaries would be done prior to the next national election, which is now only a year away.
Responding to a question then, Marape attributed to rapid surges in population across some electorates, saying the population in some electorates had swelled significantly more than others.
He said there were cases where some electorates had almost 200,000 people represented by one MP and in some cases, one MP represented up to 40,000 people.
There is therefore a huge disparity in the representation of the population in parliament that needs to be fairly scrutinised, Marape added.
One comparison sometimes used to illustrate such a disparity is that of Manus and the island of Karkar in Madang.
Manus, a province of about 60,000 people has two representatives but Karkar, with a higher population of about 70,000, does not have a representative of its own.
Instead, it remains part of Sumkar electorate (which includes Sumgilbar local level government on mainland Madang).
Chris Nangoi, a Karkar islander, is the current MP and divides his time between the mainland and the island.
There are currently 111 seats in Parliament consisting of 89 open seats and 22 provincial seats.
There is constitutional provision for no more than three nominated MPs as well.
The number of seats can increase to 120 and for there to be any anything above that number, there would have to be an amendment to the constitution made.
Increasing the number of seats would address the disparity in parliamentary representation but there are other considerations to be taken into account when going down that road.
Would that alone enable us to achieve fairer representation and distribution of resources?
Or would a larger parliament (more MPs) actually cost more and deny electorates of resources still?
Although population size could be the most important factor deciding in the number of electorates, geography, population density and the cost-effectiveness of service delivery do matter a lot today.
Without any real effort to tackle these difficulties, the disparity in service delivery may still be there even when there is an increased number of parliamentary seats.