Election process should adopt tribe-based policy

IT is mandatory to hold general elections in Papua New Guinea every five years.
Tax payers will foot more than K400 million for the 2017 elections with 4,000 candidates expected to contest.
Down the thoroughfare of life, it is not the “known” but the “unknown” in our everyday activities that causes worry, concern, perplexity and even suffering.
It is the unknown in Donald Trump that causes worry, concern and perplexity among us the world over in the US elections which is due in days’ time.
For us, it is the unknown in the forthcoming elections that causes worry, at least for me.
I am anti-election and never support the idea of election as means to elect peoples’ representative to Parliament.
I believe that PNG should have a tribe-base appointment system rather than election. I believe that a system other than election must be created whereby each tribes in PNG can ‘appoint’ not ‘elect’ a representative. I believe that through this, PNG can own 100 per cent democratic representation rather than the current system which only equates for 111 seats out of 800 tribes or a mere 13 per cent democracy.
The current system creates the imbalance in equal sharing of power and resources – a few that are in power control all the money in Waigani. No wonder some provinces are already calling for autonomy.
I see election as a foreign ploy imposed on human communities who still survive in tribal groups, have traditional values and customs.
It is an amphetamine to destabilising tribalism where the UN proclaims on the one hand and does the very oppose on the other hand by imposing system of election on them instead of promoting an appointment base tribal system for them.
Elections have traits similar to cargo cult movements in pre Independence Papua New Guinea.
More apparent in such circumstances are the promises of good life and a ‘wished for millennium’ or delivery of material goods from the ‘outside world’ often through precarious circumstances (sacrifices, worships and rituals).
Common indices or characteristics between cargo cult and elections are that there is always that someone to deliver cargo and wealth.
Former electoral commissioner Andrew Trawen once said that “elections are becoming dangerous and has breached the democratic process in this country”.
In a tribe base system, the clans congregate and in consensus appoint a representative by consent.
There will be no competition involve therefore rivalry is removed.
There will no “flushing cash’ syndrome therefore deceit and corruption is removed. There will be no election petition courts.
Certainly, it will not cost the State K400 million to hold such a tribal meet. In the nutshell, it is a better suited system for PNG.

Cyril Gare, Via email