Fairness doubted: 2012 general election unfair to voters

COMMENTARYBy EDDIE MOSES
POLLING in the industrial city of Lae last Wednesday was anything but fair.
What was supposed to be a free, fair and safe election was very unfair for hundreds of long time Lae residents.
The now widespread common roll fiasco was the order of the day. 
A furious Seventh Street resident was incredulously shaking his head at the injustice of his name not listed. “I grew up here and am now a grandfather. How is this possible when I have been voting in every election from 1987? I registered twice for this election alone,” he shouted.
Lae MP Bart Philemon could only wonder aloud at the incompetence in the common roll update when his 85-year-old elder sister and daughter were not listed on the roll in his Butibum village.
He has initiated a house to house survey in his village to determine how many of his people were not listed on the roll.
NBC Radio Morobe is still being flooded with calls from angry residents at the injustice created by the Electoral Commission. A candidate described it as a disgraceful national performance indicator on the part of the Electoral Commission.
A comic twist that emphasises the sheer incompetence evident in the roll updates exercise is when a visitor on business in the city is allowed to vote as his name is listed.
“I am a local boy but have been a resident elsewhere for decades. Why has my name been on the roll all these time?” he said.
Candidates and their supporters have also raised a further issue. There is anger at the defection of assumed voters back to their provinces of origin during voting.
“These people are residents and they should have stayed back in the city to cast their votes,” one candidate said.
The security forces ensured that voting was safe and free but missed a lot of undue activities around polling booths.
There were apparently blatant cash payments to entice voters to vote for particular candidates. At the Angau polling booth a senior hospital staffer with a thick wad of bills was seen paying out K50 and K20 notes to voters to cast their votes for his candidate.
A fellow staffer admitted he was paid K50 for his vote. At the Unitech polling site two students were arrested by security forces for being in possession of three blank cheques and a stack of candidate cards with absent students names on the back. 
The two had been distributing the cards to unlisted voters to use the absent students’ names to vote for their candidate in exchange for cash. Similar stories are reported from most polling sites in the city.
All these go to show that in Papua New Guinea nothing is sacrosanct anymore.
Any event with the future potential for huge cash payouts or business opportunities presents an ideal chance for all manner of corrupt practices. Whether the nation will learn from this fiasco is purely academic.