Make parties and policies known

WITH just few months before the next general election, it should be compulsory for the 52 political parties to publicly define who they are, their policies, membership and the kind of people who will be representing them in Parliament.
The people should know about them and the parties should continue to show themselves.
Registrar of Political Parties Dr Alphonse Gelu has been stressing on the need for political parties to register, recruit members and inform the people about their policies and other relevant information.
For the parties, this exercise should have started after the last concluded election and continue right to this one.
The period in between each election is five years and this is plenty of time for the political parties to re-group and start on re-building themselves for the next election.
Look at the results from the 2017 general election.
Some of the 45 political parties failed miserably to make their policies known when they literally did nothing in terms of publicity of their platforms, knowing fully well the voting trend.
Most knew it would be a walk in the park for these political parties against the bigger boys.
This way, voters will not only be better informed, but also have a good idea of who should be representing them in Parliament.
The 2017 national election results show that People’s National Congress fared the best, with its effective use of the media against a few.
National Alliance also stood out, as did Pangu Pati, the PNG National Party, and the People’s Movement for Change.
Political parties are important sources of power as a result of their policies that gather support and mobilise the people to vote for their policies.
People only know about the existing political parties but not the new ones because most were set up just before election. The new parties have only themselves to blame for this because they failed to do their homework on the ground.
Their failures to make contact with the people defeats the process of the invitation that is made to a party that has won the majority of seats in the election to form the government.
The relationship between the people and the parties should be strengthened and this can only be done if the executives play their part by putting in place a programme to make them visible to the people.
Researchers say most people in PNG cast their votes for the candidates they think are mostly likely to help them directly, their families or their village.
We cannot deny that the obvious trend for localised benefits votes will continue.
For the simple villager, it should be explained in simple terms about what are political parties, what is the role of political parties, how many political parties we have in PNG, who are the leaders of the political parties, how the parties can be contacted, why it is important to join a party, why it is important to consider supporting women candidates, etc.
With that situation, stringent measures should be put in place to bring the number of political parties down to below 20.
There is still a greater need for parties to expose themselves in the country.
Parties should become relevant to the people.
The people should know about them and the parties must continue to show themselves.
This would bring about positive signs to the political development of our country.