Negligence of recommendations

PAPUA New Guinea’s seemingly innocent disregard of recommendations by international observers to resolve chronic problems relating to the common roll before General Election 2022 (GE22) is seeing the results of its neglect with thousands of potential voters countrywide missing out in casting their votes since polling began on Monday.
Highlighting the common roll issue as a key problem in General Election 2017 (GE17), observers, in particular the Commonwealth Observer Group, had among its other recommendations, said: “The Group recommended that the PNGEC should conduct an urgent review and lessons learned processed immediately after this election, and improve the accuracy of the electoral roll.
“This process should be carried out with strong support from the Commonwealth Secretariat in collaboration with other development partners of PNG.
“The Government should ensure timely release of funding to the PNGEC to enable a thorough process of updating the electoral roll.
“This process should be completed earlier in advance of the election and finalised prior to the cut-off upon the issue of the writs.
“Security measures should be put in place to prevent further changes to the roll after the cut-off point, and political parties and candidates should receive copies of the final electoral roll in advance of the polling period.”
Reports of discrepancies with the common roll had been relentless as polling continued to roll out in many parts of the country.
The discrepancies ranged from missing names in common roll to shortage of ballot papers among others had been recorded despite assurances by Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai last month that people who voted in GE217 would still have their names on the common roll.
“In 2022 we did not make a new roll.
“We maintained the existing one we used in 2017.
“If you voted in 2017, your name is still on the common roll.”
In Central, more than 2,000 voters in Tubuserea, one the second largest village of the Hiri-Koiari electorate, had missed out on voting after their names were not in the common roll.
In the same electorate, hundreds of eligible voters in the Koiari local level government were frustrated after discovering that their names were not on the electoral roll.
Those that did not vote included former Lae MP Bart Philemon who called on the government to use the National Identification and Civil Registry system to update the common roll.
In Gulf, residents of Kerema have expressed concern that they could not locate their names on the common roll for polling in the Kerema Urban local level government.
In East Sepik, a Wewak resident broke down in tears after her name was not found on the electoral roll forward four.
She and other longtime residents who had been voting for years.
In Finschhafen, Morobe, Finschhafen returning officer Fredah Joses had reported that the confirmed number of ballot papers had gone over the total number of registered voters.
Making the effort to work on recommendations from independent observers would not hurt anyone.
A reference from the Melanesian Spearhead Group in 2017 was for the PNGEC to revise the system of registration of voters to ensure an accurate common roll is in place come the next election (2022).
Another, the PNGEC should ensure that polling are conducted on the days scheduled and gazetted to ensure a free, fair and credible elections.
Obviously this was overlooked.
Training for returning officers (RO), assistant RO and all polling officials needs to be prioritised to allow them to undertake the responsibilities effectively and based on the law.
That is a far cry for voters in the country’s capital city Port Moresby.
It does pay to take heed of recommendations from independent observers.