Reform proves promising

The election for University of Papua New Guinea’s 2021 Student Representative Council (UPNG SRC) was conducted over two days from Oct 21-22. This was the first election after the SRC was suspended in 2016, following student boycotts against the Government. UPNG SRC elections are important not only for the university and its students but because UPNG student leaders often go on to careers in national politics, MICHAEL KABUNI writes

The PNG Electoral Commission (PNGEC) conducted the polling, counting and declaration.
Generally, it was peaceful and the students followed the PNGEC procedures.
The enthusiasm during the campaign period was similar to public rallies during general elections in PNG, with more than 2,000 students present at the forum square to listen to candidates speak.
Limited preferential voting was used (as in the national elections).
The winners of the vice-presidential races were decided after the first preference counts, as there were only two candidates for each seat.
There were seven candidates for the position of president.
The winner of the president’s seat collected 1,567 votes after the fifth elimination and the runner-up had 1,317 votes.
The treasurer and secretary seats were left to the student representatives of each school to elect.
There were five schools at UPNG: school of humanities and social sciences; school of law; school of natural and physical sciences; school of business and public policy; and, school of medicine.
One of the changes introduced was the requirement that schools should nominate candidates to contest the SRC elections.
Provincial and regional groups were specifically banned from nominating candidates.
For the president’s seat, the winner was a nominee from the school of medicine.
Another controversial reform introduced at these elections was to prevent student nominees with a grade point average (GPA) less than 3.0 (out of five) from contesting.
The SRC screening committee was set up within the student welfare division to screen candidates.
Several students were disqualified from contesting because of a low GPA, whilst no candidates nominated by regional or provincial groups were accepted.
There were some protests from candidates who were eliminated by the SRC screening committee, but they accepted it in the end.
Following the election, I created a short online survey using Google forms and sent it out to students via email and posted the links on the UPNG Facebook group and UPNG Political Science Facebook group, to gauge student views.

To prevent non-students from participating in the survey, students were required to sign in using their UPNG email address to participate in the survey.
A total of 160 students participated in the survey that lasted for one week.
The survey focused mainly on GPA eligibility criteria and the decision to stop students from nominating candidates based on regional or provincial lines.
Of the 160 respondents, 91 per cent said the GPA minimum was a fair criterion, with many agreeing that the core responsibility of the students was to study.
One participant said: “The intending candidates who missed out did not meet the GPA requirement. However, I agree with that decision because one needs to perform extremely well academically before he or she can involve with extracurricular activities.
“Because our sole purpose here in UPNG is to study.”
The remaining 9 per cent of the respondents did not agree with the GPA eligibility criteria.
There were several reasons best summed up by this student: “GPA is not a measurement of leadership.
“There are students who lead their social groups, student societies, or provincial groups effectively but were left out because of low GPA, whilst students with high GPAs but no leadership qualities were selected.”
On the question of banning nominations from provincial and regional groups, 74 per cent thought it was a good idea and 26 per cent disagreed.
Those who supported the ban argued that regionalism was divisive.
Those who opposed it said the ban would remove the incentive for students to provide leadership in these groups.
Some students saw their regional and provincial groups as training grounds for contesting the SRC elections.
There were three additional criteria, namely, the nominee should not have a bad disciplinary record, should be a boarding student (residing within the campus) and should not hold other leadership positions within the university.
There were no disagreements on these additional criteria.
I also looked at how students voted.
After all, although candidates could not be nominated by provincial groups, there is nothing to stop students voting along regional lines.
I asked the survey respondents to state the main factor determining their vote for each of their three preferences.
Students were allowed to select only one from: The candidate and I belong to the same region or province; the candidate is from my faculty; I liked the candidate’s policies; the candidate has a good character; the candidate and I are friends; and, or other.
Encouragingly, a candidate’s policies was the most important consideration for students, especially for their first preference.
The candidate’s character was the second most important consideration and whether the student was from the same province or region came in only third. – devpolicy.org

Michael Kabuni is a teaching fellow in political science at the University of Papua New Guinea.