Revised OLIPPAC needs backing

THE revised Organic Law on Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates (OLIPAC) must be supported.
And that includes getting the MPs in the National Executive Council (NEC) to support the submission so it is passed and enforced by the Registry of Political Parties.
The focus of the Registry is to strengthen political parties.
The 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.
Unfortunately, political parties in Papua New Guinea are not empowering the people to become members of their respective organisations.
Political parties have a responsibility to make it their duty to clearly define who they are, their policies, membership and the kind of people who will be representing them in Parliament.
For the parties, this exercise should start immediately after the last concluded election in 2017 and continue into 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
The period in between the 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.
That 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 (PNC) appeared to have 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.
People only know about the existing political parties but not the new ones because most were set up just before the election.
The new parties have only themselves to blame for that 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.
Researchers say most people in PNG cast their votes for the candidates they think is mostly likely to help them directly or help their families or help their village.
We cannot deny the obvious trend for localised benefits votes will continue.
For a villager it must be explained in simple terms about what are political parties, what is their role, how many parties we have in PNG, who are the leaders, how they can be contacted, why it is important to join them, why it is important to consider supporting women candidates and etc.
With that situation, stringent measures should be put in place to bring the number of political parties down to below 20.
The relationship between the people and the parties must 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.
And so the revised changes must be supported.