Trawen: Assist EC with rolls

By SHIRLYN BELDEN
ELECTORAL commissioner Andrew Trawen agrees with Western Highlands governor Tom Olga that people must ensure that the election is clean.
Olga this week called for Papua New Guineans to assist the electoral commission in providing clean and updated names and particulars.
He also urged public servants including electoral officials to stop hijacking the rolls update.
Olga condemned acts such as the inflating of the number on electoral rolls, cutting the number of eligible voters, registering ghost names and not submitting updated lists to the commission on time.
He said it was “injustice for other candidates and people”.
Trawen agrees with Olga and urges the people to take full responsibility of the election process by changing their attitude and mindsets, and to act maturely.
“We at the Commission cannot correct and clean the electoral roll ourselves. We need the support of everyone to get the roll right for the 2012 election,” he said.
He said public servants and electoral officials on the ground were entrusted to execute the roll update in an honest and diligent fashion.
“If there is sufficient evidence against those public servants and electoral officials of corrupting the roll update exercise in Western Highlands then they can be arrested by police, charged and prosecuted for committing an electoral offense,” he said.