Vote-buying denies citizens of choices

IT is a disgrace and outright suppression of our citizens’ rights when highly educated citizens leave the towns and cities for their respective districts and provinces to campaign by using all forms of bribery and force on their tribes, communities and district to vote for certain candidates of their choice.
Buying foodstuff, calling people to eat and vote is vote-buying.
Using our position of power, money, and privilege of education to brainwash poor villagers to vote is suppression of their God-given power of choice and democratic right to choose a leader of their choice.
As educated sons and daughters in a village or a district, we have a responsibility to educate our people about the power of their choice, and the qualities to look for in a good leader and political party.
We are responsible for giving them the right kind of information or tool they can use to screen the best candidate of their choice.
We must not stoop so low as to rig the election with bribery or infringe on their right of choice.
That is not what protecting our democracy is all about.
You are only taking advantage of an uninformed and misinformed voting population.
Our democratic system of government is not the tribal system whereby the chief has the absolute power to decide for the entire clan.
The clanship system is fragmented in most societies and becoming more contemporary because of the money and cargo system.
If your clan chief tells you to vote his candidate – let him know that you have your own choice because this system of politics is not hereditary passed on from generations – it is foreign.
We adopted it from the Westminster system.
Politics is bigger than the influence of your chief, it is for the good or bad of an entire nation.
As a villager, you too must understand that those forcing you or bribing you with money, food, and cargo to vote for a particular candidate have a reason for it.
It may vest interest, business deals, or for the common good of public service delivery and good governance.
It is very important for you as a villager to question and know the intentions for such.
Who would risk time and resources to partake and support a candidate or political party if it has no promise for a win-win in it?
After all, most of those people who leave the city and town to infringe on your free will of choice are not voting for the candidate they are telling you to vote for.
Indirectly it means – you’re not deciding your future, someone else is making the choices for you.
Our elites are supposed to be the ones upholding the integrity of the election process, democracy, human rights, and freedom of choice, not suppressing them.
Our people in the remotest district and villages are in dire need of information and awareness on their rights and responsibilities, how to screen good candidates, and good party policies.
Those are citizens we cannot reach through the mass media or social media.
Let us educate them and not take advantage of their lack of awareness and rip them off their power of choice.
In our General Election 2022 voter education awareness rollout, we found out that this is currently happening across most of the remotest communities that only meet their MPs after four years in Parliament.
There is a huge information gap between opinion leaders and decision-makers and ordinary citizens, brewing misinformation and bad choices during elections.
An uninformed population can easily be deceived, manipulated, and ripped off their basic human rights and dignity through bribery and undue influence from those of us with the privilege of education and access to information.
If we are educated and called ourselves elites, are we upholding professional ethics and protecting our democracy through our actions?

Reilly Kanamon
Advocacy & Research
Caritas Papua New Guinea