THE acting Electoral Commissioner, Simon Sinai says the Port Moresby North West by-election has been a success despite complains and concerns raised on how the by-election has been conducted.
Mr Sinai clarified that the Electoral Commission is now taking a different direction in the conduct of election in PNG with a number of changes that has already happened and will continue for other elections yet to come.
Some of these changes include having a decentralised counting venue for the first preference count; replacements of Presiding Officers (POs) and counting staff for the first preference counts; increased the number of polling booths; and to increase the number of women in the polling booths.
He said whether the new changes brought on board may be helping or not, we now have to focus on how the benefits of these changes contribute to the election process.
“One of the benefits is for people to see their voting trend in their council ward area and that will happen everywhere in the future.
“The second benefit is to cut down on the timing process of counting for the first preferences which normally takes one to two weeks to complete.
“We now aim at reducing the number of counting days from 21 to 14 or to 10 days the least,” Mr. Sinai said.
He said the by-election has been successful in a way that they have provided enough electoral roll, enough ballot papers and Polling teams giving the opportunity for every citizen of Port Moresby North- West to cast their votes which they did.
Mr Sinai also accepted complains, concerns and petition raised by the scrutineers and candidates which has caused few delays over the past few days saying it is part of the process.
He further made known that most of these changes in this by-election will also occur come 2022 National General Elections.
How do you minimize rigging and manipulation? There are no successes one bit. Vote rigging, extra balloting, manipulations are the orders in every election period throughout PNG. This is the main concern need to be addressed. Those changes mentioned above are also prone to rigging and election cheats.
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