Central provincial candidates came together yesterday afternoon in a press conference to outline their grievances and put forward demands to the Central Province Election Manager, Peter Malaifeope.
Hosting the press conference, PNC endorsed candidate Rufina Peter and other contesting candidates, Scott Morata and Paul Simon and others, came together in a united front to address the issue of the 36 missing ballot papers after the first exclusion.
According to the candidates, the first candidate excluded this morning, Gabriel Lala scored 146 votes but after the distribution of the papers, 36 from the original 146 papers went missing, leading to the suspension of the Central Regional counting yesterday.
A vocal Rufina Peter stated that this type of irregularities are serious and to her, is an indication that the counting process is compromised. “So 36 ballot papers went missing somewhere, and so the counting was stopped while scrutineers demanded that they find the 36 papers.
As we speak now, the 36 papers have not been recouped,” Peter said. She added that they would like to see a few changes before the commencement of the exclusion process continues. They would like to see: 1. Total recount of the papers. 2. A change in the counting officials. 3.
Should the prior not be taken up, livestreaming of the exclusion should suffice. She reiterated further on their second point, stating that they had established that most of the counting officials are public servants working under the current provincial administration and believes that due to that affiliation with the provincial administration office, they should not have been engaged as counting officials, as that would be a conflict of interest.
“The team here and I, in terms of petition, want to see that the Provincial Returning officer and his assistant, and all of the current team that comprises largely of Central Provincial Administration staff, plus some of the staff from the current governor’s office removed,” Peter said.
The candidates have all agreed that should they not receive a favorable response to the demands that they have set, they will advise their scrutineers to boycott the counting process.