A Special Parliamentary Committee that was set up after the formation of government last year specifically to look into the 2022 National General Elections following many discrepancies identified by political commentators and observers have begun their review of the PNG elections.
The Chair of the Committee & East Sepik Governor, Allan Bird said this is the first time that the country has had a committee to look into the elections as the people have grown more concerned about the deterioration of the conduct of the elections over the past years.
“Many commentators agree that 2022 was quite bad and I think 2017 was also similar.”
The elections, according to the chair and many others are getting worse.
Making reference to the comments reports made by the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary Commissioner and the Commander of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force, the elections have progressively been getting worse.
“There is a build-up of firearms in certain parts of the country and we’re beginning to see them being used in the elections and there’s an expectation that they’ll be a lot of them being used in 2027 that the conduct of the elections more serious challenges.”
This boils down to the attitude of the people. He stressed that the review is timely as they will now be taking an in-depth look at how the elections can be better orchestrated later on in the future.
The Committee has received serious concerns as to the way the Electoral Commission has conducted the elections, even the previous one as well.