In light of recent incident of destruction in Markham that happened over the weekend, Kabwum District in Morobe Province, over the weekend experienced similar incident were ballot boxes and ballot papers were destroyed at the Counting Centre at the Kabwum station. According to Election Manager Mr. Simon Soheke, the incident that occurred are very similar. Mr. Soheke stated that dissatisfied and disgruntled supporters and candidates, with the assumption that some areas that they believed to be places they were supposed to score high results did not add up to their expectation. Thus leading to the destruction of the counting centre. “There are many similarities with this incident and the incident in Markham where candidates were not happy that places in which they believed were, according to them, their base votes did not have the number of votes they thought they would have gotten from those areas,” he said. With counting coming to a complete halt after the destruction of the Counting Centre and the ballot boxes and papers at the Kabwum Station, Mr. Soheke has advised that there has been reports of a few regional ballot boxes that survived the destruction. “We have received reports that there were a few regional ballot boxes that were intact,” Soheke said. But the election manager has stated that they will be verified first before they can be salvaged to return to Lae for the Regional count. Mr. Soheke advised they only received the premature reports but is waiting on a full report before he finalizes his report for the commissioner. He added that it is up to the commissioner now to make a decision on the outcome of the elections in the district. “We cannot speculate on the decision of the commissioner but it is his turn to make a decision. He will have to take into consideration all the aspects of the incident before making his decision,” he said.