As the incumbent Governor and Member for NCD, I want to once again express my absolute disappointment and disgust at the deferral of polling in the Capital City.
The excuse made for the initial deferral from the 4th to the 6th of July and now from 6th to maybe 8th of July is completely unacceptable.
I am furious and completely disgusted. I am sure our people are equally disgusted.
Securing counting venues and preparing polling officials, ballot boxes and ballot papers are basic outcomes Chief Electoral Commissioner and his staff should have sorted out well before the 4th or 6th of July.
These are basic issues they ought to have templates and be experts in these areas by now.
This basic failure shows highest level of incompetency and someone should be brought to account for this level of incompetency which is bordering on stupidity.
This basic failures shows poor level of leadership, poor planning and total incompetency on the part of Chief Electoral Commissioner and his Officers.
They ought to hang their heads in shame! For our Capital City to be continuously be subjected to such basic of problems is totally unacceptable! It reflects badly for the Electoral Commission, our Capital City and our country.
These are basic planning matters that should have been resolved well before polling.
They had four (4) years and then a number of weeks due to deferral of the Issue of Writs and then two more days and they still can’t solve these very basic issues.
As a veteran of four (4) past General Election and one By Election this is like deja vu. History repeating itself. Same problems in 2012 and 2017 and now 2022!
As a Party leader too, I am concerned that the delay will affect our Party politically. Delay in polling means delay in counting delay in declarations.
The delay is also costly for candidates and political Parties as we have to continue to meet cost incurred unnecessarily because of plain incompetence and stupidity.
At the end of the day too our country and our people pay a high price in not just paying more financially for this delay but equally in the poor images and impressions which such completely avoidable problems create.
Our people continue to lose confidence in the electoral process, international community including investors lose confidence in our systems and our leadership as a result of such blunder and incompetence!
I want to also call on all Candidates too not to interfere too much with the process and management of the process. Let the Electoral Commission and its staff do their job and deliver the elections.
We should respect the process by leaving the scrutiny of the process to our Scrutineers. It’s not necessary for candidates to go to the election Centers to intervene as the law allows them to be represented by their Scrutineers.
Elections in PNG sadly have never been perfect but it allows for highest levels of scrutiny and we should respect that process.