“The commotion in the Nation’s Capital this morning was not as bad as it was portrayed on social media.”
That’s from NCD Metropolitan Superintendent Gideon Ikumu at a media conference today in Port Moresby.
Ikumu said that the situation was manageable but due to social media, everything was blown out of proportion.
“Rumors of a number of people dying are also false.”
The NCD Police Boss further advised that the violence that was seen again in the Nation’s capital is a blowback of the incident from yesterday.
He said there have been ongoing issues like these and they were being handled by the Electoral Commission.
Accompanied by both the Media Office of the Police Commissioner’s Office, Superintendent Dominic Kakas, and Superintendent David Terry from the Divisional Commanders Media Office, Ikumu did not waste time but dove right into retelling events that transpired.
“We are all here for what had happened yesterday and as a result, escalated to the events that we experienced this morning.”
“The incident that happened yesterday was because of a couple of boxes that were disputed, especially around the Ward 6 area on Saturday.”
He added that there were issues that the Electoral Commission was dealing, with; one of them was the dispute of the boxes from ward 6 and amongst the scrutineers, there was a disagreement.
“They took the tussle outside and were arguing which most likely turned ugly.”
He stated that with the counting going on, you will notice that people were camping around the counting centers, and some managed to conceal weapons under their camping equipment.
“Somehow they were able to conceal weapons like knives, stones, and little projectiles that were used in the fighting.”
A few people have sustained injuries and two men had major injuries but they were not mortal wounds and there were no fatalities.
Superintendent Ikumu informed that the CID are now conducting their investigation into the matter.
“Right now the CID is investigating and trying to establish the cause of the events so that we can determine which of the two sides instigated the incident.”