| Home > South Pacific & Oceania >> Papua New Guinea | |
Battle to keep PNG ballot boxes safe
Sydney Morning Herald - June 29, 2012
Voting in the country's elections has been staggered over a week to allow thousands of soldiers and police to be focused on polling security in the Highland provinces, where the most feverish and violent campaigning has been expected.
The opening day in the Southern Highlands and Hela provinces was extended to an extra day on Sunday as polling stations were not set up on time, and Wednesday's vote in Enga was stretched to yesterday.
In Hela province on Wednesday, supporters of the 81 candidates contesting the elections there went on a rampage through the town of Tari after a radio station reported that ballot boxes would be shifted to a bigger centre, such as Mount Hagen, for counting because of mounting tensions over ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation.
Local media said crowds felled trees and pushed large rocks onto the road out of Tari, while others drove a vehicle onto Tari's airport runway to prevent the ballot boxes full of votes being taken out by land or air.
Police and soldiers fired warning shots to stop a stone-throwing crowd approaching the Tari police station where the ballot boxes are stored.
Electoral Commissioner Andrew Traven announced that counting would be held within the province, once a secure place was decided. "Options were Port Moresby and Mount Hagen but it was considered that the people of Hela province need to embrace the elections and take responsibility for their own destiny," he told the Post-Courier newspaper.
Elsewhere in Papua New Guinea's coastal regions and island provinces, voting has been mostly peaceful, said Jerry Bagita, operations manager of the corruption watchdog Transparency International, which is monitoring the election. But there have been widespread discrepancies in the electoral rolls, with many would-be voters finding their names missing.
In the Western Highlands, officials postponed today's scheduled vote until Sunday to allow the security forces to be brought in from the Southern Highlands and Enga, and are ready to further postpone until Monday or Tuesday.
"Any postponement of polling is a burden to them because they have to keep disbursing money," said businessman Paul Ogil, whose is helping the campaign of his cousin, former foreign secretary Gabriel Pepson. "This means they have to spend hundreds of thousands of kina a day extra."
Most candidates operate a "campaign house" where all comers are given a meal, a place to sleep, and a send-off with their fares to go home.
See also:
 |