Much is anticipated in the 2022 National General Elections a time when the citizens decide who will be their leader of Parliament for the next five years.
Change in leadership is necessary to alleviate the plight of citizens who continuously struggle to cope with economic instability and inflation of prices for goods and services including tax (GST).
The way to get credible leadership into Government is through the upcoming National Elections when citizens are expected to exercise their rights to appoint leaders using the ballot process in a free, fair, and safe election.
Recently a seminar was conducted by the Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council (CIMC) Governance and Service Delivery Sectoral Committee to discuss the preparations for the 2022 NGEs’ and the delivery of a transparent, fair, and credible election considering observations from past elections and to propose options for improvement in the future.
During the seminar, CIMC noted significant issues relating to elections in PNG which were presented by a researcher, Dr. Joe Ketan, who emphasized that the state of the country’s economic affairs portrayed the type of leaders voted in the elections.
Dr Ketan, said that the voting system in PNG has no credibility nor is fair or transparent as voters are influenced by money, fear of election violence, and guns dictate the choices of eligible voters.
“This is a serious area that needs to be looked at systematically. The voting process is being seriously compromised by lack of enforcement, and compliance” Dr. Ketan said.
“This raised a lot of questions about the integrity of the power”.
“People need to put a stop on the customary norm of accepting huge chunk of money and resources as campaign hospitality, as we face governance issues due to bad input in terms of people coming through the elections entering parliament,”.
“So we are all in a way colluding to bring disruptive to our election process. Security personnel from the police and defense alone cannot restore integrity to the electoral system”
Dr Ketan further stated that “The electoral system is intact it is the electoral process which has been hijacked by stakeholders, especially by politicians, that in turn affects the composition and credibility of parliament, and when that is in question it affects the composition and credibility of the public service, SOEs, state security agencies and the result is the current sad state of affairs we are in”.

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