THE Electoral Commissioner has condemned the actions of candidates and supporters that instigated the destruction of election materials; this is in relation to Markham and Kabwum in Morobe Province.

Ballot boxes and ballot papers were seen broken and burnt, scattered across the counting center; Papua New Guineans viewing the aftermath of the destruction through pictures on social media.

The question is who is to be blamed? The Electoral Commissioner, Simon Siani in a Media conference on Sunday (July 17) blamed “an aggrieved candidate” and his supporters for the destruction of the counting center in Markham.

The Electoral Commissioner has resorted to not taking some of the blame, stating that they are just facilitators of the electoral process and it’s the public that have to take ownership of the process and not resort to fighting and destroying the process, instead embracing it as an opportunity to express their democratic right.

“For the Electoral Commission I am satisfied and I am sure that I have done what I am supposed to do and what I am tasked to do as the election management body in the country, don’t blame the Electoral Commission that I have not done my work, the ballot boxes were bought to your door step, but people are fighting destroying ballot papers and ballot boxes what type message are we sending to the world,” Sinai said

The world is obviously seeing the destruction and chaos and will know of the violence through the many international observers and pictures and news on social media.

People are crying for a failed election but Sinai says that the process to declare the election in Markham and Kabwum as failed takes time and we could see the people go back to the polls.

“We are working together with Police and the security forces, at the end of the day the Electoral Commission is the Authority that will assess all the situations, where there is a need to have another polling we do that, if there needs to be counting we continue, but we will need a complete report from the officers in the provinces,” Sinai said

The Commissioner did consider some responsibility on their part stating that some of their tardiness could have caused a trigger to some of the actions by the public but says it’s a different demographic across the nation and people have a different approach towards elections.

“To some extent, there are contributing factors people are different, people going late to the polls or not having their names on the roll can trigger violence, but there are a host of different views and different understandings of how the people view the electoral process,” Sinai said

Sinai added that the process to declare a failed election in parts of Papua New Guinea is a process and will be made known once the writs are returned, Sinai also said the process includes meeting with their legal team as well to ensure that all processes are followed to make the hard decisions.

It is not only the Morobe Province experiencing a destruction of the democratic process, districts in Enga Province, Kompiam and Pogera have been facing issues which include the hijacking of ballot boxes and the destruction of property.

Social media, the access to android phones and other advances in technology have put to the limelight, the National General Election; the country is aware that not all the elections that took place have ended smoothly.

The destruction of properties, hijacking of ballot boxes and the destruction of ballot papers during the electoral process is not new to Papua New Guinea but seeing the pictures and videos of the blatant disregard of a fair and free electoral process spread across social media is a reality that no longer remains in folklore.

The Electoral Commission’s lack of update of the voter roll, group voting, underage voting, double voting, hijacking of ballot papers, burning of ballot papers and destruction of property are compounding factors that seem to justify some act of violence towards the electoral process, in each instance it has become normal to most and a talking point of discussion, yet the situation seems to reach the extreme every election year.

Electoral Commissioner, Simon Sinai at a media conference admitted that having a new election management system in place could mitigate some of the issues being faced during the elections; he added that there are many options available.

“We have seen all these things happen before, even the first past the post system in the past had bought many problems, we changed it to the Limited Preferential Voting system, we thought it would alleviate some of these issues but the trend has not even improved; we look forward to working on finding better ways to improve the elections,” Sinai said.

There is more work to be done in the next five years before the next National General Elections, but the options for new and better ways to conduct elections according to Sinai must be accepted by the people of Papua New Guinea.

“We have talked with Government about the voter roll and electronic voting but there are many ways we can improve the election management system, we have discussed about bio-metric voting but Papua New Guineans must be ready to accept this situation, we should work with systems that we can understand,” Sinai said