THE Electoral Commission was forced to hold a media conference yesterday after polling for the National Capital District was delayed again.
While candidates and members of the public fumed over the decision, what came out from the media conference was perhaps the highest display of government incompetence.
The National Capital District’s Election Manager, Kila Ralai, blundered through the conference. He stopped to consult pages of a written statement in his desperate moments under pressure and then blamed candidates and social media for the delay.
“There was interference,” he said.
His favorite word of choice, “process,” became an uncomfortable cliché and the subject of memes by the end of the hour as thousands of Papua New Guineans hammered the Commission and the election manager over the poor public representation.
The Electoral Commission had five years to plan the biggest event in the country’s democratic cycle. They knew all the risks yet did little to mitigate them.
Kila Ralai claimed to be a veteran of 40 years but in the same breath told the media that he was inexperienced in dealing with elections in NCD.
“NCD is a new challenge to me.”
The NCD election team admitted, they did not train polling officials and that they “ran out of time.”
Kila Ralai, denied they were not disorganized after ABC correspondent, Natalie Whiting, put it to him that there appeared to be widespread disorganization in the whole process.
The press conference ended with one officer lambasting the media for asking ‘unnecessary questions. He was subsequently shut down by a room full of angry journalists.
Things started to unravel on the eve of polling.
Candidates were concerned about the presence of “extra ballot boxes” and said the process was irregular and not transparent.
Hours after the Electoral Commission spoke, candidates including Andy Bawa, Dianne Unagi, Tania Bale and Sylvia Pascoe, held a separate news conference to highlight the sequence of events that led to the delay.
“If you’re standing there and you see two to four boxes that look like they have been tampered with, we have to ask those questions. They gave us no reasoning. Everybody did not feel comfortable with what they were saying.
“When you opened up those boxes, everything was sealed and these four random boxes were not sealed. Something is wrong with that.”
In Tari, the Prime Minister’s arrival to cast his vote was marred by the arrest of his son and an associate who was carrying more than a million kina in cash.
James Marape, later said he had no association or knowledge of the money. But the incident has not stopped doubts about the integrity of the election process in the Prime Minister’s own electorate.
Comments are closed.