POST COURIER News


Monday 30th January, 2012

Mald claims roll corrupt

Polling in the coming National Elections will be totally corrupted if the Electoral Commission does not do anything to rectify the grossly corrupted Common Roll exercise that is currently underway in the country, a Government Minister said yesterday.

Minister for Community Development and MP for Moresby North East Andrew Mald said reports he was getting from the community indicate that the public servants trusted to carry out the Common Roll update were colluding with some MPs and intending candidates to inflate the number of eligible voters in their electorates.

‘The Electoral Commission will note from the figures it has already that in some council wards; there are more people than ever before. In some wards, the number is equivalent to the total population of eligible voters in an entire electorate,” Mr Mald said.

Mr Mald said from the report he was getting, even the number of voters in his Moresby North East Electorate had doubled in the last five years from 60,000 to 120,000 voters.

“Just how did that happen? Is the Electoral Commission telling me that the number of adult population in my electorate grew by 60,000 in five years? There is something wrong here. If we have that number, then there must be a huge exodus of people into Port Moresby in the last five years,” Mr Mald said.

Mr Mald said the elections must not be corrupted in any way and it was the responsibility of the Electoral Commission to ensure that it was doing everything possible to make sure that such corruption was not allowed into the conduct of the Common Roll update.

He said if nothing was done to clamp down on the corruption that was creeping into the update of the Common Roll, the 2012 national elections will be declared a failed elections.

“Electoral officials in the district are working either under duress or taking bribes and inflating the number of eligible voters. There is going to be total chaos in the coming elections,” Mr Mald said.

Mr Mald also said another way to check the number of eligible voters is to bring the local government elections forward. He said polling in the LLG elections are based on wards and there will not be any foal play because everyone will be watching each other.

“The total number of elegible voters will be known from the council elections. No one can cheat there,” Mr Mald said.

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