Prime Minister James Marape strongly stated in his inaugural speech the need to reform Papua New Guinea’s electoral process.
PM Marape said, “We must reform our electoral processes. It is evident that maintaining a status quo on this is no longer an option. We must perform an audit of the National General Elections 2022. Granted that this government actually for the first-time front-loaded funds to the Electoral Commission, Police and Defense, we need to ask what happened?
“The review will be the basis for us to reform the electoral processes to make sure that one citizen gets one vote. We must aspire to give an improved electoral system as a gift to the country on the 50th Anniversary of the Independence of Papua New Guinea.”
PM Marape says building a strong governance oversight arrangement for the Electoral Commission is a must.
“We must adopt a systemized way of updating our common roll and deploy every means necessary to have reliable identification systems. We must seriously discuss biometric identification system and electronic voting and counting system,” said PM Marape.
He further added that the National Population Census associated with the electoral reform will be conducted as early as 2023.