Papua New Guinea’s ballot papers will be protected at all costs.
Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato made this comment after PNGEC would not disclose the location of the 11 containers of ballot papers.
“They will be under tight guard by Police and Army in a secured place,” Gamato told Loop PNG last week.
The Electoral Commissioner said in the next one-and-a-half months, the ballot papers will be unpacked from the containers, repacked according to enrolment numbers for each provinces, and dispatched two weeks prior to the commencement of polling on June 24.
Gamato said the 2017 ballot papers are more secure than the 2007 and 2012 generic ballot papers because it had 15 security features – eight security features hidden inside a hologram at the top of each ballot paper and seven security features hidden on the face of each ballot paper.
He said ballot papers for the provincial seat will be blue in colour, and yellow for the open seats.
The papers arrived in Port Moresby, from Indonesia, two weeks ago.