2017 General Election

Undialu remains governor for now while the Electoral Commission will have 30 days to conduct the recount.

The election petition trial conducted were over allegations of errors and omission by Electoral officials and the manipulation of the final tally figures which led to the declaration of Undialu on 24 July 2017.

The court found that the conduct of Returning Officer John Tipa led to the inconsistent tally records, because he was absent from the counting room when he was duty bound to supervise the counting.

Sir Mekere will challenge sitting member of parliament Michael Malabag for the Moresby North-West electorate.

After his nomination, Sir Mekere announced that after retiring in 2012, he has decided to return to politics based on the widespread public support.

Sir Mekere has served as the 6th Prime Minister of PNG between 1999 and 2002, and later as Leader of the Opposition, among other positions.

Police will turn down requests for police escorts made by candidates.

NCD Metropolitan Superintendent, Ben Turi, said requests have been made by the NCD Governor for police escort during nominations earlier this week. However, he turned them down, adding that the same applies to other candidates.

He said police have their normal policing operations that have already started and will be carried out throughout the nomination, campaign and polling period.

Governor-General Bob Dadae pre-signed 89 open seats' instruments/writs and continued with the 22 provincial instruments.

Over 4000 intending candidates, who have shown interest to contest, will start their nomination today at 4pm with a K1000 fee.

The election returning officers and election managers will now start receiving nominations throughout the country, starting at 4pm today.

Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato said campaign will commence for a period of eight weeks.

The vocal Kandep MP has agreed to take the podium at the next Speaker Series on February 27 at the Lamana Hotel Ballroom in Port Moresby.

He is expected to cover a range of issues as the guest speaker including the vision that Opposition-aligned parties have for Papua New Guinea, the current state of play in PNG politics and the challenges that currently face the country as the countdown begins to the 2017 General Election.

University of PNG academics, Dr. Lawrence Sause and Dr. Leo Marai, have decided to address scarce and outdated knowledge on voter behaviour and preferences by conducting a nation-wide opinion poll survey using SMS technology.

“Our study is being done to contribute to the wider body of knowledge on electoral politics in PNG and in particular, on the utility of the survey opinion poll as a tool for predicting election outcomes,” said Dr. Sause.

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill told Parliament today that the election cost is increasing yearly and the PNG Electoral Commission must find a way to help subsidize the cost. Increasing the nomination fees for candidates is an area the government is looking into.   

“One way we can do that is increase the nomination fees, I think K1,000 for national elections is a bit too low. That money does not come to consolidated revenue, it goes straight into the EC account to meet some costs of running the elections in the country.