Manus and the Autonomous region of Bougainville are both experiencing a peaceful election period. However more awareness is being carried out on the limited preferential voting system amidst fears that some of the votes could be struck out.
With Bougainville, Mr Reitama Taravaru said the autonomous region is experiencing a good period, peaceful so far. But there are some problems being encountered with the Limited Preferential Voting system.
Mr Taravaru raised a concern of fears of some of the votes being cancelled. He says some people or whole constituencies have this mentality of only choosing one candidate whom they are so focused on winning. That they don’t even think about choosing their 2nd or third preference. In the end their candidate won’t have a chance at all because it’s counted as null and void. So right now a lot of awareness is being carried out on the LPV System.
In terms of campaigning the Bougainville Election Manager said there is a lot of respect being shown by candidates towards other candidates. No name calling or any of the offensive stuff that goes with dirty politics.
Out of the 69 candidates for both regional and open seats five are woman. Two contesting regional, two for North bougainville, and one for central bougainville. Heavy weight Francisca Semoso is contesting the North Bougainville seat, currently held by Lauta Atoi, she”ll also be up against Rachael Konak who finished second with 5000,00 votes during the recent election against Atoi.
Polling for Bougainville will start on the 25th of this month, and it’s also being confirmed the new Zealanders are helping in the transportation of polling materials to the outer islands. So far the Bougainvilleans are right on track.
Meanwhile the Manus Election Manager Parkop Pasangat also confirmed that Manus has not experienced any trouble.
There are 39 people contesting for both regional and open seats and of the total, only 3 females contesting. Mr Pasangat said there is only three woman candidate because woman might be disinterested in standing.
He also said the PNGDF patrol boats will be helping to transport electoral officers the outer islands with the first 2 teams going out on the 20th.
