Prime Minister James Marape says Papua New Guinea hopes to adopt India’s electronic voting system and biometric identification during General Election 2027.
“They (India) are one of the biggest democratic nations and they deliver voting results in one day,” he said.
“With a population of 1.4 billion people, and about 800 million eligible voters, they are able to vote and get the result out in a day.
He told a radio talkback show Tuesday that PNG had a lot of anomalies “in our voting system and the election processes carried out”.
“We need to make substantial improvement in our election processes,” he said.
“The common roll itself has a lot of issues.
“Logistics during the election period is an issue as well.
“The nightmare of counting is where a lot of discrepancies take place.”
He said apart from assisting PNG with the GE27, India would become a leading partner in obtaining pharmaceutical supplies and developing business opportunities.
“We have secured a deeper bond with India,” Marape said.
“He (Modi) has requested to import oil palm products from us.
“In the last elections (GE22), they did supply the indelible ink but we want to go beyond this in terms of business and satellite technology.”
Marape said the Government planned to do away with block and clan voting by introducing electronic voting for the GE27.
He hopes that by 2025, the country would have started implementing an electronic voting system as a 50th Independence anniversary gift to the people.
“We need to clean up the voting system and do away with clan and block voting that is practised especially in the Highlands, where 5,000 people vote in less than an hour.
“We want people to choose their leaders, so we need to tidy up the election system.
“There are questions on how we can get this done when we haven’t completed the National Identification programme.
“We can’t trust the electoral roll.
“Everyone has their own interests. I cannot pass on the same election voting issues to the next prime minister and so we are looking at electronic voting and electronic counting, using electronic IDs,” Marape said.
SOURCE: THE NATIONAL/PACNEWS
