PNG Parliament Speakers Suggestion to Defer 2022 Elections Dangerous and wrong : Namah

The Papua New Guinea Parliament Speaker Jacob Pomat’s suggestion that the 2022 National General Elections be deferred by a full year is both dangerous and wrong.  Further, Speaker Job Pomat’s suggestion to defer the National General Election for one full year is a direct threat to our Democracy and the Constitution.

It is dangerous because given the normal 70% (per cent) attrition rate of Members of Parliament losing their seats at every elections, many sitting MPs will be tempted to support a deferment of the elections in order to enjoy the perks and privileges of office one year longer. This will be in total breach of the Constitution on the term of Member of Parliament and on the calling of Parliament.

An amendment to the National Constitution requires three separate sittings of Parliament of two months apart and therefore cannot be safely done in the time we have.

Even if an amendment were done somehow, the precedence set for repeated such acts in future will make reduce the Parliament to a rubber stamp, render the Constitution ineffective and circumvent the rule of Law so completely so as to make it useless and laughable.

Rt. Hon. Sir Julius Chan, one of our Founding Fathers and former two time Prime Minister has said: ‘No excuse can be a good excuse for the deferment of elections when the people must elect their leaders and choose their government’.

I agree totally with Rt. Hon. Sir Julius. Nothing else is more important or fundamental to this country than the conduct of the National General Elections in accordance with our National Constitution.

As this charade goes on I sense that that the entire drama is being orchestrated by Government and it has been going on for a long time.

First we have a Member in Government introduce a Private Member’s Bill to reintroduce the First Past the Post system of elections. The PM immediately speaks against it, but the law is on Notice Paper and gaining traction.

This is against the Constitution and the recommendations of the Constitutional Law Reform Commission (CLRC) to keep the Limited Preferential Voting (LPV) system.

Then we have the Speaker call for a deferment of Elections by one year. This ought to have been raised on the floor of Parliament which is the right and proper forum but it is broached immediately after the Parliament rises, as if to test the waters.

The PM quickly (perhaps too quickly) says there is no such law.

A National Census has been deferred, against the law. The Common Roll update is not yet done just seven months before the National General Elections.

Under the law a completed Common Roll will need to be publicised and the public given three months for public scrutiny, be checked and verified before finalization.

Money has not been released yet for all these important activities so that, despite the Prime Minister’s public reassurances about legal niceties and funding being made available, his actions give the opposite view, that of an executive government which seems to have been working deliberately for a long time towards an inevitable deferment of the elections and illegally gaining extra time in office.

We must remember that this is the same Speaker who last November created controversy by making a ruling outside of Parliament by overturning a legitimate ruling by his Deputy Speaker in Parliament.

And again he conspired with the Prime Minister to avoid a Motion of Vote of No Confidence by adjourning Parliament for a extra long time between April and August 2021.

This is cunning, dangerous and illegal manipulation of our Parliamentary and Electoral systems and is Unconstitutional. Such farces cannot and must not be allowed or tolerated under any circumstance.

In case anybody thinks he has this one in the clincher, I refer us back 19 years ago to an attempt by the then government to defer elections, a principle ground being the lack of an updated Common Roll.

The National Court ruled that the Constitution rules and ordered National General Elections to be conducted forthwith using whatever Common Role that was available.

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