Speaker 1:

1700! 1700.

Speaker 2:

Kundiawa Police Station was the main coordination centre for the Electoral Commission in Simbu province.

Speaker 1:

1861! 1861.

Speaker 2:

It looks like an impressive operation, ballot boxes numbered and checked, locked and tagged. Scrutineers outside the compound, eagle-eyed for any deceit.

Speaker 1:

1771!

Speaker 2:

Yet the elections in the highlands turned out to be an elaborate and expensive sham.

Speaker 1:

1848!

Speaker 3:

Leaders give. If you want to be a leader you have to raise a lot of money, and then you give. In return, you get your votes. And then when you get your votes, you get into Parliament, and then you make a lot of money out of it.

Speaker 4:

They say like Papua New Guinea is, we are going down and we are going down fast. I think they're going down fast, and I think what really kills us is corruption.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Money, clan rivalry, violence, just some of the factors which encourage these voters to turn out to fulfil their democratic duty, to be given their ballot papers, conveniently already marked.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

The Australian government spent heavily before the election attempting to improve the electoral process, and it is intending to spend a lot more.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Yet, elections in the southern highlands were so corrupted they'll have to be rerun. And in Simbu Province, despite vote-rigging on a huge scale, the elections were, amazingly enough, declared valid.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

The local media provided dramatic coverage of the elections. We sought visas to PNG to report on them, but permission was denied. International witnesses weren't wanted.

Robin Slark:

I mean, over thirty people have been killed in the highlands in election-related violence. Women have been raped. One of the first killed was actually a young girl. A very young girl was shot by one candidate aiming at another.

So, this is very distressing and we have to talk, quite frankly, about the situation and try and address it.

Speaker 2:

That we're now able to provide some insight into how the election was conducted in the highlands is due to Robin Slark, an Australian human-rights advocate with a dozen years' experience in PNG. She spent six weeks in Simbu videotaping the electoral process. The corruption of the election started with the Common Rolls, which were wildly inflated.

Robin Slark:

There are at least one million extra names somehow on that Common Roll. People will say, Nambelo, Stone, or Pisin. Or the names of stones, pigeons, mountains, trees are also on there. And Australia contributed money, millions and millions of dollars to fixing up this Common Roll.

Speaker 2:

AusAID, the development arm of the Australian government's foreign affairs department, certainly, to some degree, monitored its investment in the poll.

In Simbu, Nick Warner, the Australian High Commissioner to PNG, along with other Australian aid officials, photographed the burning of excess ballot papers. AusAID insists, though, that it was not responsible for running the election. That was under the authority of the PNG Electoral Commission.

Ross Mackay of the Australian Electoral Office was among the officials sent to PNG to improve the computer systems and managing the Common Rolls, a project costing millions.

Ross Mackay:

Well, certainly, we've spent, I think it's about 7.3 up until June this year. I believe that money has been well spent. The PNG Electoral Commission did have plans, well-developed plans, to cleanse the Roll, so to speak, but those plans weren't able to be put into place because of the lack of funds.

Speaker 2:

Even so, it's clear that elections were much more difficult in the warrior culture in the highlands than in other parts of the country.

The capital, Port Moresby, is far away. Basic government services like health and education are erratic, and roads are often impassable.

Elections aren't so much about democratic free expression, as an opportunity for local Big Men to garner power and influence.

Charting the conduct of elections in the highlands for 25 years has been Australian Academic, Bill Standish.

Bill Standish:

The use of intimidation, violence, and firearms in elections is something that has grown and escalated ever since 1987, that I'm aware of. And people are using whatever resources that are around, and guns are a part of it.

Speaker 2:

Guns were certainly used to intimidate many of the candidates who stood for election in Simbu. One of them was Maria Callay, who was nominated as a Home Affairs Minister in the provincial government.

Maria Callay:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Maria's spent about $20000 and offered up 12 pigs in the hope of winning a national seat. At the last minute she gave into threats.

Maria Callay:

[foreign language]

Robin Slark:

One of the competing candidates had been firing guns at night, throwing tomahawks into the ground to intimidate her people.

Maria Callay:

[foreign language]

Robin Slark:

Maria Callay was forced to step down to save the lives of people in her village. She was afraid that her young men would fight, or that they would be blamed if the candidate in the area near the polling station did not win.

Speaker 2:

In the village of Gue, Robin Slark filmed the clearest example of the corruption of the poll, with a seat in Sinasina-Yonggomugl.

Supporters of a candidate, Peter Iggy Calalay, had taken control of thousands of ballot papers. It should be stressed, there's no evidence that Mr Calalay directed this to happen.

Robin Slark:

In some areas there was open mass marking of ballot papers. Presumably the people in that village had been forced to go along with this, or just accepted the situation.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Into this confusion ventured another woman candidate, Sarah Mainer Garrap. She was refused permission to vote.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Realising that her supporters couldn't safely vote for her in the open, she asked for ballot papers to take away. She was given a small number, but then members of her clan were also refused permission to vote.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

By now with the weather turning, the supporters of Peter Iggy Calalay saw their chance for removing the voting slips and ballot boxes to a nearby house.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Robin Slark:

I have no idea how I was able to sneak in once the door was opened and some other people entered. I thought, "I've got to get in and film this because this is the evidence of the problem with this election."

Whilst I was in there, I was quite concerned that I may not be able to get out. It felt very much like a cloak and dagger sort of operation. The room was dark and people were very hurriedly marking thousands and thousands and thousands of papers. The presiding officer from that electoral team was there marking the back to say that they were authentic, wonderful papers.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Robin Slark:

Then another five or so people were folding those papers and throwing them into the ballot box.

Speaker 5:

You guys relax and do your work. We are trying to send somebody to [crosstalk].  However, you do it does not matter, just do it. [inaudible]

Speaker 11:

[inaudible]

Speaker 2:

As it turned out, Peter Iggy Calalay, despite the energetic efforts of his supporters, was not elected as the member for Sinasina-Yonggomugl.

Crowd:

[foreign langauge]

Robin Slark:

Well, he was literally outgunned. He was outgunned. People with more guns beat him.

Speaker 2:

Tensions between clans and tribes spilled over at election time. Villages were attacked. There was significant destruction of property and thousands were left homeless.

Sampson Mapay:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Extra police were drafted into the highlands, but frequently found themselves outnumbered and out-manoeuvred as the local police commander, Sampson Mapay conceded.

Sampson Mapay:

The people really need a lot of police to a polling booth. Maybe ten, six, to look after polling booth so that the officers or the voters are voting freely without threat or intimidations or whatever it is.

Speaker 13:

[foreign language inaudible]

Speaker 2:

Police were supposed to be paid special allowances for election duty. They weren't paid on time, nor were moneys forthcoming for people hired to act as electoral officials, another example of the mismanagement of the elections.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Complaints of incompetence were frequently expressed by polling officials who had experienced previous elections.

The leader electoral team 58 in Simbu found himself short of 900 ballot paper, and accordingly he dared not go to the nominated voting station.

Speaker 14:

I'll be thinking about the safety of my polling officers. Their life is much more important than having to go there and the risk of a life.

Speaker 2:

Yet some, like Sarah Mainer Garrap, literally put their lives on the line to stand as candidates.

Robin Slark:

She's a single mother, she's got five children, she walked to 23 rest houses up and down mountains, she didn't have a vehicle, she didn't have an funding.

Sarah Garrap:

When I was on my campaign trail, I walked up that mountain twice.

Speaker 2:

Sarah was leading her family and supporters down from Gue, where she'd been stopped from voting.

Robin Slark:

About thirty men with bush knives rushed at family and her family group. The women fled to the side of the road, and the men ran back down the road toward me. I expected people to be hacked in the shoulder, arm, chest, back with bush knives.

Most of our people successfully fled.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Robin Slark:

Sarah had the courage to just stand up and say, "I'm a candidate, however I wasn't able to vote, so I am not your enemy. Let us pass." And after about a half hour negotiation, we were able to pass.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Sarah Garrap:

[foreign language] So, in a way, [foreign language]

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Votes were sold in Simbu for as little as 2 kina, less than fifty US cents.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Robin Slark:

I have absolutely no doubt that most, if not all, the presiding officers who have had to put in a report saying this election was valid knew full well that it was not. Indeed, I know one the presiding officers had a gun put to his head and ballot boxes were taken away from him.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Yet in Simbu, all six winning candidates were endorsed by the Electoral Commission as having been properly elected.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Bill Standish:

How can we have a parliament that's run by criminals who've been operating in this way, using guns. These are criminal offences, they're not just electoral offences, and they're also wondering what will happen in subsequent elections. People are starting to talk about warlord politics, which is the way they're describing politics in some parts of Africa these days.

Ross Mackay:

The election that we saw is really a reflection of society in PNG. So, fixing an election to make it incorruptible and safe for voters and for polling officials is more than simply looking at an Electoral Commission.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

The PNG Electoral Commission declined to speak to us. The Commission and the Australian Electoral Office have began a formal assessment of the poll. The Commonwealth Secretariat says it, too, intends to investigate.

Crowd:

[foreign language]

Speaker 2:

Ultimately, though, they're recommendations have to address the key issue: How to establish an electoral system in Papua New Guinea which is transparent and open and worthy of people's trust.

Crowd:

[foreign language]