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] |