International Projects to provide public education programs for PNG 2007 Elections

Date:  13 June 2007

In the last issue, we reported on the mission to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to consult with party secretariats and candidates about the newly-adopted limited preferential voting (LPV) system. The LPV system is just one of a suite of reforms adopted in recent years to strengthen PNG’s democracy. The new system is designed to encourage more accommodative behaviour between political parties and candidates. Another major reform is the Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates, known as the OLIPPAC. This piece of legislation is designed to limit the ability of members of parliament to change parties during the parliamentary term. It also lays down minimum requirements for party status and rules to encourage more women to run for and win office.

In the lead-up to the June poll, International Projects offered a pilot education package for political parties and candidates to remedy some of the confusion surrounding the new system, especially for new candidates who may not have been exposed to the information about the new system. Simultaneously, the package was designed to allow party secretariats easy access to relevant information for these new candidates.

A Preferential system, the new LPV system requires voters to list in order their three preferred candidates. A formal vote must contain the names or numbers or both of the voters' candidate preferences on the ballot paper. Ballot papers marked with an "X" in any of the three choices would be considered informal. Through our consultations, PNG stakeholder highlighted concern that the new LPV system would create undue confusion and that supporters would have to be absolutely clear about the requirements of casting a formal ballot if they were to maximise the benefit to the stakeholder’s preferred candidate.

With this in mind, Australian Labor International Projects developed the pilot training tool for PNG stakeholders. The pack included generic how-to-vote templates and candidate posters, and other useful campaign information. Importantly, the emphasis was on providing simple, practical campaign information rather than providing overly technical documents including every detail of the new system.

Labor will send a senior team to observe the PNG elections beginning on 30 June 2007. Look out for a full report of the election observer team in our next edition.