PAPUA NEW GUINEA (Commonwealth Union)_Police in Papua New Guinea are looking into charges of corruption against key election officials in the wake of the violent election that took place there in July.
Alwynn Jimmy, the Southern Highlands Province’s elections manager, was detained last week on suspicion of stealing 5 million kina (about $1.5 million) from the election’s operating budget. On a bail of 1,000 kina, he was released.
Anti-graft police are unable to examine the Electoral Commission’s Port Moresby headquarters for the financial records they need as part of their investigation into Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai and his deputy, John Kalamorah, due to a court’s stay order.
Wilson Thompson, the head of Papua New Guinea’s National Research Institute, stated on Wednesday that “there needs to be an immediate independent assessment [of the Electoral Commission].”
In order to limit election fraud and restore the Electoral Commission’s accountability, he stated, a review of the claims against Sinai and Kalamorah is required.
According to Thompson, even when their handling of elections is successfully contested in court, election returning officials frequently maintain their employment.
Jimmy is accused of stealing election funds from an Election Commission account between May and August of this year and investing them in his car-hire business, according to National Crimes Directorate Chief Inspector Joel Simatab.
A business that received funding from Sinai to instal CCTV cameras in places where votes are counted is allegedly accused by detectives from the National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate of not completing the job.
After Sinai and Kalamorah claimed that a signature on the warrant was falsified and that the complainant in the case had political motivations, a district judge in Port Moresby last week suspended the directorate’s warrant authorising a search of the Electoral Office headquarters. Neither man has made an admission of guilt.
At the next court hearing in the case, scheduled for March 28, police aim to have the stay order reversed, allowing them to conduct their search.
According to a Transparency International survey of Pacific island nations conducted last year, 96% of Papuan New Guineans believe that corruption is a major issue in their nation, and more than half had paid bribes to use government services.
In July, Dirk Wagener, the resident coordinator for the UN in Papua New Guinea, denounced reports that scores of people had died during the tumultuous two-week national election voting process in the country’s highlands.
According to the U.N., claims of ballot manipulation and ballot box theft, ineffective planning and organisation, and underlying clan rivalries all contributed to the election’s unrest.
