Comments

Well articulated article.

Thanks Kingtau! Very useful information. Unfortunately, at the time of publication, we were unable to gather this information. We now acknowledge this unfortunate circumstance, and wish Ms Ganzik well and hope she gets help where necessary through proper means.

Thank you Kintau for this information about Gengewe Ganzik.

The real cause of climate change is human deviation from the natural ways of living and the land is groaning and it's waging war against humanity. Romans 8:19-22. The earth is defiled by its inhabitants therefore it's heading to it's desolation Isaiah 24:4-6. Globalist needs to tell humans to mend their ways of living.

We have forever blamed corruptions, stolen ballots, votes rigging and the list goes on. I personally think its not real cause of the problem why women are not elected into Parliament. The real issues at end is the voters people who turned up at the polling booth and cast their votes for male candidates. Raicoast District in Madang, is a classic example, people turn out to vote for female candidate who is now elected MP. We cannot continuous deny the fact that voters choices and reasons why they don't vote for female candidates. I have few female colleagues who went out to exercise their rights to vote. When they returned I asked them if they have voted for a female candidates whether in Regional or Open Districts. And their reply was astonishing . They said No, they didn't like the candidates and their policies.

In Markham District, a female candidate by the name of Gengewe Ganzik, a senior accountant of the Morobe Provincial Government was running strongly in second place when the ballot papers got burnt and counting ended prematurely. In one ballot box, she got near 76 per cent of the total votes, the incumbent got 15 per cent and 8 per cent was split between the other 31 male candidates. Of these 31 male candidates, nearly 90 per cent of them got nil votes from this box. This box is from where she did community services ("han-mak" in pidgin) and is strongly related to as "a family member" and seen as an esteemed elite professional. Not to generalise but an opinion from this observation is that women candidates stand a high chance of being elected to parliament if they (1) have a university qualification with good working experience under their belt, (2) they have done some communities services, meet some cultural obligations such as supporting haus cry, (3) and build an image that voters can easily relate to as family or someone close to them, and will be there for them during times of need.

Spot on, Paul.

To solve this problem, why not the government set a Law to assessed all intending candidates with a criteria...

Digicel has done a great job. Telecommunication Sector is one of the most important sectors today, as we are living in a Technological world. Digicel captures almost all parts of PNG geographical locations enabling everyone to be connected. PNG world have change in the last 15 years, everything seem to be more easier now. Access to information is one of the very key factor helping citizens to improve in advancing their knowledge. In the past it is harder to gain extra knowledge and most university students rely heavily on the library books. Compare it to today you can access information and send information any where you are. Digicel has bring a big change to the country.

Can we bring some more ideas into this and have propose it to our Government

What ever comparison you make is irrelevant. Fact is there were so many guns and people were killed. As you point out, no one should be killed for standing in line to vote. 2022 is the one size fits all for electoral corruption in PNG. The winners were corrupt power hungry politicians and their henchmen.

I meant to add a link to this post as well, which is illuminating on Tongan attitudes to migration: https://devpolicy.org/tongas-future-in-one-poll-20180904/