Women candidates in Papua New Guinea's 2017 general elections

By Madeline Saga

The 2017 National Elections saw the largest number of women contesting in history of Papua New Guinea. A total of 167 women contested, the highest so far, an increase of 33 women from 134 from the 2012 Elections and 101 from 2007. This trend makes it obvious to note that we will see an ever increasing number of women contesting the next elections as more women become aware of political participation.

 

 Of the 167 women candidates, 106 of them contested as independents while 61 were party endorsed candidates. This clearly shows that over half of the total number of women candidates contested as independents. A number of reasons as to why this was the case would include, no form of resource support since first contact of a political party, parties did not seem to show an interest in the candidate, candidate just had no form of knowledge for what parties stood for and a candidate felt she did not need to be in association with a party as she had all her resources in place. However, the Registry of Political Parties and Candidates believe that any candidate whether male or female that contests under a political party has a greater chance of being placed in the top 5 final placing of the seat that he or she contests than an independent candidate. It is important to note that of the 110 declared seats 96 were won by candidates who contested under political parties while 14 candidates ran as independents. 

Despite there being a fair distribution of women candidates throughout the country as shown in the column graph above, not a single woman candidate was able to win a seat. However, the women who ran under parties fared much better by making it into the top 10. Those most notable include Dulciana Somare for East Sepik Regional, Rufina Peter for Central Regional, Delilah Gore for Sohe Open, Julie Soso for Eastern Highlands Regional and Iamo Launa for Rigo Open amongst a few of the 61 party endorsed female candidates.

The Registry has now begun to strengthen the role of women through political parties, a key area the Registry has always emphasised on and will continue to do so. The Registry will endeavour to work closely with political parties specifically their Constitutions to create a separate division that will promote women as members, as executives, conduct training tailored for women, identify potential women candidates and seek funds to support women in the political parties that they are members of.

If you would like to get more stories please visit this www.ippcc.gov.pg

COMMISSIONING OF THE NEW IPPCC SERVER

Since the inception of the Registry back in the early 2000s, the Registry didn’t have a server nor a Local Area Network (LAN). In 2009 the Registry purchased it first server and setup its LAN in the old office premises at Kumul Haus along Waigani. The Registry moved to its present location here at Varahe Street in 2014 and also moved its equipment. By than the server had being in operation for over 5 years and needed replacing. The office fitout and the initial setup cost was fairly high and left little funds for other works including the purchase of a new. The server finally crashed in early 2016 and the office was handicapped since. This was compounded by the Registry’s budget cut that same year.

The Registry through the Registrar sought various sponsors to assist in the registry’s plight until the Department of National Planning through the Secretary, Ms Hakaua Harry intervened and took up the cost of purchasing it for the office. The server was purchased at a cost of K120 803.75 through Datec. It functions as a data center to support the Registry’s computer applications such as email, file print, website, Alesco payroll system as well as the government accounting system called IFMS.

Features:

• ·     Staff can access emails via mobile devices anywhere 24/7
• ·     Share files without the need for flash drives
• ·     Files are backed up regularly via automated schedules
• ·     Control of files and usage of internet
• ·     Capacity to digitalising and archiving of hard copies
• ·    Updated antivirus and security system
• ·   Virtualisation technology to run more than one server
• ·    Increased storage capacity 
•   The server is backed up by a 2KVA UPS in case of delayed blackout.

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The Registrar, Dr Alphonse Gelu would like to thank Secretary Hakaua Harry from the Department of National Planning for this timely assistance and look forward to enhancing its work through this valuable asset.