Wenge: Defer LLG elections

By GLORIA BAUAI
MOROBE Governor Luther Wenge says local level government elections for ward councillors and council presidents should be deferred to next year.
Wenge, commenting as chairman of the Parliamentary Bipartisan Committee for decentralisation in PNG, said deferring this would allow the country to focus on the census currently underway.
He noted that census will continue through July as LLG election writs open on July 29, giving way to elections.
He said given issues of manpower and funding, it was not wise allowing two important national events to be conducted back to back.
Wenge called on provincial and Local Level Government Affairs Minister Soroi Eoe to consult Prime Minister James Marape and the National Executive Council to defer the LLG elections to mid-2025.
“The wise, respectable and fair thing to do is to defer the elections and allow census to be concluded properly,” he said.
“This is to give enough time and also muscle the resources as there seems to be not enough money to conduct both census and LLG elections.
“Another thing is, the same people conducting census have been listed to conduct the LLG elections so there will be insufficient number of people to make sure both events take place successfully.”
Wenge also said there was no uniformity in the manner in which council presidents would be elected so it had to be addressed before the event.
“In some places, NEC decided that council presidents will be elected by the people while others like Morobe, the newly-elected ward councillors will elect their council president,” he said. Wenge said this NEC decision was met by strong opposition by the majority of the people in Morobe.
Wenge believes that the proposed amendment for Section 34 of the Organic Law on Provincial and LLG, to rectify existing election arrangements, should be able to address those issues.
He said when parliament convenes in September, they will vote whether to give a two-year gap between the LLG elections and the national members’ election, or be conducted concurrently.
“The Government has sufficient required constitutional numbers (79) to pass this Organic Law proposed amendment so I suggest deferring these elections and hopefully the proposed Bill will sort out the issues,” he said.
“We can establish uniformity of the manner in which the council president will be elected and by then, hopefully, be able to have accumulated through the budget to be handed down in November, to put sufficient money to allow the election to take place.
“I’m calling on the Government to use their intelligence to make sure they have the facts and figures on the ground to conduct both national programmes and make a speedy decision and inform the nation.
“From my view, we are not capable at this time and may have failed events.”