Relentless
Soldier without a weapon

Nicholas’s solution to election violence

BETTY GABRIEL WAKIA

PORT MORESBY - The Highlands region of Papua New Guinea is known for the election-related violence that has clans fighting amongst themselves and prosecuting bloody wars that have no end.

Provinces like Enga, Southern Highlands, Simbu, Western Highlands and Hela are particularly known for this.

The 2002 general elections were considered chaotic and violent, and led to many deaths. The 2007 elections were characterised by widespread election fraud and malpractice.

Neither were the 2012 elections generally free nor fair, and the 2017 national elections were hijacked in many places by fraud, unprecedented violence and insecurity.

Due to the lack of understanding of how government works, as well as illiteracy and poverty, for many people elections are seen as times of opportunity to receive benefits rather than a time to make important choices.

PNG democracy is money democracy. Those who have more buying power at election time are more likely to win.

The PNG democratic system has barely survived through successive elections that have been conducted amongst serious doubts about their credibility.

The greatest challenge is how to overcome electoral fraud and misconduct that leads to election-related violence.

Electoral fraud exists at all political levels and ranges from the manipulation of results by corrupt electoral officials to outright intimidation of voters.

Papua New Guinean voters do not trust the PNG Electoral Commission and its officials and are suspicious of how the ballot papers are treated.

Enter Australian-based Papua New Guinean aerospace engineer Nicholas Wabiria.

Nicholas, originally from Koroba in Hela Province has proposed a solution to overcome election-related violence.

He grew up with his late father Sir Andrew Wabiria OBE who was elected as the member for Koroba-Lake Kopiago in the House of Assembly in 1972.

Nicholas has designed and developed what he calls the Wabiria electoral solution system  to help the PNG Electoral Commission conduct cheap, simple and successful elections without fraud and manipulation.

WES is a block-chain powered technology built to run high-security online elections for governments and other organisations.

The system claims to bring transparency to the electoral process and build trust and confidence amongst political parties and voters.

It removes the need to use ballot papers which also reduces the cost of election administration and eliminates human error and fraud.

WES is a two ends system. The election administrator’s end is internet base application and the voters’ end is a mobile-phone texting base. Votes can be cast using mobile phones from anywhere within the established election start and finish times.

As soon as the votes are received, the scores are automatically updated without human inference or influence.

The blockchain technology is tamper- proof and can’t be hacked. Nor can there be any interference by a third party.

Every vote is treated as a transaction that takes place in the system. It is encrypted and gets entered into a ledger anonymously so the voter’s identity remains hidden.

Election violence in PNG flows from the lack of transparency in the conduct of elections and voters’ subsequent lack of trust in the process.

Nicholas Wabiria says WES system can accommodate the current voting system in PNG and can also be adapted for other purposes such as opinion polling and community surveys.

Growing up with a father who was a prominent politician has familiarised Nicholas with PNG’s election practices and challenges.

He believes his WES system will fight electoral corruption and thus put a stop to election-related violence.

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Peter Tupio

This guy is an a fraud. His qualifications are fraudulent. He’s a very uninspiring and not very intelligent individual so the whole process seems suspicious.

Peter Sandery

As I have mentioned on this site sometime ago there is a less technical and just as effective method that was once used assiduously in all PNG elections, namely a public reconciliation of ballots issued, ballots cast and ballots spoilt at each counting centre simultaneously to the count.

It was discontinued in the 1980's for a reason that has never been satisfactorily explained, although I can hazard a couple of guesses.

Philip Kai Morre

I have doubt whether Nicholas's proposed WES technology will work in a society where structural and underlying issues are complicated and corruption and violence is real in every election.

While I don't question the intellectual and technological ability of Nicholas, the process will be complicated where information technology is new to this country.

We are yet to fully comprehend information technology in using appliances that are workable like mobile phones, laptops etc.

During the last election someone was trying to introduce biometrics, which started off in Lae but never eventuated nationally because those involved were corrupt and didn't have the technological ability.

Let's wait for another 10 to 20 years before new technology is introduced to new people who will be much better educated.

Lindsay F Bond

They, standing in a thought waterfall, as if "outa-fall", think splash of cash.

Then inducements and interfering at points of practicality, so by what trial?

Test is not only an outcome but acceptance of outcome. Will winners be of legal employ?

This reporting by Betty is, as folk say, "on the money".

Michael Dom

Fascinating.

I look forward to hearing about the trouble shooting and practicalities, eg, accessible phone units, valid phone numbers, voter ID, entry format, and how to avoid 'point of a gun voting'.

Great story capture,Betty, and love the fluent English.

"PNG democracy is money democracy. Those who have more buying power at election time are more likely to win".

Well phrased.

Well done.

Another for inflight magazines?

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)