And, of the Highlands candidates, a meagre 1% are women.

Voters say female candidates should have good leadership qualities good policies and should be elected on merit.

These are all good expectations. But here’s the problem.

Using these criteria for 47 years, we’ve elected 976 male candidates. And where did that leave us?

What is there to show for our insistence on merit, quality, and policies?

Can you confidently point to a political party and state its policies?

I’m not talking about useless mantras like ‘Pangu Save Lo Rot’ or ‘PNC4PNG’.

Can you name a politician who has not switched sides at least once in his lifetime?

Why does policy matter if there are no commitments to policy?

How on earth can you elect ‘leadership on merit’ for 47 years and still be consistently corrupt.

When rated by Transparency International’s corruption perception index in January, PNG was again well down the list - 124th of 180 countries?

How do you feel about a parliament full of ‘quality’ leaders who end up grossly misusing constituency development funds?

So there’s nothing much to show for politicians of merit, quality or policy strength, is there?

Given all of this, you won’t lose much by voting a female candidate.

The alternative is another male candidate with policies he doesn’t intend to keep, qualities he will ditch during the formation of a government and merit only useful in concealing corruption.

Aren’t you tired of voting for male candidates after 47 years of terrible results?

What more excuse is there not to vote for female candidates?

You can definitely not hide behind ‘good policies, merit or quality’.

Maybe female MPs will be just as corrupt as male MPs, but what’s not new to us?

Or they will remarry and change their surname after being elected. But you might remember that lots of male MP re-marry after being elected.

Maybe female MPs will get into a screaming competition with airline cabin crew, but is that worse than millions of kina wasted on deals you are never told about that go nowhere?

Is there any good argument left for not voting for a female candidate?