More deaths reported in violent PNG polls

More deaths reported in violent PNG polls

Agencies, Port Moresby

Two more people have been reported killed in election-related unrest in Papua New Guinea (PNG)'s Southern Highlands, where troop reinforcements were deployed early on Thursday to help stem the violence, local media said.

Armed tribesmen also overran two police stations and stole tens of thousands of marked ballots in the provincial capital Mendi and in Tari, a town to the west that is a key supply base for the region's oil and gas fields, the Post Courier newspaper reported.

The latest violence erupted on early Wednesday just hours before 120 soldiers began arriving in the province, where clans have been using military weapons to boost the chances of their candidates in the national elections.

Two men were shot and hacked to death near the Tari police station, where armed men stole 40 ballot boxes with an estimated 50,000 marked ballots, the newspaper reported.

In an earlier incident, two men were shot and killed in Mendi in another attack on a police station in which 30,000 ballots were stolen, it said.

Former Southern Highlands Governor Anderson Agiru told The Post-Courier newspaper he saw two men shot and then chopped to pieces just meters from a police station in Tari on Wednesday.

Nearly 20 people have been reported killed in violence since the national election began on June 15. Voting was to have finished last Saturday but has been extended two weeks until July 29.

In response to the violence, about 120 soldiers of the PNG Defense Forces were flown to the Southern Highlands Wednesday to help guard polling stations. Another planeload of troops was on the way Thursday.

The police spokesman said more troops were likely to be sent under operation Helpim NATEL 2002 -- pidgin English for Help the 20022 National Elections -- on Thursday.

Despite the mayhem, the Election Commission is pressing ahead with counting and has declared results in 45 of the 109 seats.

Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta's People's Democratic Movement trails the rival National Alliance by eight seats to seven, with the remaining 30 decided seats split between 14 other parties and six independents.

Speaking from Mendi yesterday, one prominent candidate joined calls for the elections to be canceled. "It is no longer free and secret voting, especially in the Southern Highlands," Pila Niningi said.

Meanwhile, the long-serving speaker of the 109-member parliament joined a number of other prominent politicians in losing their seats in the election.

The speaker, Bernard Narokobi, lost his seat in Wewak which he had held fifteen years.

Sir Pita Lus, the longest serving deputy first elected to the local legislature in 1964, was also defeated.