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.