200 women candidates to contest PNG election
10th April, 2017
Library picture of PNG voting booth. (PC: Pacific Islands Report)
4068 candidates to contest PNG election
More than 4000 candidates, 200 of them women, have registered their intention to contest the 2017 National Election in Papua New Guinea, which is 10 days away.
The Highlands region has registered the highest number of 1719 intending candidates.
It is followed by Momase with 1017, Southern with 998 and New Guinea Islands with only 334. More women, 71, are vying for seats in the Southern region. They are followed by 59 in the Highlands, 45 in Momase and 18 in the New Guinea Islands.
Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato announced the progressive number of intending candidates last Friday. Gamato said the total number of candidates contesting the 2017 National Election is 4068. These candidates have filled and submitted the candidate bio-data form (Form 29), he added.
West New Britain Province is the only province that did not record any women candidates to contest the 2017 election, while Morobe and Gulf provinces recorded the highest number of women intending candidates so far, with 18 each.
Gamato said that the nomination fee for the 2017 National Election would remain at K1000; that was after Parliamentallowed the second and third readings of amendments to the Organic Law on National and LLG Elections to lapse last week.
“The proposed amendments are still the property of Parliament and will await the new Parliament to deliberate on the proposed amendments to pass or not,” he said.
(Source: PACNEWS)