PNG’s Failing Election – The Devil Is In The Hidden Detail
by PAUL FLANAGAN The resignation of PNG’s Election Advisory Committee is a devastating blow to the credibility of PNG’s 2017 election. The failure to provide this high level constitutional Committee with factual electoral information suggests deliberate acts to hide the truth (the EAC is a constitutional committee with the Chief Ombudsman, representative of Transparency International, and a law lecturer from the University of PNG). In its resignation letter, the committee indicates it was “prevented from performing its constitutional duties and roles” because it has not been provided with “baseline data and information nor have we been party to regular reporting”. Detailed information is required to unpack possible deliberate ‘cooking the books’ from the general chaos and mismanagement of PNG’s 2017 election. At an aggregate level, initial statistical analysis indicates that no clear pattern of bias can be determined at an electorate by electorate level (see b