Transcript
GARY BAKI: These two policemen that have been killed, they're not from Southern highlands, they're from Hela (neighbouring province), and they were travelling back from Mt Hagen through Mendi to go back to Hela when they found their fate on Saturday afternoon.
JOHNNY BLADES: So there's likely to be ramnifications for this from the Hela people, aren't there? They will want...
GB: Obviously you're aware of the mentality of our people particularly up in that part of the country. It will call for other unruly behaviours that might likely come on later on. I know there's been reports of some damages beng done in Mendi following the killing of my two police officers by supporters of those losing candidates. You know, people are just getting out of their mind in resorting to destroying government properties and what's been put in place for them. It will be a long while - if these things are destroyed - for any of these to be restored back in a province like Southern Highlands. Southern Highlands has been a target of a state of emergency being declared in 2005, 2006 over there, and [now] it's the same issue. Are we going to go back again into Southern Highlands and continue to be deployed over there to ensure that things don't go out of hand.
JB: Do we assume that this cycle of violence is going to continue for a while up in these parts?
GB: It will.. now that we're going into some [cases of petitions in] court of disputed returns being filed, we will just have to monitor the outcome of those. If candidates lose there is a strong possibility of... if they win in that, in the sense of if they go back to a by-election, it could erupt during a by-election. The situation has not really stabilised at this point in time, so we're monitoring that very, very closely.
JB: You've seen a few elections up there, and I know there was a couple of bad ones ten or fifteen years ago. has this one been worse? I mean, not just these two policemen, but there were some mobile squad officers killed in Wabag. It's been pretty violent in parts, hasn't it?
GB: It has been pretty violent, I agree. Election-related killings have never had this (level of) four policemen being killed unnecessarily as a result of that. We had planned to deal with extreme situations but there has been a lot of inconsistency in the way some decisions have been made in terms of the electoral process. That then tends to become law and order issues that we have to contain and deal with. As a result of that, we're stretching our resources to the limit, and at the same time allowing more unnecessary security situations to resurrect or to reoccur. And a couple of those have resulted in the shootings of the police officers. In terms of planning for elections, we planned really well for it. But in terms of having to cater for the incidents that have come out, if we would have stuck to the electoral officials being consistent in some of the decisions they make, I don't think they would have gone through this. So as far as I'm concerned, a lot of the issues that have come up are electoral-related. And as a result of that we have to deal with it because it tends to become a law and order situation. It's not a very good situation. It's probably one of the worst elections we've gone through in terms of losing policemen's lives.
