Transcript
MAURICIO CLAUDIO: We believe we can make significant improvements to the roll with the additional six weeks’ time. Ideally, we could have had more time but these six weeks we believe will give us the ability to do a couple of things. One, is to continue enrolling Bougainvilleans in hard to reach locations, the other is to triple the time for the phase three period of public display for the preliminary roll. In addition, those six weeks will give us the opportunity to enrol those people who just became eligible to enrol due to the extension of the dates. Now the people who will be eligible to enrol will be those who are 18 years of age or older by the new start of polling date which is November 23rd.
DON WISEMAN: When the preliminary rolls go on public displays how many of these displays are there going to be around? How does that work, for instance, for these people in hard to reach areas?
MC: Well, the roll will be displayed in each of the 442 wards throughout Bougainville, at the PNGEC [Electoral Commission] offices where enrolments took place and we are in discussion with DFAT [Australian Government] about making them available in the four locations at which there was enrolment overseas - two locations in both Australia and in Solomon Islands.
DW: The foreign enrolment process - that is also going to continue for some time?
MC: That has finished. We managed to enrol about 250 people in four locations in Australia and Solomon Islands. Enrolling persons in the geographical boundaries of PNG is now concluded.
DW: If by the end of this process, which is I guess, effectively by about the end of August - is that right?
MC: Enrolment continues until the issue of writs, which is the 27th September. There will be a period for resolution and challenges, starting from August 31st, going on until the issue of writs, and then there will be final adjustment to the roll, and the final referendum rolls will be completed a couple of weeks after the issue of writs.
DW: All of the dates have been released now and I see the counting of the referendum votes is not going to begin until sometime in December. Why is there a delay?
MC: Well we have to have polling. You can't have counting until you have polling and polling will take place over a period of two weeks. This is routine and standard practice in Bougainville. This is what happened in the ABG general elections. Conditions, when it comes to communications and infrastructure and weather
and geography haven't changed in Bougainville, so the BRC will be requesting, in the writs, the full two-week period allowed under the law. This means that polling starts on 23rd November, it will conclude at the end of the first week of December. That is when we will be getting the count underway. The reason for this we can't start the count until we finish the poll. We cannot literally open any ballot box until all voting has been concluded.
DW: And that process, do you have any idea how long that might take, the counting?
MC: We would like to finish everything by the middle of December - so roughly a week.
DW: Once you get to that and we know what the result of the referendum is, the leaders are going to have to sit down and mull it over. Do we have any time line for when they might get together and do that?
MC: OK let me explain what's going to happen. At the conclusion of the count the BRC will return the writs with the raw vote totals for each one of the options on the referendum ballot. We will get those to the governor general and then the work of the BRC is largely concluded. The BRC will wait for a period of 40 days for appeals to the referendum result and after that period of appeals has concluded the BRC will go to its transitional committee modality and the next act will be to decommission itself. When it comes to the political negotiations after the return of the writs that is for the two governments, and the BRC has no comment or timelines for those.
DW: Will the result be made public?
MC: of course. These are public events. The results will be made public and the writs will be sent to the governor general.
