Patrick Nomos | 12/07/2026
Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister, Hon. James Marape’s announcement of the appointment of Professor Nicole Haley as PNG’s Electoral Commissioner has been generally welcomed in PNG, including by opposition politicians. The confirmation of Dr Haley’s appointment followed a meeting of PNG’s Electoral Commission Appointments Committee held at Melanesian Haus, Port Moresby, PNG on 30/6/2026.
Dr Haley is a professor of anthropology and Pacific politics at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia and was the inaugural head of the ANU’s Department of Pacific Affairs. She has spent more than thirty years researching PNG’s political landscape and governance systems, with a particular focus on women’s representation. She is co-editor of a book entitled “Conflict and Resource Development in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea”.
In 2007, Dr Haley coordinated the first ever domestic observation of the PNG General Elections and is co-author of “The 2007 Papua New Guinea National General Elections Domestic Observation Report”. She is currently writing about electoral politics and local political cultures in PNG.
Veteran PNG politician and Opposition Leader in the PNG Parliament, Hon. Don Pomb Polye, Member for Kandep Open, was one of the first public figures to welcome the news of Dr Haley’s appointment. Another opposition politician, Hon. Kerenga Kua, Member for Sinasina-Yonggamugl Open, speaking on the 3/7/2026 ABC Pacific podcast, welcomed Dr Haley’s appointment but cautioned that she would “need to be made of steel” to cope with the political pressures associated with her new role. During the same podcast, Dr Haley said that she’s observed several PNG polls first-hand and knows the problems that have plagued them, such as inaccurate voter rolls, electoral fraud and election-related violence. To this daunting list could be added coercion of voters and vote-buying.
Despite these thorny issues, at least one observer views PNG as “… a robust, if somewhat disorderly, democracy….in which all elections have been held on schedule, and apart from localised incidents, voters generally have accepted the outcomes of the elections”1. A less generous assessment of PNG’s quality of democracy is provided by the Democracy Index, published by the British media company, the Economist Group. The 2025 edition of the Democracy Index categorises PNG as a “Hybrid Regime” with a democracy quality ranking of 75 out of 167 countries and territories across the world. By way of comparison, Norway is ranked first and Afghanistan is ranked 167th.
The Democracy Index is based on sixty indicators grouped into five categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. This quantitative and comparative assessment is centrally concerned with democratic rights and democratic institutions.
Dr Haley’s appointment comes almost exactly a year before PNG’s next general election. Given the technical, logistical and political difficulties encountered by her predecessors in the role of Electoral Commissioner, this seems to be woefully insufficient time for her to orchestrate a nationally acceptable election outcome. Unfortunately, it’s likely that PNG will be stuck with the “Hybrid Regime” tag for the foreseeable future.
1May, R. (2025). Political and Social Development in Papua New Guinea. The Round Table, 114(4), 481-484.