Amidst the election days, Deputy Prime Minister Belden Namah said that PM Peter O'Neill should be "ashamed" for allowing the election to take place as scheduled because of the problems with the voter rolls in urban areas and blaming Australia for contributing to the claimed pandemonium in saying: "Cries have been received from all parts of PNG echoing and demonstrating that our country was and is not ready to proceed with elections this last week. What a disaster. Peter O'Neill should be ashamed for listening to the PNG Electoral Commissioner and its Australian advisers." Though he said there were over 200 Australian advisers working for the election commission,
The Australian claimed there were "just 22 Australian logistical advisers". On 28 June, O'Neill appealed to the Electoral Commissioner Andrew Trawen to release supplementary common rolls after many people had reported not being on the electoral rolls at voting centres. He also said of Namah that "I'm fed up with this political opportunism. It is not the job of politicians to run elections. That is the job of the election commissioner." Paul Barker, the executive director of the
Institute of National Affairs, said that it was common to see errors in the electoral rolls and that "it was wide scale in the 2007 poll, but it seems worse now. The current roll hasn't been updated. The roll has names where people lived 20 years ago." He also said that Trawen was not entirely to blame as "the electoral commission only gets a trickle of money in the early years, then big cash just before the election. In that time, they cannot be doing what they're supposed to be doing." There were reports of underage, illegal voting, as well as the poor quality of the indelible ink used to mark voters, which facilitated double voting. On 4 July 2012,
The National reported that four people, including an election official had been charged with tampering with ballot boxes and papers in the
Dei electorate of the Western Highlands. It was alleged that the four individuals stole six ballot boxes and filled them with doctored ballot papers before returning them to the CEG officials. In Hela province, two empty boxes were also stolen and returned with doctored ballots, while three other ballot boxes were destroyed by angry voters. Additionally, in
Kandep,
Enga province, on 7 July a GEC officer was stabbed to death, while a colleague was injured in a
bush-knife at a vote counting centre in Wabag allegedly as revenge for another murder. Following this voting was suspended for two days. Vote counting in
Port Moresby also resumed the next day after resolution to a dispute over payments with GEC officials. Trawen also did not comment on the burning of ballots over the dispute. Though he said vote counting was ongoing in eight of 22 provinces, there was concern that monitors—some of whom were employed by candidates—had interfered in what was supposed to be independent vote counting. "We will not hesitate to remove any scrutineer from counting venues that continuously cross the line during counting sessions. The elections are not over. We still appeal to every citizen to ensure it is free, fair and safe elections right through to the end, regardless of the hiccups and security situations we have had so far." The voting timeframe was also speculated to being increased as the highlands provinces would not finish in time. The
Bougainville area was also inaccessible as the GEC did not have the ships to transport its team to the said outlying atolls until the following week. However, vote counting had already started in the other provinces where voting had finished, despite protests against the process. Electoral observers said the election was not a failure, even though they were not in full praise. ==Results==