P-NG’s Second Council

Elections, October 2

SATURDAY, October 2, 1954, will be election day in Papua-New Guinea. Residents of the Terri tory will go to the polls to choose the three elected mernb°rs of the total 29 members of the Papua and New Guinea Legislative Council.

Suggested modifications of the composition of the Council, which were tabled at the May meeting of the Legislative Council, came too late for consideration by Canberra before the Federal elections, and there will be no increase in the number of elected members in the Territory’s second Council. There will be one elected member for each of three electorates —Papua, New Guinea Mainland and New Guinea Islands. (The recommended modi fication provides for three elected members for each of these three electorates).

Voting is not compulsory in the Terri tory. Those eligible and desiring to vote must register. Those who did not register before the last election (in November, 1951) may now do so before August 2, when the rolls close. Application forms are obtainable at all District Offices and post offices.

Nominations for candidates close on August 9.

Electors who are more than 10 miles from polling places at Port Moresby, Lae and Rabaul may lodge postal votes, appli cations for which will be received up to September 24. Postal votes must reach Returning Officers by October 9, A 65-year-old Japanese-born French national, Zenjiro Uechi, was allowed to return to New Caledonia last month after four years’ in ternment in Australia during the war and eight years’ detention in Okinawa, his birth-place. He had a wife and 12 children waiting for him. Uechi migrated to New Cale donia in 1922. After Pearl Harbour he was sent to Australia for intern ment because of his Japanese birth, and in 1946 he was sent back to Okinawa. Only now has he been given an American certificate of identity and French permission to return home.