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Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill is hoping voters will overlook economic problems and corruption controversies to give him a second term when they cast their ballots over the next two weeks.
Voting has begun in PNG's national elections, with the struggling economy and lack of government services at the forefront of voter concerns.
Mr O'Neill will also be judged for his handling of official corruption allegations — which he has fought in the courts — that led university students to protest for months last year.
The protest ended after police shot eight students and injured dozens of others.
Mr O'Neill subsequently faced and won a vote of no confidence in parliament, with many of his opponents saying they hoped the elections would deliver a reckoning instead.
The Prime Minister defended his term of government in an interview with SBS World News.
"I am certainly proud that we've been able to deliver on health, education, infrastructure and all the commitments we have done on decentralising government decision-making down to the district and provincial level, funding arrangements going down to the rural communities, these are the areas that we are very proud that we've been able to deliver," he said.
Mr O'Neill also said the electorate would understand why he had chosen not to comply with the warrant for his arrest for the charge of official corruption.
"I am not above the law," he said.
"I am quite happy to go to the courts like anyone else to seek the protection the courts can give me as a citizen of our country, which I've done on many occasions and I've proven time and time again that those allegations are not true and have been politically motivated in many cases so I think the ballot will speak for itself."
Opposition leader Don Polye — a former treasurer in Mr O'Neill's Government — has been hammering the theme of economic collapse and irresponsible borrowing in his campaign.
"Now he [Mr O'Neill] is panicking, he's nervous, he now realises he's in danger, now he's on crisis management mode," he told a crowd in Port Moresby.
"He's saying 'let's borrow, let's borrow, cover it up, cover it up, let's win the elections then we'll be safe'."
Mr Polye pointed to several incidents at Mr O'Neill's campaign rallies, including one where police fired tear gas into the crowd, as signs people were unhappy with the Prime Minister's leadership.
"People in Papua New Guinea can tear PNC (People's National Congress) shirts and burn down PNC caps, Peter O'Neill's party caps and all his uniforms, and they reject Peter O'Neill, yelling at him when he goes to forums like in Goroka, then that means that people have already spoken, they reject him," he said.
"So if we have a proper democratic conduct of the elections in this country, definitely Peter O'Neill will not win."
There is suspicion in some areas that certain candidates are trying to rig the vote.
In Tari, where people threw rocks at Mr O'Neill, officials were forced to publicly burn excess ballot papers to prove they would not be used to influence the election outcome.
"We are showing that we want transparency, we want to have a good election, we have to change and adjust and sort out corruption and show we don't want it," returning officer Stewart Paragua said.
The Government's budget problems have affected election preparations.
To save money, Papua New Guinea's electoral commission printed ballot papers overseas for the first time in PNG's history.
Problems noted in the rushed election five years ago — which included voters disappearing from the electoral roll and the Government's failure to redistribute electoral districts based on population growth — also persist.
The chair of the Commonwealth Observer Group, Sir Anand Satyanand, expects election observers will report many of the same issues they identified in the 2012 poll.
"I have little doubt that some of the recommendations we will make will be a repeat of things that were raised in 2012," he said.
Approximately 5 million people will vote over the next two weeks, as polling moves progressively across the country.
The final results won't be known for about a month, then the biggest party gets the chance to try to form government, usually in coalition.
Topics: elections, government-and-politics, world-politics, papua-new-guinea, pacific
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