Fijian Elections Office ready for 2018 elections as count demonstration takes place

The Fijian Elections Office is ready for the 2018 general elections as talk builds up about the issuing of the Writ Of Elections by President Jioji Konrote on any day now.

When asked by Fijivillage on the state of preparedness of the Elections Office, Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem says they have already started deploying non sensitive elections material to Police Stations around the country and are ready to go when the date is announced.

With the Vodafone Arena which was the National Count Centre now under renovation, Saneem confirms that they have identified alternative venues for the National Count Centre.

Meanwhile the Supervisor of Elections also invited the media to a count demonstration yesterday.

Party Polling Agents from FijiFirst, SODELPA, National Federation Party, Fiji Labour Party, People’s Democratic Party, HOPE and Unity Fiji were also present during the count demonstration.

Polling agents monitoring the count at today's count demonstration

The demonstration included the party agents standing right next to the table observing the sorting out of ballot papers and the count of the ballots.

All party agents confirmed that they could clearly see the ballot papers as this was an issue earlier raised by some parties that they were unsure on whether they could see the ballot papers during the count.

Saneem says there is a lot of opportunity for the party agents to clearly observe the count.

When questioned by Fijivillage on NFP’s Vice President Seini Nabou earlier raising the issue regarding where they can stand to observe the count, Saneem says they are making it clear and have now demonstrated the count process again to clear any doubt or misunderstanding.