People’s Alliance legal team working on a response to the Supervisor of Elections

The People’s Alliance legal team is currently working on a response to the Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem informing the party of their findings into the party’s complaint against the FijiFirst for allegedly breaching campaign rules.

The party says Saneem wrote that they had evaluated that the complaint lacks merit and substance in terms of the legal requirements and is therefore dismissed.

The People’s Alliance will now decide on their next move based on their legal options.

Saneem had said that the FijiFirst did not breach Section 112 of the Electoral Act and the People’s Alliance complaint appears to stem from a misconceived interpretation of the legal requirements, and is therefore dismissed accordingly.

Saneem said the FEO has found that the fourteen samples that were attached to the complaint were published on FijiFirst’s Facebook page but they were not physically printed and distributed; Section 112 (1)(a) of the Electoral Act applies to printed material and therefore does not apply in this case; the distribution of the materials were only in electronic mode through FijiFirst’s Facebook page which meant that it did not cost anything and no payments would be involved. In this case, section 112(1)(b) of the Electoral Act 2014 is not applicable; there were no companies involved in the printing of the material which means section 112(1)(c) is not applicable; and the date of issue of the material would be the date that the post was published.

Saneem said they also note that the People’s Alliance did not provide links, or screenshots of the actual posts which carried the material complained about. He said in the circumstances, the date of the post would be regarded as the date of issue. The People’s Alliance had earlier written a letter of complaint to Saneem citing several alleged breaches of campaign rules by the FijiFirst.

They say the letter which was delivered to the Fijian Elections Office referred to 15 samples of campaign materials that the FijiFirst had posted prominently on its Facebook page.

The party claimed the campaign materials do not meet requirements stipulated in the Electoral Act 2014.

People’s Alliance General Secretary, Sakiasi Ditoka had said that these campaign materials can be viewed on the FijiFirst Facebook page and the party’s posting of these flyers are clearly campaign materials given the language, pictures, diagram, photos and information they contain promote and advertise FijiFirst.