SOE on mending burnt bridges at Elections Office

Supervisor of Elections Ana Mataiciwa moved into her new role as Acting SOE on the 26th of January after holding the post of the Manager Legal and she knew from the get-go that she had to mend the burnt bridges with the external stakeholders to gain their trust back.

Mataiciwa says she had certain things to fix, one of which was to establish a strong foundation for the organization.

Mataiciwa made this clear on fijivillage Straight Talk With Vijay Narayan and highlighted the fact that there were members of her staff who had served the establishment since 2014 while some have served for more than 5 years.

She emphasized the importance of setting up a healthy culture in terms of staff members raising their concerns and opinions without being victimized.

Mataiciwa says the second issue she wanted to address was flexibility, in terms of humanizing the way they worked having flexible hours, and not being used like robots as they previously encountered during the chronological events of the previous administration.

Furthermore, Mataiciwa says they need to follow the simple process of honesty and they have to be honest with themselves.

Mataiciwa says they needed to do an internal review of themselves, the 2022 general elections and the overall operations of the organization.

Mataiciwa referred the former Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem to the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption, when she came in and says the matter is now before the courts.