Update to a new blue voter card if your current card does not have a polling venue – Saneem

People are being urged to upgrade to the latest blue voter cards if their blue voter card does not have a polling venue to ensure they can cast their vote during election day.

Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem says the latest voter card has the polling venue.

When questioned on whether there is a system in place where individual voters can check their names on the voter list, Saneem says there have been 5 rounds of verification that have been done, the parties, the Advisory Councillors and the Turaga Ni Koro have the list and if a voter wants to know where they have to vote and they have not managed to check the list, the latest voter card has the details.

While speaking in a press conference today, Saneem said he wishes to give a clarification in relation to polling venues.

Saneem says in a huge effort to politically mask the changes to the voter card, he thinks some politicians have actually forgotten that the voter card now actually carries your polling venue on it.

Saneem then said he was very suspicious because fijivillage was asking him extensively about this point in the press conference just before the speeches were made in parliament.

Communications Fiji Limited, which is the parent company of fijivillage, FM96, Legend FM, Viti FM, Navtarang and Radio Sargam is independent. We would like to state that we had asked Saneem questions after some married women raised concerns that they did not want to change their birth certificate to include their married name if they wanted to use their married name as a voter while some people had said that they had blue voter cards that had no polling venue on them.

At no time did fijivillage have access to parliamentary speeches or planned questions as claimed by the Supervisor.

Meanwhile Saneem also says if there are still objections to upgrading to the blue voter card, its your fault, because those are the same candidates who were objecting to the upgrade to the blue voter card and are now complaining about not being able to find the venue.

He says in an election, the election management body looks far and wide and it also looks near and close because it is their job to ensure that whatever is possible and practical is done.

Saneem says in Fiji, over 500,000 people are holding on to the blue voter card and on the blue voter card, your polling venue is written on it and with that information you will be able to turn up to your polling venue and you will be able to vote.