Where is their legal basis to demand for a recount – Saneem

Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem has questioned if the five political parties have a legal basis to demand for a recount of the votes in the 2022 general elections.

Saneem was responding to the leaders of the People’s Alliance, SODELPA, National Federation Party, Fiji Labour Party and Unity Fiji after they called on the Supervisor to conduct a recount after the FEO app glitch last night.

Saneem addressed the media in a press conference at the Count Centre at the Vodafone Arena and showed the media about the manual counting for the pre-poll and postal votes that they are currently undertaking and says that there is no electronic counting and the FEO app does not count the elections result.

Saneem says that they are conducting manual counting and this is done by the Fijian Elections Office staff.

He adds that he has nothing to hide and that provisional results might have errors.

Saneem also said that they will release the final voter turnout numbers after they finish verifying the postal votes.

He adds that they did not have time for an independent audit after the incident last night.

Meanwhile Sitiveni Rabuka, Professor Biman Prasad, Mahendra Chaudhry and Savenaca Narube had a press conference this afternoon, saying they are very concerned about how the provisional results was handled last night.

They say they are calling on FEO for a recount of the results based on the actual protocol of the results and in the presence of independent scrutineers and political party agents and only that will make this elections and the outcome of it a credible one and that's their focus.

They are calling on the Electoral Commission and the Fijian Elections Office to act.

Professor Prasad says unless they are convinced that it has come out from a transparent, proper and accountable counting process, and reflect the will of the people, they cannot accept the outcome of the results.