Allegations are too general to affect the results - Saneem

The Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem confirmed that he received the letter from five political parties at around 9 last night in relation to allegations made about the electoral process by the parties.

Saneem said the joint letter from the Fiji Labour Party, the Social Democratic Party, the National Federation Party, People’s Democratic Party and One Fiji Party contained two alleged evidence the parties have submitted to prove their allegations.

Saneem said at this preliminary stage they are investigating the alleged evidence, however, the photographs require more verification.

He added that as for the ballot paper they will need the original copy so that they can begin their investigation.

He said at this moment nothing is stopping the election result as the allegations are too general to affect the results.

Meanwhile the five parties have sent letters to the President of Fiji, the Electoral Commission and the Supervisor of Elections.

People’s Democratic Party President Lynda Tabuya claims that they have some photographs and other details but they will leave it to the Electoral Commission to make the decision.

Tabuya said they are still documenting fifty alleged cases such as a village being unable to vote because a polling booth was not set up. The name of the village has not been given to us.

Tabuya also refused to comment when we asked her why this issue was not raised on polling day on Wednesday.

Fijivillage has also questioned Tabuya on what the parties are planning to do as they have said that they will not accept the election results.

We asked her if this means that the parties that qualify to be in the opposition will not take up their parliamentary seats after the allocation of the seats.

Tabuya said they cannot say much on what would happen when parliament sits.

According to the constitution, the quorum required for a parliamentary sitting is one third.

Based on provisional results from 70 percent of the polling stations, the current percentage of seats that the FijiFirst is likely to have if the trend continues is 60 percent which means that parliament can still sit if the opposition parties decide not to enter parliament.