51 parliament seats will be contested in 2018 elections

51 seats will be contested in the next General Election.

Electoral Commission Chairman Suresh Chandra says they unanimously agreed to alter the composition of Parliament for the next General Election by adding 1 more seat.

Currently there are 50 seats in parliament.

He adds in the next general election the maximum number of candidates that can be nominated under a political party will be 51.

Chandra says this is the first time in our history that the Electoral Commission is empowered by the Constitution to alter the number of seats in Parliament.

He says the Commission is empowered to do this under Section 54 of the Constitution.

Chandra says the Electoral Commission held its second meeting yesterday and they considered the population data provided by Fiji Bureau of Statistics and data from the National Register of Voters submitted by the Fijian Elections Office to work out the ratio of the population to the seats in 2014.

He says the commission then used the same ratio to assess whether there was a need to increase the number of seats based on the current population and voter data.

Chandra says they found that in 2014 with a national population of 873,608 there was a ratio of one seat in Parliament for every 17,472 citizens.

He says as at 1st March 2017, the Fiji Bureau of Statistics has projected that the national population had increased to 886,416.

Chandra says in order to maintain the ratio of one seat for every 17,472 citizens they would need 50.73 seats as at 1st March 2017.

He says the Commission decided that 50.73 be rounded upwards to 51.

Chandra says similarly, the National Register of Voters contained the names of 591,101 citizens in 2014 for a ratio of one seat for every 11,822 registered voters.

He says the number of registered voters has increased to 603,546 as at 1st March 2017, so they would need one more seat to maintain that ratio in the next election.