GENERAL ELECTIONS BRIEF FOR THE MEDIA COUNCIL

18 July 2001

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Fiji will go to the polls on 25th August 2001 and the purpose of this paper is to provide a general brief of the status of the Supervisor of Elections’ general preparations for the forthcoming elections.

2.0 Public Awareness and Education Programme

2.1 Much of the face-to-face briefings at District level have been completed.

2.2 Electoral Officials are now beginning to brief political parties, NGO’s, community groups, media organisations and any other groups who seek to be briefed about the electoral system and the various processes involved.

2.3 Relevant advertisements in the media (print, radio and television) began to be run in early June and will intensify as we approach the polling date – 25 August 2001. These advertisements will cover a wide range of issues including how one should vote, how the votes are counted, the secrecy of the ballot, where one could vote, how to vote by postal ballot etc.

3.0 Registration of Voters

3.1 The registration process is on-going and registration will close on 19 July 2001; 7 days after the writ is issued.

3.2Of the 20,000 additional voters which the Elections Office hopes to register about 13,500 have registered so far. The remaining 6,500 are still being urged to register.

3.3 The electoral rolls containing the names of those persons whose registrations were fully processed as at 25 June 2001 have been printed and distributed on 4 July 2001. The Supervisor of Elections gave the electorate until 10 July to file any objections or amendments to this set of rolls and any of the names already appearing on the electoral rolls (main and supplementary rolls) used in 1999. All these rolls are being merged to form the main rolls for the forthcoming general elections. In other words, the main roll for each of the 71 constituencies closed on 10 July 2001.

3.4 Any new registrations processed after 25 June 2001 to the close of registration on 19 July 2001 will appear on Supplementary rolls which the Supervisor of Elections hopes to print on or about 24 July 2001.

3.5 The registration data is now on-line and anyone with access to internet anywhere in the world can check his or her registration on http://www.itc.com.fj

4.0 Polling

4.1 The preparations for polling are on schedule. The polling stations have all been identified and the Supervisor of Elections hopes to be able to issue the full polling programme as soon as possible after the writs are issued .

4.2 Once the polling details are finalised, the officers at ITCServices (the Government computer services agency) will try and feed this into the Internet Elections System (IES) so that a person accessing the system could ascertain his or her registration details as well as the particular polling stations the person could go to (which issues his or her 2 ballot papers) and the dates and times each of them would be open for polling.

4.3 There will be about 800 polling stations in the forthcoming general election compared to about 755 in 1999.

4.4 Polling will end on Saturday 1st September 2001 and Sunday 2nd September 2001 will be used to transport any remaining ballot boxes to the count centers. It will also be an opportunity to check and ensure that all ballot boxes are properly accounted for before the count begins on Monday 3rd September 2001.

4.5 There have been some undue speculation about potential vote rigging as a result of the removal of ballot boxes from the PWD Depot at Lautoka. The Self-explanatory media release at annex ‘A’ to this paper explains the position.

5.0 The Count

5.1 Preparations for the count are on schedule and the Supervisor of Elections hopes to complete the count within 5 days.

5.2 The Count will be undertaken by administrative division at the following 4 venues :-

Eastern Division - Veiuto Primary School, Suva
Central Division - Suva Grammar School, Suva
Western Division - Natabua High School, Lautoka
Northern Division - Labasa College, Labasa

5.3 A National Tally Centre is expected to be established at the Holiday Inn or Berjaya Inn to receive the results from all 4 centres and disseminate them through the internet, fax etc.

6.0 Political Parties

6.1 The Elections Office has now registered 26 political parties.
Annexure ‘B’ contains the list of political parties.

6.2 The processing of applications for registration of all political parties must be finalised by 11 July 2001 and since there is a compulsory 14 day gazettal period for objections to be lodged, the last day for any applications for registration was 27 June 2001.

6.3 The large number of registered political parties means that the ballot paper could potentially be larger than usual if many of these parties lodged lists of preferences with the Supervisor of Elections.

7.0 Training

7.1 The training phase of electoral officials began with a 3 day seminar for senior officials from 26 to 28 June 2001 which focused largely on electoral principles and values and acceptable electoral practices. This was conducted by 3 senior officials from the Australian Electoral Commission and was made possible by AusAid.

7.2 Subsequent training in respect of the electoral processes continued from 2nd July to 4th July and the training programmes at district level began on 9 July and are expected to be completed during the first week of August 2001.

8.0 Issue of Writs

8.1 The Writs were issued on the 12th by His Excellency the President.

8.2 Annexure ‘C’ sets out the advertisement which will appear inthe dailies from 13 July 2001. A similar gazette notice will be published on the same day.

9.0 Observers

9.1 A decision as to whether or not the U.N. will send observers to Fiji is expected shortly.

9.2 The Commonwealth Secretariat is considering sending 6 teams of 2 persons each (12 persons altogether) to observe the next elections.

10.0 Conclusion

10.1 Overall, the preparations for the forthcoming general elections is on target and the Supervisor of Elections is quite confident that things would work out as planned although he is conscious of the fact that in a large logistical exercise such as this, there will always be some things which would not quite go according to plan. That is the nature of general elections.

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