MUTUAL EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION IS VITAL - KARAVAKI

(May 10th, 2006 No. 74)

The mutual exchange of information from the media to the Office of the Supervisor of Elections and vice versa is vital because it ensures the dissemination of correct information to the public and also assist with the proper running of the electoral administration.

Supervisor of Elections, Semesa Karavaki at a press briefing yesterday said that the Elections Office cannot by itself fully monitor the elections and it needs the support of the media who whilst doing their rounds, could highlight some issues that they have encountered which could be rectified so as to improve the electoral process.

“I say this again it’s time that I hope and we all hope that we can exchange information not only for the information that has to be given out to members of the public but also that we can work together to help even the administration of the elections to try to improve while we are moving on,” he said.

“Because most of the things that you would be sharing with us or you had encountered while making your rounds through the polling stations, some of those things that had not been told or been passed on over to me and you know in the process of exchanging this information we are not only giving you information, you are also helping us to properly understand what is going on, on the ground.”

Meanwhile, the second day of polling (Monday, 09/05) had progressed satisfactorily according to Mr Karavaki.

He said that there were about 209 polling stations scheduled to open on Monday (08/05) and reports received that they were all opened on time and went smoothly.

“Some polling stations experienced long queues and the Returning officers were required to deal with the situation by increasing the number of streams and also increasing the number of polling.”

In addition other issues arising was the absence of voters name from the registry prolonging the waiting of some of these voters.

In most of these cases the names were not able to be found because they were either registered in another constituency or the names given by voters are different from the one that they registered or may be they did not register at all.

In certain cases such as that at Dilkusha Boys polling station, there were about 50 voters who were going to return home without voting because their names were not found on the register of voters.

However, Karavaki said that with the assistance of election officials at the Dilkusha Boys polling station with their laptop computers and having the database with them, they were able to locate the names of all these 50 voters.

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