LESS COMPLAINTS RECEIVED FROM TAILEVU ON DAY 3 OF POLLING

(May 10th, 2006 No. 76)

The third day of polling in Tailevu went well and there were not a lot of complaints received by people whose names were not registered in the rolls as compared to that of Saturday and Monday.

There was however an experience of inconsistency of the programme for the Polling Station at Saraswati College yesterday.

According to the Provincial Administrator Tailevu, Eliki Rabuka, the official programme states that polls begins at 7am and ends at 5pm however, the Fiji Times stated that polling in this station was to begin at 1pm and close at 5pm.

“As a result voters began arriving a little before 1pm,” he said.

Mr Rabuka stated that there must have been a misprint of the Polling Programme.

Meanwhile comparing the first two days of polling to that of the third day, with regards to the return of ballot boxes, there was a huge improvement of the time of return of ballot boxes.

All ballot boxes from the 16 Polling Stations arrived at PA Tailevu’s Office by 10pm with the first box arriving at 6:45 pm and the last arriving at 10pm.

The ballot boxes were transported to the Count Centre at Suva Grammar at 10:30pm.

Below is a table of the total number of votes cast per day for the Polling Stations under PA Tailevu.

The above table indicates that the number of voters that cast their votes had declined on the third day.

The reason for this decline can be attributed to the fact there were three polling stations in operation since the first day of polling and majority of the voter population where these particular polling stations are located would have already cast their votes.

The polling stations that were in operation since Saturday were St. Joseph the Worker Primary School, Vuci Methodist School and Nakasi High School. An increase in voter turnout is expected today (Wednesday 10/05) as new polling stations will be opened.

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