Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is to stay in power for a second term as his party won a general election yesterday after voting resumed following delays due to bad weather.
Bainimarama’s Fiji First party led with about 50 percent of the votes, closely followed by nearly 40 percent for the opposition Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), the Fiji Elections Office said.
BLOODLESS COUP
Bainimarama, who has been in office since leading a bloodless coup in 2006, has won 27 of 51 seats, the electoral commission said.
“I’m proud to become your prime minister once again,” Bainimarama told FBC News from Auckland, New Zealand, where he had been attending his brother’s funeral.
SODELPA, which won 21 seats, and three other losing parties urged the electoral commission and the elections office to refrain from officially announcing results, saying that the tally process was not transparent.
Fiji went to the polls on Wednesday, only the second time the country has held democratic elections since 2006.
“The supervisor of elections has been in a great hurry to get the results out,” Mahendra Chaudhry of the Fiji Labor Party said on Facebook Live video, along with SODELPA, the National Federation Party and Unity Fiji.
“He [the supervisor] has, in the process, compromised the procedures and the requirement of the law, so that should be set right if this election is to have any credibility,” Chaudhry said.
FAIR ELECTION
Elections Supervisor Mohammed Saneem said that the authorities had been open.
“The people of Fiji deserve better in terms of information. And the Fiji Elections Office is giving all the information accurately in a timely manner,” Saneem said, also on Facebook Live.
Endorsing Saneem’s claims, election monitoring body Multinational Observer Group (MOG) in a short interim statement on Friday said that the Fijian election campaign was conducted according to international standards.
“We understand that there are some members of the public who have concerns about the integrity of the prepoll ballots and therefore we recognized the need to look closely at this process,” it said. “The MOG assesses that the legal framework underpinning the electoral system complies with the fundamental international principles of universal suffrage and non-discrimination.”
Earlier in the week, heavy rain disrupted the election in some venues. Voting in those places was rescheduled to Saturday to ensure that all eligible votes were counted.
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