Further changes cast doubt on Fiji elections

Transcript

The Fiji Labour Party says the government's decision not to make the National Register of Voters public further erodes the integrity of the September general election.

It says in March this year the regime slipped in a change via Decree 9 that removed the requirement to publish the National Register.

The Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry told Bridget Tunnicliffe that they only discovered the change recently.

Mr Chaudhry says the party has written to the Supervisor of Elections seeking an explanation.

MAHENDRA CHAUDHRY: Decrees here when they are promulgated - they are not necessarily announced or made public and this was one of them.  We just discovered it a couple of weeks ago. It was never given any publicity and copies were not sent to political parties and this was kept very quiet.

BRIDGET TUNNICLIFFE: Can you have confidence in the National Register of Voters?

MC: Absolutely not. Because we have no access to it because the requirement for publishing it has also been removed so they are not now obliged to publish the information of the people, the information of the voters, of the political parties and one can only access his or her own information - nobody else's. It has now become a secret document and now accessible only to the state and of course in this particular case to the state - maybe the Fiji First Party to the exclusion of all other political parties and registered voters.

BT: And I understand the other change is the registered voters' right to object to names registered that has been removed as well?

MC: Yes, indeed. Well, there was a process when the register of voters was published. Any registered voter could place an objection on the registration of another voter on the grounds that he or she did not qualify to be a voter. Then there was a process of verification of the objection, settling that objection, then disposing it off - either the objection is upheld and the person against whom the objection is lodged their name is deleted from the register or else the objection is dismissed.

BT: What does this mean for the election in your mind?

MC: Well, there could be thousands of bogus entries in the voters register. We wouldn't know because we don't have any access to it. We can't even see anything about who is registered and all that so there is no transparency and anything can happen.  

BT: Should this be treated as a major warning sign, a big red flag, to the international community?

MC: Indeed, we have written other letters also and the international community is sitting here very silent. I don't know how they will assess this election because it is very important as things are happening - electoral laws are being changed within weeks of the elections and these changes are not making it more transparent but these changes are actually keeping things away from the political parties and the voters and they are entitled to know all this.

They have changed the system, they are not putting any symbols on the ballot papers, nor names of the candidates, they are going to use numbers only and there are so many things that are happening which actually leads to one believing that the whole process is being manipulated by the regime. The Electoral Commission is helpless here because the changes are made not on the recommendation of the Electoral Commission but these are made by the Minister, who is the Secretary-General of the Fiji First Party.