FOUR political party leaders called for the suspension of the counting of the votes for the 2018 General Election yesterday.
Social Democratic Liberal Party leader Sitiveni Rabuka, National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad, Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry and Unity Fiji leader Savenaca Narube had informed the Fijian Elections Office to stop entering the results of all the polling stations on their app as they wanted to receive all the Protocol of Results and the systems entry records for verification.
Professor Prasad along with the other leaders have claimed that their polling agents were not allowed by the FEO to verify the results before it was announced or updated on the FEO app.
“I was just told that Mr Mohammed Saneem just gave an announcement that the Protocol of Results which we complained was not available to the political party agents before the results were announced on the FEO app will now be given,” Prof Prasad claimed.
“It’s a little too late, so what we are asking really is the suspension of the counting and the proper procedures laid down.”
Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem said yesterday they would not be loading any more results on to the results management system.
Mr Saneem said this was after political parties requested FEO to stop entering the results for the polling stations so that their agents could reconcile, verify and catch up with the FEO.
“We will pause and provide the political parties that have got agents present here with the records from the results management system as well as the Protocols of Results and we will reconcile to make sure that everybody in the results centre has the same amount of data including the data on the app,” he said.
