Voter awareness will be crucial as the country heads into the local government elections, says Local Government Ministry’s permanent secretary Seema Sharma.
Speaking at a panel discussion on the electoral system design for the local government election in Suva this week, Ms Sharma said they had received feedback from the public with regards to the electoral process.
“The whole idea was, when you are thinking about an electoral system, it was not only about who is going to win, but how it is going to serve the needs of the people,” Ms Sharma said.
“What’s the purpose of someone being elected in the local government? What do they do? It’s very rightly pointed out, it’s not your parliament.”
She added that being in local government was also implementing national policies to some extent.
“For example, government makes a national commitment on climate change. But how are you going to implement it at the national level, you need the local governments to implement it.
“So, you need to look at all those areas, but the most important thing is the local government is the representative of the residents of the town or the city.
“They represent the needs, they look at some of the issues, they look at how they can improve the towns and cities and the services for the people. These are things that need to be taken into consideration.
“I think there was this issue also brought up looking at wards, so all our towns and cities are divided into smaller constituencies. I’ll use Suva as an example, it’s divided into four wards. In our initial submissions to Cabinet, we were told to maintain the ward system.”
Ms Sharma also said there were a lot of advantages to the ward system because residents were able to vote in representatives from that area.
“Moving forward from here, there is a step that we have to take to the Cabinet and because it’s an amendment to enact, it needs to go to Parliament. Following that, it is very important that before we go into elections, you need to have voter awareness.
“The voters need to know who they’re going to vote for. What exactly is the local government? What ward they’ll fall in and how will they vote?”
She said the responsibility would be taken onboard by the Fijian Elections Office.
“Once the registration process is completed, then you move towards the possible date of the election, which will be determined by the Electoral Commission. There is obviously a ballpark figure. That had a timeline that has been given which has been said it could be the second half of 2024.”
