Former supervisor of elections and a constitutional lawyer Jon Apted believes the existing laws are not suitable for the Local Government elections.
While contributing to a panel discussion organised by Dialogue Fiji on Tuesday, he said current laws would be an impediment to the process.
He said he disagreed with the amendment to the law last year where the qualification for nomination were “either as a representative of a registered political party or stand as an independent”.
“Historically, there’s been a huge difference in the way elections in big cities, in the big municipalities and Local Government elections in the small municipalities have been contested.
“Big towns were battlegrounds for political parties but this was not the case for the smaller ones, which political parties had no interest in.
“To be nominated by a registered political party and to be a registered political party, ‘you require 5000 signatures’.
“It’s just a huge barrier and you’ve got all of these reporting requirements.”
He said the second barrier was of the political parties being the doorway into the Local Government elections and candidacy.
“How do you influence the political parties to choose you, especially if you come from a little town, you have no major contribution to make to the party you have no history with the party?
“How does a woman in Savusavu get noticed by the NFP? How does a woman in Sigatoka get noticed by a party that was formerly FijiFirst or the Government party?
“So, this is a real barrier of the fact that you can only get in through a party, and women have no natural historical or women from municipalities have no profile within parties.
“So, a lot of work needs to start happening within the Local Government municipalities where if women want to be candidates, they’ve got to start accessing the leaders of their political party and put their name forward.
“If you want to be in the game, you’ve got to put your hand up early, you’ve got to make sure that they know of you, you’ve got to be noticed.
“So, that’s the legal imperative, the framework. As far as the law, we don’t know what that will be.
“Women and the political parties, and the NGOs have got to start waving their hands at the Government, at the Minister for Elections who has the power to make the regulations that will govern the forthcoming elections to be heard about what goes in those regulations.”
