37 Days to Register Proposed Party: Saneem

It takes more than a month to complete the registration process for a proposed new political party.

Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem also clarified that everyone has the liberty to collect signatures for their parties.

The Fijian Elections Office will not be accepting any applications to register a new political party from the day the writ of elections is issued by the President.

“If there is an application received on the day the writ is issued, we can’t consider it. They have to register before that to allow us to complete the process.

The process takes at least 37 days,” Mr Saneem said.

On the issue of collection of signatures, he said ideally parties would reserve their party name with FEO first before they started collecting signatures.

However, in the event a party starts collecting signatures before reserving a party name, it does not nullify the signatures already collected.

Mr Saneem confirmed that former SODELPA and Opposition Leader Sitiveni Rabuka had sought the FEO to reserve the proposed party name of their choice last Monday (January 11, 2021).

The incident of collection of signatures during the TC Yasa Appeal Concert at Ratu Sukuna Park happened prior to that.

“Everybody has the liberty to collect signatures. Whether they need authorisation from any other authority that’s on the person themself they have to go and seek that approval it’s not our jurisdiction.” He confirmed that Mr Rabuka is yet to submit an application to register his proposed new party.