A-G labels poll as ‘gimmicky’
ATTORNEY-GENERAL Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has labelled a recent poll conducted by Fiji Sun as “gimmicky” and unreliable.
He was responding to a question raised during a news conference on Friday about a poll which showed Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka being neck to neck in the lead-up to the 2022 General Election.
“From what we understand, the Fiji Sun is doing, is simply phoning up people and they have no way of verifying who these people are,” he said.
“If somebody wants to run proper polls, you go overseas and see how people run proper polls, it is done in a lot more systematic manner.”
He said there was no way of verifying who the people were being called to conduct the polls and whether the information they were giving was correct.
“Most reliable polls are done face-toface, where you go down on the ground and have a good spread of people, example in a squatter area, the issues they face would be different to people living in MacGregor Rd.”
In response, Fiji Sun publisher, Peter Lomas said polls were always open for criticism and the media outlet would scrutinise what the Attorney-General said in response to “a probably planted question at this press conference”.
“But our poll methodology was developed by an expert and it’s proved accurate that even one of our most vocal and regular critics has grudgingly admitted this,” he said.
If somebody wants to run proper polls, you go overseas and see how people run proper polls ... – Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum