FEO hosts parties for logisitics workshop
The Fijian Elections Office has conducted the final logistics workshop for political parties. This follows the announcement of the General Election to be held on November 14th, 2018 by the, President Major General (Ret’d) Jioji Konrote. Nominations for candidates started on October 2nd and on October 3rd the Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem conducted a workshop, which was attended by political party representatives including observers from the MultiNational Observer Group at the Grand Pacific Hotel. Participants at the workshop were presented with the provisional prepoll schedule as well as the pre-poll route maps and other logistics information regarding ballot box packing, ballot paper printing and postal vote packaging. In explaining the workshop, Mr Saneem mentioned that it was necessary for political parties to be given all packing information considering political parties have made their intentions known to observe the election from ballot paper production right down till the return of materials to sensitive storage after the election.
“What basically the political parties want to do is they want to be at every point in the process so that they are able to peruse and see the entire process for themselves,” he said.
“I hope that with such levels of access the Fijian Elections Office is granting, political parties are able to understand the process and at the end of the election are able to accept the results of the General Election based on their level of access.”
FijiFirst, SODELPA, Fiji Labour Party, Unity Fiji and Freedom Alliance were represented by three representatives each while HOPE had two representative and National Federation Party had one representative at the half day workshop. They were provided with tentative pre-poll schedules, tentative pre-poll polling materials exchange sites for all pre-poll teams, FEO Hub Offices locations, presentation by the Supervisor of the Election and polling materials exchange sites maps.