Fiji political parties refuse to accept poll results

Transcript

Five political parties in Fiji have called on election authorities to suspend all counting and verification of provisional results, saying they will not accept the outcome of Wednesday's poll.

The parties have been running against the FijiFirst party led by the prime minister Frank Bainimarama.

According to provisional results he has a commanding lead of 60 percent of the vote.

Mick Beddoes of the Sodelpa party has told the media the parties have found there was a  systematic effort to defraud the people of Fiji of a free and fair election.

MICK BEDDOES: We call on the Electoral Commission, the Supervisor of Elections and the Minister of Elections to suspend all counting of pre-polling, postal ballots and verification of provisional results until all issues identified have been satisfactorily dealt with. For example, the tampering of ballot boxes, removing of ballot boxes from polling stations without being counted, the inclusion of large size files and envelopes in ballot boxes that could only have been placed in it through the opening of the ballot boxes as they cannot fit through the slots provided of the ballot boxes. There are a multitude of other incidences but these are just an explanation of some of the few. The leaders of the political parties have communicated these concerns to both the chairman of the Electoral Commission and the Supervisor of Elections. And on that score I need to confirm to you that that communication is actually underway to them as we speak so therefore you need to give them a bit of time to receive it themselves, but I'm just making that clarification. And this statement is signed jointly by One Fiji Party, the National Federation Party, the People's Democratic Party, the Fiji Labour Party and the Social Democratic Liberal Party, and the leaders are here in front of you today. And as I said we're just waiting on the One Fiji Party leader.

REPORTER: So what proof do you have of the irregularities on the day?

MB: That has been presented to us and we will be tabulating all of these and presenting it all to the chairman of the Electoral Commission tomorrow.

REPORTER: Who supplied you with the proof?

MB: All of the agents of all of the political parties. And none of us have communicated with eachother about these incidences until we met this morning.

REPORTER: Is this being done because you don't want to accept defeat?

MB: Not at all.

REPORTER: what do you make of the multi-national observer group saying that they've seen no irregularities whatsoever?

MB: Well, that's their opinion and that's their statement. They are observing the processes. And we have people on the ground as well. And they have identified these. And a lot of incidences where this occurs, the actual observers may not actually be there at the time. Because there's not enough of them.