Polling day on Nauru judged free and fair

Transcript

The leader of the Commonwealth Secretariat's election observer mission to Nauru, Anote Tong, says polling day on the island has been competent, transparent, free and fair.

The mission has released an interim report on the election for the country's 19-seat parliament which was conducted at the weekend.

Mr Tong,  who is a former president of Kiribati, told Sally Round there was comprehensive coverage of all the polling stations by the observers and it was clear that polling was done extremely well.

ANOTE TONG: Certainly during polling day itself we did have very comprehensive coverage of all the polling stations. It was very clear that even with the newly established electoral commission and even with the new people involved on polling day. It was done extremely well and very confidently, very transparently. I would describe the atmosphere as very cordial quite friendly very relaxed indeed. Of course there were events before that, that we really cannot comment on, at this point in time to the extent, because it would impact on the election. The polling day itself I thought it was very transparent very fair.

SALLY ROUND: So would you say it was a free and fair election?

AT: I would say polling day was indeed a free and a very fair election, yes. I have no hesitation in saying that.

SR: But you seem to have some concerns about the run up, can you elaborate on those more?

AT: It's not so much my concern, it's the concern of those involved. We did have the opportunity to meet with different people and of course in any political situation you get politicians on different sides making allegations at each other. We were not in a position to be able to ascertain the validity in full of any of the comments that were being put forward.

SR: And I see most of the concerns were about free and fair access to the media?

AT: That was also raised with it. It's very difficult in Nauru because you just have the one media. Both the radio and the TV controlled and owned by the government the question one would ask is does any single individual have access to media at the disadvantage of the rest? My answer would be that I never saw any candidates at any time, saw any individual candidates from the government side or opposition having access to the media. So we did ask around if this was the practice, and got advice that yes it is the normal practice. I think It's the nature of campaigning in Nauru itself it is a very small community It's much easier to campaign directly rather than via the media. I think this would be the same in our own situation also. It would be pointless campaigning on national media when you're targeting your own. It doesn't work you really have to go to your own constituency and do the campaigning there. Having said all of that we did indicate in our interim report more coverage, more  in our final report, that there had to be media coverage in the future and of course this is covered in the new act. At the function of the electoral commission to ensure that no one is given  undue advantage over others and access to the media.

SR: Do you think that this perhaps failing, the fact that the media is not so important there, do you think this would of affected the election in anyway?

AT: No candidate either government or the opposition did have access to the media as a medium for campaigning. This is not the practice in Nauru. What we saw was that the government, explaining at a national level what it had achieved not at favour of any individual candidate either within government or outside of government.