The Fijian Elections Office recorded a drop in the voter turnout in this year’s general election with only 72% of registered Fijians turning up on Election Day to cast their vote compared to 84.60% in 2014.
Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem revealed a drop of more than 12% in this year’s election turnout.
”The total number of votes casts in the general elections is 458, 532. This makes up 72% as the turnout for the 2018 general election. The total number of invalid votes for the general election stands at 4197 which makes 0.92 percent of the total votes.”
The FEO says 1436 polling venues with 2173 polling stations were available for the voters.
Saneem adds many media organizations were registered to cover this year’s election as well.
”We had 371 accredited media personnel for the general election to ensure that members of public know how to, when to and where to vote. The elections office conducted 3069 awareness sessions in total. To get to the election, we conducted 107 press conferences, 43 releases and 77 accredited observers for the general election.”
Saneem says an increase in the participation of women has also been recorded.
He says 10 women will be part of the parliament with five from FijiFirst, four from Social Democratic Liberal Party and one from the National Federation Party.
