Fijian Election

Reveal source says SOE

December 7, 2022 4:44 pm

Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem

The Supervisor of Elections has hit out at the National Federation Party questioning its credibility following claims made against Fiji First General Secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

The NFP had claimed that Sayed-Khaiyum visited Star Printery in Raiwaqa in the early hours of last Thursday, and the reason for his visit is unknown.

The NFP also claimed that Sayed-Khaiyum ordered that the CCTV cameras on the premises be turned off and that he refused to leave at the request of FEO officials because ballot papers were being printed.

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Biman Prasad’s party alleges that the police were called, and Sayed-Khaiyum refused to leave at their request.

NFP had written a letter to the Fijian Elections Office and the same was posted on their Facebook page until yesterday.

While responding to media queries today, Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem is asking NFP to reveal its source.

“This is an example of how quickly people are susceptible to conspiracy theories and how quickly even a political party can fall victim to this. Now the question that NFP needs to answer is who told them that and they need to reveal their source because if it is not and they are going to protect the source then that means they are part of the exercise.”

Saneem says one of the ways to defeat misinformation is to publish the source of this disinformation.

“If the NFP cannot reveal their source about this disinformation they are not credible. That is the whole point of this. You cannot go and play around with the Electoral Process simply by writing a letter and immediately publishing it knowing that the letter contains disinformation of the highest degree.”

Saneem says when they had gone for the production of the ballot papers, The People’s Alliance agent was with them and the least NFP could have done was to consult the party agent as the two parties have an alliance.

He says there is a need to put a stop to this misinformation.

Meanwhile, Star Printery Director Sandeep Chauhan says the final batch of ballot papers were transferred from Star Printery to the Fijian Elections Office warehouse at Laucala Beach on 28th November and therefore there is no basis in the claims made by NFP.