Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem (Left), Fiji Labour Party Leader Mahendra Chaudhry. [File Photo]

Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem has shot back at Fiji Labour Party Leader Mahendra Chaudhry, saying the FEO will carry out a workshop at any venue available to them.

Saneem was responding to Chaudhry’s statements, whereby he questioned the FEO for carrying out an Electoral Processes Workshop at the Attorney General’s Conference Room at Level 9 Suvavou House last week.

Saneem says there are other offices at the Suvavou House apart from the Attorney General’s, and it would have been better for Chaudhry to clarify with the FEO rather than release a press statement which he says was published by fijivillage.

“What is the urge to simply bring about the question that this is the location where the Attorney General’s Office is, so why is the meeting being held there? The sheer lack of courtesy for the Fiji Labour Party to itself write to the FEO to ask for this clarification before rumbling out in the media shows the real and malicious intentions of this press release in the first place.”

Saneem also questioned media outlet Fijivillage for running the story, claiming he was not even given enough time to make a response.

“When we were looking at the questions, we saw that the story was already up. So why can’t they wait for us to give them a response? I think these are questions that fijivillage needs to really put forward because the journalistic integrity of this organization is now being questioned. “

In its response, Fijivillage says it has evidence to prove that the story was not published at 3pm as claimed by Saneem.

The media company says they had sent questions to the FEO Communications and Saneem for comments at 3pm last Wednesday after the concerns were raised by Chaudhry.

It also says that they got an email message receipting the email, and a follow up call was also made to the FEO Communications team, and they were told that the email was received by the Manager PR.

Fijivillage says it then said that they were awaiting the response as the FLP had said that the meeting was scheduled for the next day.

It adds that no response came through and the story then ran at 5.05pm last Wednesday since the meeting was scheduled for last Thursday, saying that the concerns were raised by the FLP, and we were still awaiting the FEO’s response.

On the issue of the SOE questioning on when the photo of Sayed-Khaiyum and Saneem shaking hands was taken, Fijivillage says it had reported at the time that the FijiFirst General Secretary had come over to the National Results Centre to observe how things were progressing.

The station adds that it had said that Sayed-Khaiyum had shaken hands with the Supervisor outside the centre and then went to the Results Centre where other party representatives were also observing the process.

It confirms that the footage was taken by its 2018 elections camera crew.

Saneem says Fijivillage admitted that the photo was actually taken outside the Results Centre but the wrong caption remains.

He says the Count Centre was located in the carpark of the National Gymnasium while this photo is inside the National Gymnasium.

“ If Fijivillage had seen that the photo had been wrongly captioned since 2018, they ought to have issued an apology and a correction in any of the years post 2018 but they have failed to do so until they were pointed out during Monday’s press conference. The question is why now?” .