News

UN to provide technical assistance during elections

April 10, 2012 7:00 pm

A United Nations Needs Assessment Mission is in the country to work on technical needs for the next general elections.

Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says the delegation is here on the invitation of the government.

“They are here to see what we require and their mandate is to try and ensure that our needs are met in terms of ensuring that we have a proper electoral system – they will go back and write a report as to what they believe should be done from a technical perspective and indeed there may be some countries that may wish to participate in ensuring that there is an electoral process that has integrity.”

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He says the previous elections had so many anomalies and the government will ensure that there is absolute transparency in the next elections.

“In the 2006 elections the EU observer group identified a number of fundamental flaws in the electoral process for example – one of the constituencies there was 101percent voter turnout so obviously there was a fraud- the Electoral Commission was not transparent in their process. There were invalid votes of approximately 10% so the Bainimarama government believes that in order for any elections to be held, there needs to be integrity within the process.”

The Mission is expected to complete their work on Friday.