FLP queries credibility of poll results

Fiji Labour Party has questioned the credibility of the entire Count process and provisional poll results on the 2022 General Elections released by the Fijian Elections Office.

Leader Mahendra Chaudhry said a serious concern was the sudden announcement just before 11.30 pm last night by the Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem that the FEO Results App had suffered some technical glitch.

“Feedback we are receiving from IT experts appears to show considerable manipulation of data and interference with polling results,”  Chaudhry said in a statement.

“We call for a manual count and an independent and complete audit of the system in the interest of transparency.”

He further stated that this came at a crucial time when the Count showed the People’s Alliance Party leading the Count with 32,955 votes ahead of Fiji First with 18,468 votes.

“After the blackout period which lasted approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes, the results were completely changed with Fiji First in the lead with 132,037 votes compared to PAP 102,255 votes.”

He highlighted several serious discrepancies that arose in the case of the Fiji Labour Party.

“Our candidate Monica Raghwan was showing a count of 2383, but the provisional results put out after the blackout shows Ms Raghwan with a mere 106 votes. Where did 2277 of her votes disappear to?”

“Similarly, Miriama Cama had a count of 1068 votes before the blackout with 552 of 2071 stations counted. Currently, her votes have dropped to 165.”

“Now these are very serious discrepancies. How can votes decrease so markedly?”

At the time of the blackout with just 552 of the 2071 stations counted,  Labour was third in place with 6131 votes.

“After the blackout with half the polling stations still to be counted, our votes had merely gone up to 7957 and we had dropped to 5^th place.”

“We are receiving numerous calls from close friends, relatives, supporters who say they voted for Labour but it does not show in the results. Our candidates are also crying foul claiming the results do not accurately reflect their expectation of votes.”