The Peoples Democratic Party has conceded that the Fijian elections were free and fair.

Party leader Lynda Tabuya has distanced herself from the petition she earlier backed claiming electoral fraud.

The allegations in the petition were presented to the Electoral Commission and signed by political leaders Ro Teimumu Kepa (Social Democratic Liberal Party), Mahendra Chaudhry (Fiji Labour Party), Sitiveni Kalou (general secretary One Fiji party), Tupou Draunidalo (National Federation Party) and Ms  Tabuya for PDP.

The coalition of parties wanted the suspension of the counting process but did not provide any credible evidence of discrepancies.

Ms Tabuya said her party respected the decision of the Electoral Commission and the reassurance of a free and fair election.

Ms Tabuya said it was now up to individual parties to take their next step but as far as PDP was concerned she said they would respect the outcome of this election.

She thanked all the supporters who voted for the party and had believed in the party’s manifesto.

Ms Tabuya said the parties had been allowed very short time to campaign.

“The electoral decree didn’t come out till March and then there were a lot of changes from there, amendments about rules as to where we can campaign and how and what kinds of advertising we could do,” she said.

“It was challenging but our strategy really had been to cover the highly populated areas because of the election system since it is now based on the number of votes you receive.”

Ms Tabuya said it was unfortunate that PDP did not meet the threshold of five per cent but said it was not the end of the fledgling party.

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