The Fijian Elections Office (FEO) yesterday made submissions on the Electoral Amendment Bills 2021 to the Standing Committee on Justice, Law and Human Rights.

Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem, while making the submission, described Fiji’s current electoral framework as follows: “The first law introduced for elections since 2006 was the 2012 Electoral Registration of Voters Act followed by the 2013 Political Parties (Registration, Conduct, Funding and Disclosures) Act. In September 2013, the Constitution of the Republic of Fiji brought into effect the modified version of the Open List Proportional Representation system, single Constituency, single voter list and the concept of one person one vote one value was enshrined in the highest law of the land.

“In 2014, the Electoral Act came in and more features of the electoral system were finalised such as ‘One-day voting’ followed by counting at the polling station, introduction of multiple stations at each polling venue, the rule that voters can only vote at the polling station they are assigned, overnight provisional results and the widely used d’hondt system for calculating seats in Parliament,” he said.

Mr Saneem said Parliament had amended the laws previously in 2017 in line for the 2018 General Election.

In summary, there are 56 clauses proposed to be amended which includes 11 clauses in the Electoral (Registration of Voters) Act, 2012, 31 clauses in the Electoral Act, 2014 and 14 clauses in the Political Parties (Registration, Conduct, Funding and Disclosures) Act, 2013.

“To the Chair and members of the committee, you will notice from the amendments, the amendments introduced what I would say is the settling down of the laws that are there making it more mature, more functional and with greater coverage of the processes in order to ensure there is legitimacy to the activities of the FEO,” Mr Saneem said.

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