Saneem defends electoral legacy in court testimony

Former Supervisor of Elections, Mohamed Saneem, has denied allegations of receiving a corrupt benefit when he appeared in court today.

Saneem is accused of requesting and receiving $55,944.03 in tax relief on his back pay from former Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

The allegation claims that Sayed-Khaiyum approved or waived additional taxes owed by Saneem without proper approval from the President or the Constitutional Offices Commission (COC).

At the time, Sayed-Khaiyum was acting as Prime Minister and chair of the COC.

In his testimony, Saneem gave a detailed account of his work at the Fiji Electoral Office (FEO). He said he developed training materials and guidelines that became the standard for the office.

He highlighted the success of the 2014 election, which had an 84 per cent voter turnout and only 0.75 per cent invalid votes.

Saneem explained how he expanded the office from four staff to 45, recruited specialised staff, and introduced new software systems to manage elections.

He also mapped all polling venues using GPS and developed an app to track election results, which was praised by regional election observers.

Saneem said his work also included civic education, encouraging young voters who had never voted before, and running small-scale elections, including trade union elections using touchscreen voting machines.

He defended his performance, saying that his contract required annual performance reviews which were not done, and that he acted in official capacities from 2019 to 2021 after his contract expired.

The prosecution questioned why Saneem did not address the issue with the COC and pointed out that the COC Secretariat had claimed to have no knowledge of changes made to the deed. Saneem responded that he did write to the Secretariat.

The case was adjourned to November 7 for closing submissions.