War of words over Fiji election integrity

A war of words over the integrity of Fiji's electoral system has culminated in opposition parties calling for ballot counting to stop and for the military to intervene.

The leaders of four opposition parties said they would refuse to be sworn into parliament if elected if there was no independent oversight of a recount.

All declined to express faith in the Fijian Elections Office.

The issue started after the provisional tally uploaded to the election's result app was taken offline for a number of hours on election night on Wednesday.

People's Alliance leader Sitiveni Rabuka was ahead in the count and Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama's FijiFirst government was trailing significantly before it went offline.

Their positions had switched when it came back online.

Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem said there had been a glitch when data was transferred to the result's app and it mismatched results to different candidates.

Some candidates subsequently recorded an unusually high number of votes.

The data was then wiped and uploaded again.

A final count is being undertaken, with results due by Sunday.

Rabuka said the explanation was inadequate, with similar glitches or power outages that resulted in a boost to government votes at each of the past two elections.

He said the glitch and anomalies "calls into question the integrity of the whole system".

Rabuka says opposition observers sent the results from pink slips posted at all polling stations which show the provisional tally and the raw data doesn't match the current count.

Saneem hit back at the criticisms and accused the opposition of spreading misinformation.

He said while the app was down, a substantial number of polling stations reported their results, which is what updated the overall tally.

He challenged Rabuka to prove the number on the pink slips matched the early provisional data before the app was taken offline.

The election supervisor maintained no final voting tallies had been incorrect as the system used for the count is offline and data is plugged in after ballots are manually counted and numbers are verified.

Saneem said he had always been open that there could be errors in the provisional results, which are called in from voting stations.

But he maintained publishing them on election night was the right thing to do to give the nation confidence that counting was under way.

He said scrutineers from all political parties were allowed to observe the process and that People's Alliance had collected data from the centre.

"Conspiracy theories have gone to an extent where political leaders are coming up and asking for intervention in the electoral process simply because their own general secretaries failed to update them on what's going on," he said.

Rabuka - a former prime minister and 1987 coup leader - said he would also write to the military commander and ask him to use his powers under the constitution to intervene and oversee a fair count.

Fiji's constitution gives the military the responsibility "to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and Fijians".

Fiji's military commander has told his soldiers to respect the outcome of the election and said anything less would be an affront to democracy.

Asked if flagging military intervention would spark anxiety in a nation that's history is riddled with coups, Rabuka said it would not be a coup.

He said the military would be acting in line with the constitution if they accepted his proposal.

"It will be supporting the civilian system that is running," he said.

"They will not come in to run the government, they will not come in to act as ministers."

He said a caretaker prime minister, who isn't necessarily the incumbent, could be installed by the president.

The Multinational Observer Group said it was continuing to monitor the electoral process.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Fijian election "appears to have been conducted ... peacefully in an orderly manner".

This article was made possible through the Melbourne Press Club's Michael Gordon Journalism Fellowship Program.