19 Apr 2006

Fiji political parties declare their election preferences

10:44 am on 19 April 2006

Smaller political parties and independents fighting Fiji's general elections have mostly given their preferences to the new National Alliance Party of Fiji.

The Daily Post reports that as the deadline for filing preferences closed at midnight last night, the National Alliance Party had received preferences from the Social, Liberal and Multicultural Party, the Coalition of Independent Conservatives, the Justice and Freedom Party and independents.

The Fiji Labour Party will be sharing its preferences with its coalition partners, the United People's Party and the Party of National Unity.

The National Federation Party has shared its preferences with both Labour and the SDL in individual constituencies, while also giving high preference to women candidates and independents.

The ruling SDL has given some of its preferences to its own members in constituencies where it is fielding two candidates while distributi8ng others to those closely aligned to it.

Under Fiji's electoral system, the distribution of preferences is important because they are counted when no one candidate has an outright win with 50% or more of the votes at the end of the first count.