Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who is also the Elections Minister and the General Secretary of the ruling FijiFirst party, has introduced a controversial bill to amend legislation to increase the powers of the nation's elections chief.
It comes as parliament sits for its final session this week ahead of the 2022 general elections to be held before the end of the year.
The proposed changes to the Electoral Act 2022 is "necessary…to avoid any potential procedural conflicts under the Act" and to "empower the supervisor of elections to obtain relevant information and documentation," Sayed-Khaiyum said while introducing the bill to parliament.
Wylie Clarke Photo: Fiji Law Society
But the Fiji Law Society (FLS) said it was "deeply concerned about the proposed amendments".
"The Society's particular concern is that the bill unnecessarily attacks citizens' rights to privacy, including the legal professional privilege," FLS president Wylie Clarke said on Wednesday.
"The amendment would give to the Supervisor of Elections power to compel any person to provide him all or any information or documents on virtually any pretext. Citizens must hand over information 'notwithstanding the provisions of any other written law on confidentiality, privilege or secrecy'."
Clarke said the changes work against established legal conventions and "erode civil rights protections".
"The attack on legal professional privilege is particularly serious," he said.
"If this privilege is taken away, people cannot take advice on their legal rights and cannot exercise them to the fullest extent and may end up breaching laws," he said.
If the amendments are passed into law, people will not be able to appeal any decision made by the elections supervisor except to the Electoral Commission "which is final and cannot be further appealed to or reviewed by any court," Clarke said.
The Law Society wants the government to withdraw the controversial bill and spend more time considering its implications.
Elections supervisor 'almost like a God'
With the Fijian elections looming, there are concerns the government is using its majority numbers to push through another significant amendment to stifle political competition.
National Federation Party leader Biman Prasad said Fiji has a history of draconian electoral laws.
"These are things that in a good democracy a government will discuss with other political parties or at least the opposition," Prasad said.
He said the supervisor of elections Mohammed Saneem "is almost like a God now".
"So many powers have been given to the Supervisor of Elections and a lot of the decisions that the Supervisor makes cannot be even challenged in the court of law," he said.
"This bill should be withdrawn."
It is expected that the bill will be passed into law on Thursday.
