Long-Term Fiji poll observer impressed

Transcript

One of the long-term observers of the Fiji election says his month long travels around Fiji in the run up to polling day gave him a detailed picture of the election environment.

The former New Zealand parliamentarian and deputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech was among a multi national team of observers who have found the election to be generally credible.

Mr Creech told Sally Round in Suva that he travelled to remote islands and towns around Fiji, scrutinising early voting too.

WYATT CREECH: There will always be mechanical issues, things not done quite properly. But overall, you have to take a balanced judgement. I think it was a very credible election. They put a lot of effort into creating a system of one type of vote for the whole country and everywhere I went, even the most remote villages, the people understood that they had one vote, and it was for a number, and most of them knew the number of the candidate they were going to vote for. The Fiji Elections Office put a lot of effort into education, voter education, and that had obviously paid off. I thought it was a credible election and a credible outcome.

SALLY ROUND: There have been complaints about the freeness and fairness in the run-up to the polls, you were in the run-up a month before. What do you think of those criticisms?

WC: Whenever we got a criticism, we went and talked to the party, we talked to the political parties all the way through. We said produce evidence. Often it was more a feeling that they were being subjected to an unfair media environment. I mean, no one can say that everything was perfect, it's a developing country, super challenging country to hold an election logistically because there are so many islands, so many villages, poor communications, so difficult to move anything around, lots of areas have to be served by speed boats. I think they made a pretty good effort given how difficult it would be to do. It's a huge step forward from where they had been, which is a military regime.

SR: One of the criticisms was this sort of restrictive media environment. So in for example the Lau group, how did perhaps the lack of media affect the election process out there?

WC: Well they couldn't really say that there was bias media out there, because there is no media out there, no traditional media. But the village chiefs and the village people when I met with them all seemed to understand what they were going to do. I didn't think the media in the remoter parts of Fiji really had much influence on anything, it was all word of mouth. But in Suva, the Fiji Sun clearly supports the government, the Times was a much more contesting kind of publication.

SR: Do you think in those urban areas where there is more media access, do you think a restrictive environment affected those areas at all?

WC: It's really hard to say. We didn't see any evidence of it affecting voter behaviour, they went ahead and voted, they voted 84 percent, of the people voted, it is a very high turnout. I didn't see particular evidence of them being persuaded, but it's hard to know in this environment how much impact those sorts of things have. But I think most people would say that Fiji must be very careful now to make sure it maintains an open environment that is consistent with a democratic government, because they will find it hard to get people outside to recognise the quality of democracy. I was surprised when I was in these places how pleased people were that observers were here, international observers, how much they appreciated New Zealand's involvement. They saw us as a guarantee that the government wouldn't do anything obviously wrong. Because if we saw it, we would have reported it.

SR: And did you see anything that was obviously wrong?

WC: Nothing that I would class as more than minor. There were always people forgetting to count the thing correctly and going back and doing a bit of a correction, but that was rare. Nothing that I would class as sufficiently significant as to cause any kind of alarm or response.

SR: And what about say, for instance, in the Lau group, where there was concern that pre-polling was sprung on people by surprise?

WC: I think there was concern that pre-polling was sprung on people all over the country. They didn't get much notice of pre-polling. I think that is one area they can improve in the future. But in the Lau group, it is even more difficult. They were told they were going to pre-poll, but it was done by a boat that was travelling around the islands and it was really hard to predict what time they would be anywhere, because they lost one day with the bad weather. And you know, you can't do anything about that. But it didn't seem to matter. Lomaloma village where I was that night, they were just told that the boat is not coming this afternoon at 4 o'clock afterall, it hopes to get there tomorrow morning. And the boat got in about 11 o'clock at night, and we went and saw and checked that the polling papers were being protected on the boat. The word that the vote would be held the next morning spread round the village just like that. Great word of mouth communicators.

SR: How do you think, from all your travels around the country talking to all these people, how do you think people feel about this election and how do they feel about going forward?

WC: I think they are very positive about having an election. A lot of the tourist operators in the remoter parts of Fiji told me that they don't really have anything to do with coups, but every time there is a coup, they lose business and they feel by having a democracy they protect themselves from that kind of threat on their livelihoods. I found that people are very positive about the election. And we are now a few days after the election, but even the day after the election, the town of Suva was as calm as can be. It would be hard to know that there had been a big event the night before.