The ruling Fiji First party led provisional national election results, boosted by a 31.42 per cent vote for Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, with half of polling stations counted in the Pacific island nation after Wednesday’s vote.
Bainimarama, who came to power in a coup 16 years ago, is contesting his third democratic election since reforms to Fiji’s constitution in 2013 scrapped a system that drew distinctions between the votes of indigenous Fijians and its large ethnic Indian population.
He is in a tight race against another former coup leader and one-time Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, whose People’s Alliance Party has formed a coalition with Fiji’s oldest political party, the National Federation Party.
The provisional result showed Fiji First with 45.88 per cent of votes at 7am Thursday, ahead of the People’s Alliance Party with 32.66 per cent of votes, while the National Federation Party had 9.29 per cent of votes.
With 1,238 out of 2,017 polling stations counted, Bainimarama had garnered 31.42 per cent of all votes in Fiji’s proportional representation system, where there is a single constituency, and Rabuka had 16.34 per cent of votes.
Technical problems plagued the election office’s app, used by the public to track provisional results on Wednesday evening. It had shown a People’s Alliance Party candidate leading, before the app was taken offline for several hours and returned at 2am to show Fiji First ahead.
The election office said mistakes had been made transferring data to the app, which had incorrectly boosted some candidates vote.
Rabuka told reporters at a press conference on Thursday his party was “not satisfied with the outcome after the break, after the glitch last night” and is writing to the Supervisor of Elections, the army commander and Fiji’s president.
On Thursday morning, Fiji’s election commissioner, Mohammed Saneem, demonstrated to media a “double blind data entry” system being used to avoid errors in the final count.
The final result will be known on Sunday, he said.
Voter turnout was less than 60 per cent, which analysts said was the lowest in a decade.
Bainimarama has a high international profile for climate change advocacy and chaired the Pacific Islands Forum, the regional diplomatic bloc, as it sought this year to manage rising security tensions between the United States and China.
A multinational observer group led by Australia, India and Indonesia includes 90 election observers.
Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong told reporters Fiji’s election appeared to have been conducted “peacefully and in an orderly manner”.
