The Acting Supervisor of Elections Mr. Soro Toutou has been invited to a one week study programme which will concentrate on the United Kingdom’s electoral system and administration.
Managing elections: Techniques and Perspectives by the Public Administration International (PAI) in London which is accredited by the British Accreditation Council for Independent Further and Higher Education is part of Fiji’s build up to elections in 2014.
With approval of the Attorney General, who is also the Minister for Justice and Electoral Reform, Mr. Toutou left the country on Friday 10/9.
He will pay a courtesy call to the Fiji High Commission in London before attending the programme from Monday 13/9/2010.
The study programme will at the same time draw on comparative experience from other countries in Europe, in particular the administering of the Proportional Representative (PR) List Voting System which is recommended in the Peoples’ Charter for Change.
The programme will be delivered by experienced speakers, including academics from United Kingdom universities, election administrators, public officials and election experts and consultants.
A key feature of the study programme will be visits to UK institutions where Mr. Toutou will meet with his counterparts and discuss election emerging challenges and managing tools.
After observing the recent one day election in the Solomon Islands as well as in Australia, Mr. Toutou said Fiji should not have any major problem with ONE DAY POLL or with the count to proceed immediately after that.
Apart from saving us millions of dollars, it is one way of discouraging voter fraud, impersonation, tampering with ballot boxes etc. But again it is the Government to make that call, not the Elections Office.
Nevertheless, in terms of operations, the three crucial elements of one day election are simply the right sizing of the Elections Office, capacity building and investment in information technology.
Mr. Toutou said that while Elections in Fiji is scheduled to be held in September 2014 after the anticipated reforms, there were still a number of electoral processes and activities that were best introduced and implemented in the early stages rather than towards the elections year, irrespective of what type of voting system Fiji would adopt.
This is important in order to spread the immense costs of preparing an election and also to minimise wastages and errors when election officials are pressured with time.
A good example would be to deal with voter registration process separately from the so called “election proper process” which entails the type of voting system we will adopt, constituency boundaries, polling and counting, etc.
Statistically, the voter population to be registered for the 2014 elections according to the last Census is approximately 680,000.
From January this year, elections officials have been visiting the remotest and furthest villages and settlements in the interior of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu that are not accessible by roads and likewise travelling to the islands conducting surveys and sites inspections in order to confirm the number and locations of Voter Registration Centres around the country.
Mr. Toutou said the visits and site inspections as such were essential in good planning to enable the Elections Office to manage the voters’ expectations better and adapt our strategies as far as possible to the needs and the locations of our voters while tailoring generally applicable best practice and international standards.
It is envisaged that Fiji will be having its first ever biometrics voter electoral database for both national and municipal elections by 2012 with only 20 or so months left, for the Elections Office to prepare for its complex elections-proper processes on the new voting system.