(Reuters) – The ruling Fiji First party led provisional results, boosted by a 31.42% vote for Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, with half of polling stations counted in the Pacific island nation after Wednesday’s national election.
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 race-based voting system.
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% of votes at 7 a.m. Thursday, ahead of the People’s Alliance Party with 32.66% of votes, while the National Federation Party had 9.29% of votes.
With 1,238 out of 2,017 polling stations counted, Bainimarama had garnered 31.42% of all votes in Fiji’s proportional representation system, where there is a single constituency, and Rabuka had 16.34% of votes.
On Thursday morning in the National Results Centre, Fiji’s election commissioner, Mohammed Saneem, demonstrated to media a “double blind data entry” system that is being used for the final count, which began Thursday.
The final result will be known on Sunday, he said, adding that it was a “rigorous system” intended to prevent errors.
Technical problems plagued the election office’s app, used by the public to track the provisional result 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 2 a.m. 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.
Voter turnout was less than 60%, 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.
Shailendra Singh, a political commentator and associate professor of journalism at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said the voter turnout was the lowest since Fiji’s constitution was reformed in 2013. The rising cost of living and the economy were major issues for voters, he said.
Bainimarama’s Fiji First supporters campaigned on stability and progress, while the opposition said national debt was too high and questioned the state of democracy, he said.
A multinational observer group led by Australia, India and Indonesia includes 90 election observers who are also monitoring the national vote counting centre.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Leslie Adler)
