Fiji's main opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka says he doesn't have faith in the vote count underway from yesterday's general election, and will complain to the Fijian Elections Office (FEO).
Counting of the provisional votes in the elections result app was suspended late last night after the FEO reported a glitch.
After the app went back online, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama's Fiji First party had moved ahead of the main opposition party, The People's Alliance.
Mr Rabuka said the results published after the glitch did not line up with his own party's assessment of the count.
"I believe everybody is probably taken by surprise at the turn of events last night," Mr Rabuka said in a press conference this morning.
"We actually were ahead … but when the systems came back on, there was a big change, not in our favour."
He said he would petition Fiji's President Wiliame Katonivere over the matter.
The FEO advised of the issues with the election office's app, used by the public to track the early results, around midnight last night.
Elections supervisor Mohammad Saneem held a press conference, saying the FEO had detected an anomaly in the system.
"To cure this, Fijian elections office had to review the entire mechanism through which we were pushing our results," Mr Saneem said.
He said the glitch occurred during an upload of data to the mobile app, which caused a mismatch of some candidates' identification numbers between the data processing system and the mobile app.
This led to some candidates displaying an unusually large number of votes in the app, he said.
At one point a relatively low-profile candidate, Peceli Vosanibola, appeared to have garnered 15 000 votes in the early count – more than the Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama or his challenger Sitiveni Rabuka held at that time.
This morning the provisional count showed him with only 281 votes.
"What we had to do was we had to delete the data that had been published, and then we had to then re-upload the data on the app," Mr Saneem said.
The provisional result showed Fiji First with 45.88 per cent of votes at 7am, 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.
Early this morning the Fijian Elections Office announced it would abandon the provisional count, with votes from about 60 per cent of polling venues tallied, and move on to the final count.
Mr Rabuka said he would challenge that decision.
"We have no faith really in the recommencement of the count after the glitch," he said.
The People's Alliance claims photographs of results taken by party observers from polling venues across the country yesterday, did not align with the results published by the FEO this morning.
A multinational observer group led by Australia, India and Indonesia includes 90 election observers who are also monitoring the national vote counting centre.
Shailendra Singh, a political commentator and associate professor of journalism at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said the voter turnout of about 60 per cent 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.
Glitch stirs online controversy
Tess Newton Cain, project lead for the Griffith Pacific Hub, said while early results indicate a "very close" race, the low voter turnout "looks to have benefited Fiji First".
"What we don't know is what caused the turnout to be so low. However, it is still too early to know for sure what the final result will be," she said.
"We have already seen posts on social media from people raising questions about the glitch with the app.
"It may well have an impact on public confidence in the election and it will almost certainly have an impact on confidence in the Office of Elections and [Mohammad] Saneem as Supervisor."
'Peacefully and in an orderly manner'
In Palau for the final leg of a bi-partisan Pacific tour, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she would not comment "on the domestic policies of Fiji".
"We sent, at Fiji's request, representatives from our parliament to co-lead the multinational observer group," she said.
"It appears to have been conducted, and I can only speak from here, peacefully and in an orderly manner."
"We continue to support democracy and elections and an appropriate election process in Fiji and we're very pleased the multinational observer group was able to participate."
ABC/Reuters
