Fiji election back on track after shaky start

SUVA, May 8: Voting in Fiji's racially charged election resumed today as officials sought to assure voters opening day glitches would not affect the outcome, but observers feared that the real trouble may come after ballots are cast.

Some minor problems were reported but there was no repeat of the chaotic start to the week-long poll on Saturday, when thousands of voters waited for hours because ballot boxes and papers were late arriving. Some voters were turned away.

Those problems added to a tense build-up to the election made worse by a public slanging match between Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and the South Pacific nation's outspoken military chief.

The poll pits Qarase, an indigenous Fijian, against ethnic Indian challenger Mahendra Chaudhry, who was ousted as prime minister in a 2000 coup by armed nationalists.

Both have predicted they will win a majority in the 71-seat parliament but vote counting will not start for another week.

Election Supervisor Semesa Karavaki has fended off Chaudhry's calls for his resignation and said the poll was progressing smoothly.

''All the things that happened on the first day, we've put behind us,'' Karavaki told a news conference.

Analysts and international observers agreed the problems were unlikely to affect the result but some were worried by reports from polling stations that an unknown number of would-be voters were turned away because their names were not on electoral rolls.

''Until returns are in it's hard to know because we've got no indication of the size,'' Graham Hassall, head of an 18-member University of the South Pacific election observation team, said of the missing names.

''I don't think it threatens the legitimacy (of the election) because I don't think it was done intentionally,'' he told reporters in the capital Suva. Hassall feared that Fiji's worst election problems will come after the vote because of the racial tensions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians, whose ancestors were brought to work British sugar cane farms from the late 1800s.

''The question here is not who the winner will be, it's what the loser will do, whether they'll abide by the decision,'' Hassall said.

Racial tensions have resulted in three coups by indigenous nationalists against Indian-dominated governments since 1987.

Indigenous Fijians make up 51 percent of the 906,000 population and fear that the economic clout of Indians, who dominate the sugar- and tourism-based economy, will be matched by political might.

Military chief Frank Bainimarama warned candidates not to incite racial hatred after the prime minister said during campaigning that Fiji was not yet ready for an Indian leader.

He and Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes have also warned they will not tolerate a repeat of the 1987 and 2000 coups.

''We are not going to allow some radical elements who decided they don't like the outcome of the democratic process and they're going to take the law into their own hands and change it. No, that's not going to happen,'' Hughes told reporters.

He said no serious security incidents had been reported since voting began.

The election is run over seven polling days because of the difficulty in transporting ballot boxes and papers to and from Fiji's 320-odd islands, about a third of which are inhabited. A result is expected to be announced on May 18.

REUTERS