The Fijian Elections Office [‘FEO’] would like to point out a major discrepancy in the statements coming from Fijivillage and their article yesterday published by Vijay Narayan titled “Saneem clarifies that the FEO will have workshops and meetings in any venue available to the FEO, Supervisor questions the motives of Fijivillage”.

In responding to the article, Supervisor of Elections Mr Mohammed Saneem says the picture in question, which is also attached to this press release, was published by the Fijivillage in 2018 where the caption by Fijivillage reads “Live from the Fiji Elections Office Counting Center”.

“The Fijivillage in their article yesterday admitted that the photo was actually taken outside the Results Centre. The Count Centre was located in the carpark of the National Gymnasium while this photo is inside the National Gymnasium. If Fijivillage had seen that the photo had been wrongly captioned since 2018, they ought to have issued an apology and a correction in any of the years post 2018 but they have failed to do so until they were pointed out during Monday’s press conference. The question is why now?” Mr Saneem said.

The FEO urges all media to report honestly and accurately.

“When it comes to the Fijivillage news, there seems to be a desperate urgency to publish, without balance or accuracy – most statements that are detrimental to the credibility of elections. The four (4) years of misleading its audience and the countless times the wrongly captioned picture has been circulated on social media is evidence of the irresponsible behavior of the news organization.”

-Ends-