Counting for the Nakanai Open seat is progressing despite candidates petitioning the provincial electoral office over alleged irregularities in counting.
The petition highlighted the slow counting and elimination process, calling on the counting officials to step up and deliver a fair and transparent counting process.
The Provincial Returning Officer, Emily Kelton when receiving petition yesterday said in spite of this counting would go ahead.
Spokesperson, candidate Francis Marus, said they are concerned with instances of the figures not balancing and asked that the officials step up and deliver a transparent job or make a change to counting officials. “All we are asking for is they step up, get counters in there, sorters in there, do it properly for the people of Nakanai. If you can do two shifts do it properly. I was surprised to see there is many informal papers again coming up.’ He added, “We’ve come past this stage already. Why is there an oversight in there and informal papers coming up after polling check. Get your staff to step up do it properly for the people of Nakanai,”.
Candidate Dacca Wagai said the discrepancies should not occur as counting and quality checks had been done “Coming into the quality checks again figures were not balanced and until lately our scrutineers reported that there were more discrepancies as we were going through quality checks and elimination process. We candidates representing everyone we’re anxious to know what will happen.”
They presented their petition to be kept in the EC file for later reference so any of them wish to pursue the matter in Court.
Nakanai Returning Officer, Roland Popunurea said they had been either up or down by one figure, due to human error and omission. He said this had been corrected and counting can expect to progress orderly now to the declaration.
PRO Emily Kelton gave assurance that their concerns had been heard and she expects counting to progress smoothly until the declaration of results and for the return of writs