The Fijian Elections Office (FEO) hopes to correct misinformation shared about the election process by providing training videos and question and answer sessions for potential candidates.
An FEO statement stated during the 2014 and 2018 general election, only selected party officials received training provided by the FEO and not the candidates themselves.
This creates a lot of misinformation aired by the candidates who had not attended any such training because the party selected junior staff or non-contesting party officials to attend,” the statement read.
“To mitigate this, we will be conducting online training for all members of the public for any person who may be interested in becoming a candidate in the next general election from November 2021.”
The training videos would be 30 minutes long followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session.
“The training will be repeated every month until the general election is called so we encourage all citizens to go through the training so that they are aware of the information that candidates ought to know when they come to contest the election.
“Citizens can play a role in capacity building of candidates as well as in the event candidates are not aware of their own rights, roles and responsibilities during the campaign or other facets of the election.”
