Four parties including FijiFirst, We Unite Fiji, All People’s and New Generation have been suspended and cannot operate or function as a political entity unless they present audited financial statements to the acting Registrar of Political Parties.
A statement issued by the Fijian Elections Office (FEO) yesterday stated the four parties had a 30-day suspension and 60 days to either present the required documents or face deregistration.
Under Section 26 (2) of the Political Parties Act 2013, all registered political parties are required to submit audited records of its income, expenditure, asset and liabilities within three months after the end of each financial year.
Acting Supervisor of Elections Ana Mataiciwa said all political parties were given a one month extension to submit all accounts and other disclosures by April 29 this year.
“However, until today, the four named parties have not complied with these requirements,” Ms Mataiciwa said.
During the 30-day suspension, all four cannot operate, function, represent or hold itself out to be a political party.
At the time this newspaper contacted FijiFirst general secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum yesterday, he confirmed receiving the email notifying the party of the suspension.
“I’ll respond to you because we’re just studying what they’ve written to us,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“I’ve just seen the press release also. We’ve found a number of anomalies, but we’ll get back to you, we’re just looking at it at the moment.”
Meanwhile, FEO also confirmed that an additional notice was sent to all four parties to submit their list of sources of funds.
FEO revealed the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) and The People’s Alliance (PA) had not submitted their list of sources of funds either.
Ms Mataiciwa said that any party that failed to submit its sources of funds was liable to a penalty of $100 for each day the non-compliance continued.
If this remained non-compliant after 30 days, the party must be deregistered.
As of now, the 30-day period will end on May 29.
SODELPA leader Viliame Gavoka confirmed that the party was in the process of completing the list “any day now”.
The People’s Alliance general secretary Sakiasi Ditoka said they were working to rectify the oversight.
“We had submitted our audit report as required by law and as part of the notes, we had also submitted the list of our sources of funds and we thought that would suffice,” he said.
He said the acting SOE thought otherwise and they respected her decision.
“We will submit it in a separate report.”
(* Additional reporting by SHAYAL DEVI)
