Statement by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission
Mr Mukesh Nand
2022 EVP Welcome Dinner
Suva – 12.12.22
Supervisor of Elections
Staff of FEO
Bula Vinaka and a very warm welcome to you all.
It is my pleasure and honour to welcome you all here today on behalf of the people of Fiji, the Electoral Commission and the Fijian Elections Office. A special welcome to all the dignitaries from the Pacific region who are participating in this program.
Ladies and gentlemen, at the outset I would like to say that our Election Visitor Program is an effort of the Electoral Commission and the Fijian Elections Office to share our elections experience with our friends and families from the pacific as well as the citizens of Fiji.
We want to be able to demonstrate to you the activities that we do under our elections and thereafter seek your views on the comparative learnings we can do from this.
In no way, our intention to put our elections forward as a model or a standard. However, we simply want to share our experience with our friends so that we can all work together to continue to nurture the democratic elections that we all have in our countries.
I would like to welcome all of you who have come from afar, and especially welcome the citizens of Fiji who are also participants in this program through the expression of interest exercise. We thank you for your interest in your election and we look forward to you having a productive time whilst in this program. For some of you, this maybe the very first time you actually see how the operations in an election happen and I wish you all the best in your learnings.
I would like to acknowledge the organizers of the event, Eric and his team with the humble support of the New Zealand Electoral Commission and the Australian Electoral Commission in putting together this program and I would like to thank the British Government and the United Nation Development Program for financially supporting this program and the activities.
On this note, I would like to acknowledge the initiative taken by the Fijian Elections Office to conduct the Election Visitor Program and I wish you all the very best.
Thank you very much for coming to Fiji and I wish you a safe stay and an enjoyable one
Vinaka.