Fiji's military commander has declined to get involved in the electoral process after the leader of an opposition party wrote to him asking for intervention.
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People's Alliance leader and former coup commander Sitiveni Rabuka wanted the military to use its powers under the constitution to oversee a fair ballot count after alleging voting irregularities in the general election.
Major General Jone Kalouniwai said using the military in the electoral process would be unconstitutional, and he maintained faith in the system.
"I wish to reassure the people of Fiji that the RFMF (Republic of Fiji Military Forces) will not respond to Rabuka's insistence or any political party," Maj Gen Kalouniwai told Radio NZ.
Fiji's constitution gives the military the responsibility "to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and Fijians".
Rabuka said he accepted the commander's response and maintained the intervention would not be a coup because the army could not be running the government.
Rabuka has now taken an early lead in the final tally, attracting 43 per cent of the vote. He said he was feeling confident but wanted to wait until the final results were in and scrutinised.
Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama's FijiFirst is sitting on a third of the vote while the Social Democratic Liberal Party has seven per cent and the National Federation Party 6.5 per cent.
The other five political parties remain below the five per cent threshold of votes required to qualify for a seat in the expanded 55-member parliament.
Just under a quarter of polling stations have been counted.
Opposition parties had raised concerns over the preliminary count after results changed dramatically when the election's app was taken offline due to a glitch.
People's Alliance had been ahead of FijiFirst but this swapped when the app came back online after a number of hours on Wednesday, election night.
The supervisor of elections said votes had been mismatched to candidates when they were uploaded to the results app, causing some candidates to show unusually high numbers.
The glitch was corrected when the app was taken offline and wiped and the data re-uploaded.
Supervisor Mohammed Saneem said there has been no problems with the official voting data as the system used for the count is offline, and data is plugged in after ballots are manually counted and numbers are verified.
He said while the app was down, a substantial number of polling stations reported their results, which is what updated the overall tally.
The Fijian Electoral Commission said issues with the results app had been rectified and the final results being published were correct.
Speaking to media on Friday, Rabuka held up pictures of provisional voting tallies from polling stations he said didn't line up with the numbers in the app.
"We want and demand transparency and accountability, and we will settle for nothing less," he said.
Saneem said he had been open about the fact that provisional results could have discrepancies because they are phoned in, and tellers could mishear numbers. He stood by his decision to publish a provisional tally, saying it instilled confidence in the public to know counting was taking place.
But Rabuka and three other opposition party leaders say they can't trust the information published on the app and questioned the integrity of the data transfer from the manual vote count to online.
They will also refuse to be sworn into parliament if elected if there is no independent oversight of a recount.
All declined to express faith in the Fijian Elections Office.
The influential Methodist Church in the deeply religious nation has also expressed concerns over the integrity of the election.
The Multinational Observer Group says it has not observed "any significant irregularities or issues during pre-polling, postal voting or election day voting".
Co-chair and Australian MP Rebekha Sharkie said vote counting speed had slowed after additional safeguards were put in place after the glitch.
She expressed confidence in the ballot counting process when asked if there was any evidence to substantiate the opposition's claims.
The organisation's interim report noted the app is not used to count votes but only to publish results.
This article was made possible through the Melbourne Press Club's Michael Gordon Journalism Fellowship Program.
Australian Associated Press
