Fiji parties say election count should stop after glitch

The leaders of four political parties contesting Fiji’s general election called for an immediate halt to vote-counting Thursday after the online results app experienced a glitch and then the next batch of results swung in favor of the incumbent prime minister.
The latest events threaten the Pacific nation’s delicate democracy, which has been marred by four military coups in the past 35 years. This election has pitted two former coup leaders against each other.
Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the first coup back in 1987, has emerged as the main challenger to Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who has held power for the past 16 years. After polls closed Wednesday night, Rabuka’s People’s Alliance Party was leading in preliminary results.
At around midnight, election officials announced they had found an anomaly in the app system used by the public to follow the election. When the next batch of results was posted on the app, Bainimarama’s Fiji First party was solidly in the lead.
Rabuka said he didn’t have faith in the vote count after the glitch, and that results from party observers at polling stations didn’t match those provided by election officials.