Suva : High voter turnout was reported Wednesday in Fiji’s first general elections since the 2006 military coup, a media report said. The country has a large ethnic Indian population.
Four polling booths across the country witnessed a 75-100 percent turnout, Fiji Live reported. More than 527,000 voters are eligible to cast their ballots.
Election supervisor Mohammed Saneem said the turnout was “encouraging”.
The Fijian Elections Office hopes to start receiving the provisional results late in the evening. Polling for the 50-seat parliament will close at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Ethnic Indians comprise 37 percent of Fiji’s population of nearly 870,000. Most of them are descendants of indentured labourers who were brought from India between 1879 and 1916 to work in the country’s sugarcane plantations.