Cyclone Oma obstructs NGE nominations

The current bad weather has forced the Solomon Islands Electoral Commission to decide on creating additional nomination centres particularly for South Guadalcanal Constituency.

Chief Electoral Officer, Mose Saitala confirmed this afternoon.

He said candidates for South Guadalcanal Constituency can submit their nominations in Honiara at the Guadalcanal Province Headquarter.

Mr Saitala said Section 59 of the Electoral Act provides for this decision.

“We have to invoke that provisions under Section 59 (3) where the commission may declare a place outside the constituency to be a nomination place for the constituency, provided there is also at least one nomination place in the constituency. Now because of that we have invoked that power of the Commission yesterday to determine South Guadalcanal nomination centre,” he said.

“As I said as of yesterday we also received a lot of reports with regard to our candidates being stranded everywhere, stranded meaning they cannot reach a constituency where Returning Officers are allocated to file their nominations”.

Meanwhile, Mr Saitala said the Commission would determine a similar recommendation for other constituencies tomorrow.

“The Commssion will meet tomorrow at noon time to be able to consider the recommendations, but there is very likely to be the case that one; the Commission to consider the possibility of establishing nomination centres in provinces headquarters,” he said.

“In other words, pull back all our Returning Officers to the provincial headquarters to deal with those who are stuck at provincial headquarters and the other is also to allow us here in Honiara to open up centres as well for the same constituencies so that we can also receive nominations of candidates”.

By: Rickson Bau.