Voters Transfer

While Nauru’s political game has peaked, new candidates for the next general election are spending lots of money to transferring voters from one constituency to another to pave their way into parliament. Targeted group are those who have just reach the eligible age for voting, since they still have the choice to decide where they want to cast their vote for the first time.

The Government office is packed for over the past two weeks from 9:00am to 5:00pm, and campaign managers are rallying around Nauru collecting people who are willing to sale their votes for money. This has been a practise in Nauru since the past general elections and today it is still pouring. While the vote lobbying and other campaign strategies have been considered by the candidates, some people feel very disappointed since their transfer applications have been rejected, for not satisfying the requirements of the Electoral Act 1965 recently amended in 2012 and in forced under parliament resolution. 

The act states that voters are only allowed to apply for a transfer to their respective birth district, or to the district in which they’ve been living in for the past 2 months. Some people call this system corrupt, but in fact the system is introduced to resolve the issue of vote sale fundraisers after the occurrence in the last general election in 2010, where people were transferred today to another constituency and the next day being re-transferred again to another and so forth.

This problem has caused problem in the poll, while others may have been playing with the transfer system ended up having two to three names in two to three separate constituency. Today, the government has tightened up their belts and making sure that any breach of the amendment act will be penalized.