By Staff Writer
The Electoral Commissioner Faimalomatumua Mathew Lemisio is hyped up as he leads the charge for the big moment his office has been primed to make since the last time Samoa went to the polls in 2016.
Following closely behind his directions are roughly 2,800 poll workers who will man the voting sites in the general elections.
There are many more with every action taken on the logistics of holding a major event of this size and magnitude.
Faimalomatumua is a lawyer by profession and his first general elections experience was the last one 5 years ago.
The 2021 General Election is his first as the commanding general of the whole operation that is about to be put to the final test in three weeks from now.
‘We’ve been under pressure since the 2016 general elections to prepare for this moment and what to expect and we’re very confident with our preparations,” the Electoral Commissioner quietly declared like a champion boxer fired up to do all his talking in the ring.
“We’ve been following a strategic plan for this since we started our build up and we’ve ticked off a lot of our targeted objectives, so we’re confident, excited and positive with our preparations.
“We’ve done all our training with our polling officials and will be getting together on the 29th of March to go over the whole election process for the last time.”
Most of the election workers are recruited from the public service they included many with previous election experience.
Faimalomatumua has been stoking the commitment of his vast army of election workers by urging them to take full advantage of the experience.
“This is a unique experience that only comes after every 5 years and you can never tell if you’ll make it to the next one.
“I’ve been telling everyone to embrace the moment with this general election.”
The OEC office has been very vigilant in keeping a tight watch on pre-election proceedings with the recent example of a recall of all pre-polling fill-in forms.
Staff were sent out to sit in with the voters while they fill application forms for pre-polling and hand them in.
The OEC office added commitment slammed on the face of attempts by candidates’ campaign supporters found to be trying to influence pre-poll voting.