[Al Jazeera] Frank Bainimarama, a former coup leader, is on the verge of becoming Fiji's first elected leader in eight years, as international observers give the ballot a stamp of approval.With 70 percent of the vote counted as of Thursday, the incumbent prime minister's Fiji First Party had 60.1 percent, well clear of its nearest rival, the Social Democratic Liberal Party (Sodelpa) on 26.7 percent.
"This was a credible election," said a statement from the 92-member panel drawn from 13 countries around the world as well as the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
"While counting is ongoing and the results are yet to be finalised, we assess that the outcome is on track to broadly represent the will of the Fijian voters."
The election was conducted "in an atmosphere of calm, with an absence of electoral misconduct or evident intimidation".
Australia and New Zealand, who led global condemnation of Bainimarama following the coup, described the ballot as a "significant event".
"All early indications are that the conditions were in place for the people of Fiji to exercise their right to vote freely," Murray McCully, New Zealand's foreign minister, said.
Although Bainimarama was accused of human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
abuses and the Pacific nation subjected to international sanctions after he seized control in a 2006 coup, Brij Lal, a Fiji political analyst based at the Australian National University, said the outcome was no surprise.
"He had all the advantages of incumbency, name recognition, a public profile, media on his side, campaigning on the public purse, and a desire on the part of the voters for stability, which he promised," Lal told AFP news agency.