Fiji’s opposition has taken an early lead in the final ballot count after a preliminary tally was fraught with controversy.

Sitiveni Rabuka’s People’s Alliance party has garnered almost 55 per cent of the vote, compared to 22 per cent for Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama’s FijiFirst party from 13 per cent of voting stations.

The Social Democratic Liberal Party is on 8 per cent and the National Federation Party 5.

The other five political parties remain below the 5 per cent threshold of votes needed to qualify for a seat in the expanded 55-member parliament.

Opposition parties had raised concerns over the preliminary count after results changed dramatically when the election’s app was taken offline due to a glitch.

People’s Alliance had been ahead of FijiFirst. It swapped when the app came back online after a number of hours on Wednesday, election night.

The supervisor of elections said votes had been mismatched to candidates when being uploaded to the results app and caused some candidates to show an unusually high number of votes.

It was corrected when it was taken offline, wiped and data re-uploaded.

Mohammed Saneem said there had been no problems with the official voting data as the system used for the count was offline and data was plugged in after ballots were manually counted and numbers were verified.

He said while the app was down, a substantial number of polling stations reported their results, which is what updated the overall tally.

But Mr Rabuka and the leaders of three other opposition parties said they would refuse to be sworn into parliament if elected if there was no independent oversight of a recount.

All declined to express faith in the Fijian Elections Office.

Mr Rabuka – a former prime minister and 1987 coup leader – said he would write to the military commander and ask him to use his powers under the constitution to intervene.

Fiji’s constitution gives the military the responsibility “to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and Fijians”.

Fiji’s military commander has told his soldiers to respect the outcome of the election and said anything less would be an affront to democracy.

Asked if flagging military intervention would spark anxiety in a nation with a history riddled with coups, Mr Rabuka said it would not be a coup.

He said the military would be acting in line with the constitution if they accepted his proposal.

“It will be supporting the civilian system that is running,” he said.

“They will not come in to run the government, they will not come in to act as ministers.”

Both Mr Bainimarama – who came to power after instigating a coup in 2006 – and Mr Rabuka have garnered 13 per cent of the vote in Fiji’s single constituency.

This article was made possible through the Melbourne Press Club’s Michael Gordon Journalism Fellowship Program.

-AAP