Divided island

With the verdict in Fiji now in, it would be better if the country’s leaders left hardline rhetoric behind

Shubha Singh Fiji

After a stormy build-up to the general elections, Fiji’s electorate has given another five-year term to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase’s Soqsoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) party. But the results also show the sharply polarised nature of Fiji’s polity.

The initial rounds of counting predicted a close race that further fuelled rumours of political instability that had been generated in the pre-election period. When the results came in, however, the SDL had won 36 seats in a 71-member House of Representatives, while the opposition Fiji Labour Party received 31 seats. Two other seats went to a small party aligned with the Labour party and the two independent candidates elected gave their support to the SDL providing it a simple majority. 

Shortly after being sworn-in as prime minister for a second term, Qarase invited the leader of the Fiji Labour Party, Mahendra Chaudhry, to be part of his cabinet, in line with constitutional requirements. According to Fiji’s constitution adopted in 1997, any political party that wins 10 per cent of the seats in the House of Representatives has the right to be represented in the cabinet in proportion to its strength in the House. Chaudhry accepted the generous offer that allocated the Commerce, Environment, Health, Energy, Mineral Resources and Local Government portfolios to his party. 

It is a good beginning for the new government, for it moves away from the fractious experience after the 2001 elections when Qarase and Chaudhry went through protracted legal battles over the question of the Labour Party’s place in the cabinet. The courts held that Qarase was bound to invite the Labour Party to join and negotiations continued till Chaudhry finally decided three years later that the Labour Party would sit in the opposition. The entire controversy carried over the strains of the coup in 2000 when an armed gang opposed to the idea of an Indo-Fijian prime minister ousted Chaudhry’s one-year-old Labour government. The Fiji army had installed Qarase as interim prime minister. In the elections held a year later, Qarase defeated Chaudhry to form the government in September 2001.

Race is an integral part of Fiji’s elections since the constitution mandates a certain number of communal seats in order to give adequate representation to the main ethnic groups in the islands. The two major political groups largely represent the two main communities, the indigenous Fijians and the Indo-Fijians, people of Indian descent whose ancestors were brought to work in Fiji’s sugarcane plantations over 125 years ago. In the elections, each voter casts two votes, one for a constituency that is represented by that individuals own ethnic group known as the communal seat and one for an “open seat” that is open for contesting by all ethnic groups in the country. The 46 communal seats are divided between 23 indigenous Fijians, 19 Indo-Fijians, one Rotuman Islander (a small island dependency of Fiji) and 3 general electors.

Election time is when all kinds of hardline oratory gets aired in public. One Fijian leader suggested in the pre-poll debates that if Mahendra Chaudhry won, he should allow an indigenous Fijian Prime Minister to take over, citing the example of Sonia Gandhi in India. He hoped that the former prime minister would show good sense and humility like Sonia Gandhi and let the Fijian people rule their own country.  Prime Minister Qarase’s comments during the course of campaigning that indigenous Fijians were not ready to accept an Indo-Fijian as prime minister and it could lead to another coup had sparked off a controversy. Commodore Bainimarama reacted sharply to the comment, saying that the Fiji army would guarantee the stability of Fiji. The military chief had earlier taken strong exception to the government trying to bring in a bill that would have given amnesty to those involved in the coup and a mutiny in 2000.