PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Dr. Jon Fraenkel

Fiji in 2006 defied expectations in some ways, but ran to form in others. Things that were not anticipated surprisingly occurred, and things that widely expected to fail suddenly, at least temporarily, succeeded. Some things were predictable.

The 2006 election turned out to be a collision of landslides; two parties demonstrated that they were the undisputed representatives of their respective communities and took nearly all the seats. That much had been suggested by a string of earlier by-election results, and the weakness of centrist parties even back at the 2001 polls.

Less easy to envisage for those who lived through the 1987 or 2000 coups, was that the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces] would so turn against the government it had originally put into office. The electoral impact of that was probably to sharpen the communal fears that so characterised the 2006 polls.

Surprising also was that, in the wake of the 2006 polls, an electoral system intended to facilitate the emergence of multiple political parties came now to be defended as generating a robust two party system. One wonders whether that will remain so as the next election approaches, or whether the major political parties will revert to the more usual style of communal politics – seeking to sustain a united ethnically-based party representing one’s own ethnic group, while doing everything humanly possible to encourage the emergence of small splinter parties in the other ethnic group.

Unexpected, for many, was the formation of a multi-party cabinet. Most anticipated a repeat of the failures of power sharing after the 1999 and 2001 polls. Instead, the portfolios offered were substantial, and nine Labour members entered cabinet.

There was a subsequent reversal of previous roles; with Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase increasingly warming to the idea of a multi-ethnic government, and Labour Leader Mahendra Chaudhry, on last week’s Have Your Say on Fiji TV, responding to accusations of having an overly confrontational approach by saying that this was an accusation levelled in the past at many other ‘Indian leaders’.

Oddly, the 2004 Supreme Court decision allowing independents and senators to enter cabinet outside the constrained party formulas of section 99 of the constitution – worked reasonably well in the aftermath of the 2006 polls, at least in giving some greater flexibility to the government formation process (even if this encouraged the emergence of a costly and oversized cabinet).

But the problems ahead will be severe, unless the Labour ministers are able to show substantial political gains to the Indian community, for example over land leasing legislation or by amendments to the amnesty provisions in the RTU Bill. Growing economic difficulties also limit scope for manoeuvre to deliver the kind of broad improvements in living standards that might consolidate Indian support over the longer-run behind the new top-level institutional arrangements.

Unexpected, for many, was that the dispute in the ranks of the Fiji Labour Party would so quickly flare out into the public gaze.

We were told that this was about disagreements over whether former MP Vijay Singh would get a Labour ticket on the Senate. More broadly, it was an inevitable consequence of the difficulties Labour faced in adjusting to the new multi-party cabinet arrangements.

Without the FLP leader entering cabinet, the relationship with the party’s new ministers was always likely to be fraught with difficulties.

Power-sharing agreements are never simple; notorious failures occurred in Cyprus in the 1960s and Lebanon in the 1970s.

It is hard to imagine multi-party cabinet having worked well in South Africa if F.W. De Clerk had chosen to remain on the backbenches. Nor are Northern Ireland’s new arrangements ever likely to work effectively if Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams were to decline a position at Stormont preferring instead to look after the best interests of Sinn Fein or the IRA.

In the longer-run, one of three options seem most likely; either Fiji’s multi-party cabinet arrangement will fail, or the Labour leader will enter cabinet or there will eventually be a leadership change. In most other countries that have power-sharing arrangements, the leader of the minority party receives a deputy premiership (or presidency).

The calculus of Fiji politics is changing, but political visions have not yet altered sufficiently.

The changing proportion of the two ethnic groups has major repercussions in a country where race-based voting is strongly entrenched. And as more Fiji Indians than Fijians are emigrating, the arithmetic of demography is working relentlessly against the Fiji Labour Party. Might the ironic effect be to enhance inter-ethnic cooperation in government as the Fiji Indians, losing numbers all the time, recognize that power sharing offers the best chance of a place at the table?

More doubtful is whether communal solidarity can and will prevail, particularly amongst the Fijians, as the forces that bound both communities into a bipolar two party system dissipate. If it does not, the electoral mechanics and campaign strategies of future elections will be very different from 1999, 2001 and 2006.

That will complicate matters, and may - if one is hopeful - by that odd, long and painful route, make the victors in future elections those who are less steeped in the communal politics of the past.