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The Changed Guard in Fiji
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13270 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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10 / 1987 |
3,070 Words |
| Author
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W. Theo Roy
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When the British withdrew from Fiji in 1970 at the ebb tide of colonialization, they left behind a constitution on the Westminster model, a viable economy, a civil service, a police force, and a small standing army - but a population vastly different in composition from the one they found in 1874. In this fact lie the seeds of Fiji's present disturbances.
In 1879 the first shipload of Indians arrived. That shipload was followed by many more over the years as the British responded to the need for plantation labor, until the abolition of the system in 1920. Out of a total of 60,969 Indians, an estimated 12,000 returned to India, but the rest remained to form the basis of the Indian component of Fiji's society. Currently, of the 715,000 inhabitants of Fiji, 48 percent are Indians and 46 percent are native Fijians.
The Fijians, though reluctant to let their imperial protectors go, eventually faced up to political reality. Having found a replacement for the deceased Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna (the respected former leader of a separate Fijian administration) in the person of Ratu (now Sir) Kamisese Mara (a New Zealand- and Oxford-educated high chief from the Lau group), they founded the Alliance Party in 1966. Its composition and backing was primarily Fijian, although it also included various groups of Pacific Islanders resident in Fiji, Europeans and part-Europeans, and Chinese.
Meanwhile in 1965, immigrant lawyer A.D. Patel completed the foundation for an Indian-based Federation Party with an apparatus reminiscent of the Indian National Congress, and with himself as its president. For the first time electoral battle lines were clearly drawn in time for elections on a wide franchise, granted by the 1965 London Constitutional Conference and held in 1966.
The Alliance won 22 seats to the Federation's 9 and was further strengthened by the presence of two nominees of the Council of Chiefs and three independents. Thus regulated to a position of political impotence, Patel retaliated by staging a walkout in September 1967, in consequence of which the Federation forfeited its seats. Subsequently, a by-election was called. Once again Federation candidates won all nine seats in September 1968. This underlined the racial bases of the parties and, by implication, set the conditions under which the preindependence constitutional conference of May 1970 took place in London.
The constitution devised there for an independent Fiji was a monument to the determination of its makers to maximize the possibility of achieving fairness of representation for all communities. It did this by voting on a common roll for 25 of the 52 seats in the Lower House, while retaining a communal franchise for the remaining 27 seats. The paramountcy of Fijian interests was protected by the composition of the Senate, of which the largest component was a group of eight nominees of the Great Council of Chiefs. They virtually had the power of veto, particularly if any changes were proposed in those sections of the constitution that protected Fijian land and customary rights.
Since independence, Fiji has held five general elections - one in 1972, two in 1977, one each in 1982 and 1987. The voting pattern and contesting parties in the first four provide interesting indicators of the state of Fijian politics. In particular, 1977 saw a hung parliament which demonstrated the
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