Outcome depends on ethnic votes

Fiji’s electoral system is one of the world’s most complex. For while most elected bodies have but one class of seats, Fiji’s parliament has six. There are six kinds of ballot papers and each voter receives four, all colour coded, each dealing with a different class of seat.

No matter which major party or coalition runs the government, each Fiji elector is represented by four members, two certain to be of that voter’s ethnic background and two certain not to be from that community.

The system stems from the desire of the departing British colonial masters and their local allies to create a system of govern ment that would ensure that each of the three founding ethnic groups (Fijians, In dians and others) would be represented and also to ensure that whichever party or coalition forms the government would have substantial support from at least two of the three communities.

All of this is contained within a standard Westminster-style democracy in which the dominant group chooses the prime minister and forms the government. The British “first past the post” system of single member districts was also retained.

Then, to meet the long-term goals regar ding multi-cultural participation in Fijian politics, it was decided that parliament would be divided into two broad categories of seats and then into three sub-categories within each of the two main classes to make a total of six.

There are 52 seats 25 national and 27 communal. Voters from all ethnic groups elect the national MPs while only voters from the specific ethnic communities elect the communal members.

As a result the six classes of seats break down thus: Fijian National (10); Indian National (10); General National (5); Fijian Communal (12); Indian Communal (12); General Communal (3).

When a Fijian voter goes to the polls he has to make four decisions. He will vote for a Fijian to represent him in the Fijian communal seat, another Fijian to represent him in the Fijian national seat and an Indian and a member of the “general” population to represent him in the Indian and general constituencies.

And while the individual voter has to worry about four contests, the political parties and the civil servants who run the electoral machinery have to cope with all six classes of districts. To make matters harder (or perhaps more interesting), these six classes of districts are geographically overlapping.

This apparently tangled situation has been largely rationalised by the division

between the parties. The ruling Alliance Party has held a majority of the Fijian and General vote while the opposition National Federation Party (NFP) has had majority support among the Indian voters.

In fact a study of the 1982 general election results indicates that a knowledge of which ethnic group dominated a given electorate would have enabled accurate prediction of the outcome.

The communal seats were the easiest to pick: Alliance won all Fijian and all General seats; NFP won all Indian seats. Totals for the communal seats Alliance: 15, NFP: 12.

The 1982 national seats winners related directly to the ethnic majority in each case.

In five of the national Indian seats there were more Fijians and Europeans than Indians on the rolls. The Alliance won.

In the other five Indian national seats the reverse was the case and the NFP won.

Similarly, in the national Fijian seats a five-five split occurred while the five general seats divided three for Alliance and two for NFP again mirroring the ethnic make up of the voters. The totals for the national seats were: Alliance, 13; NFP, 12. Alliance won overall by 28 to 24.

However, in some pre-1982 elections the ethnic factor was not quite so obvious.

Every so often, Alliance won seats in districts with Indian majorities, for exam ple. But by 1982 Alliance took only those seats where Indian voters were outnum bered.

If anyone is over-represented by the system, it’s the general voters. In 1982 there were 6,800 of them compared to some 110,000 Indians and 120,000 Fijians.

So the general voters, with about 3 per cent of the votes, controlled 15 per cent of the seats. Although the most recent population figures show a few more Indians than Fijians (48.6 per cent compared to 46.2 per cent) a higher percentage of Fijians than Indians apparently voted in 1982.

The opposition coalition of NFP and Labour Party that is seeking to overthrow the long entrenched Alliance Party of prime minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara will, while holding on to the Indian vote, have to do one of two things: convert a majority of the general voters to their cause or make a substantial enough dent in Fijian solidarity so that eight of the ten Fijian national seats vote for the opposition. (This would, if the 1982 pattern was otherwise repeated, pro duce an opposition majority of 27-25).

An opposition party could also win by simply breaking the ethnic hold over Fijian politics, winning majorities in constituen cies dominated by both the major ethnic

groups.

David S. North.