for Fiji?

Compulsory voting for Fiji?

Reports on the Fiji elections may seem redundant in view of later events, but I must take issue with your Suva cor respondent’s article on Fiji’s electoral system in the May number of PIM.

Many of his criticisms of electoral administration are valid and will require urgent attention when parliamentary democracy is restored. One must also sympathise with the call for compulsory registration.

However, compulsory voting is a very different matter. It is not simply a technique for getting the idle to the polls, but impinges directly on the indi vidual’s relationship to govern ment. Many would argue that our right to abstain from voting

is as essential a component of democracy as the vote itself.

Significant variations in turnout from one election to the next can tell us things about the performance of a political sys tem which are lost when abstention becomes an offence.

In other words, compulsory voting is a complex question which raises major constitutio nal issues and deserves the most serious and extensive con sideration. It would be un fortunate if it slipped on to the agenda for public debate under the guise of a simple proposal to tighten up the electoral reg ulations.

John Chick,

University of Queensland, Queensland.