for Fiji's voters

A new alternative for Fiji's voters

By Sophie Foster Hildebrand

WHEN Fiji hits the polls between May 8-15 this year, it will have been 12 years since the military coup stopped democracy in its tracks. During those dozen years since, Fiji has gone through a turbulent and emotionally draining period attempting to claw its way back to the post-coup racial har mony.

On the tenth anniversary of that fateful day, coup leader and current prime minis ter Sitiveni Rabuka said: “I do not expect human beings to forgive me and my sol diers who were with me during the coups.

It is not easy to forget but let us learn from what happened and why it happened”.

He said “the situation that led to the events of 1987 could have been avoided and I am satisfied and convinced that a government of a country has a clear responsibility to ensure that harmonious co-existence exists in the country and open conflict does not arise. And that harmo nious co-existence will survive any politi cal change, any leadership change”.

A dozen years since the coups - the army long since pardoned - Fiji looks to have come of age and seems set to take a new tack.

On the verge of another General Election, Fiji is this time armed with a new constitution and several major multi-ethnic political alliances.

While the transition from 1987 to 1999 has been a long and rocky one, fraught with difficulties, the result seems astound

ing.

In a move that would have been unthinkable just after the coup, political parties are now aligning themselves with parties of other ethnic backgrounds in a bid to get into the country’s highest governing

body.

All of this is because of the alternative voting system that will be implemented for the first time during the country’s general elections next month.

The biggest alliance, in terms of current members of parliament, is that of the Soqosoqo Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT),

NFP and the United General Party (UGP).

These three parties are led by the out going prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka, out going opposition leader Jai Ram Reddy, and UGP’s David Pickering.

After signing the coalition agreement between the parties in mid-March, Pickering said: “The coalition is going into this election to win a decisive mandate and form the Fiji Islands first truly multi racial government”.

The other big alliance is that of the Fijian Association Party, the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) and the Party of National Unity (PANU). This alliance is led by Adi Kuini Speed, who is a member of the Great Council of Chiefs, Mahendra Chaudhry (FLP) who is also head of the Fiji Public Service Association, and Apisai Tora

(Panu).

Rabuka has called the new system of elections “truly democratic”.

Under the alternative system, an elec toral candidate has to gain 50 per cent plus one to win a seat.

“Clearly,” says Rabuka, this “would be in the national interest”.

The person in the hot seat at the moment, Fiji’s Supervisor of Elections, Walter Rigamoto, says the preferential vot ing system works well where parties col laborate in the lead-up to the elections.

“The idea is that the different political parties work with parties of other ethnic groups and it is trying to break the barrier of race. For example, in the open seats unless you are voting with the other group ings, if you are a Fijian party and unless you are working with an Indian as well as a general voter group, your chances are not particularly healthy because you need everybody’s vote,” he says.

However, coalitions do not need to be formal to succeed.

“A coalition would work just as well as any other party that is not coalescing with any other party formally but working closely with other parties in trading prefer ences for example. I suppose the answer is that you do not really need to have a for mal coalition to succeed but you would probably do better by having one. But other parties that work closely with other ethnic parties would also do just as well if they do their homework,” he says.

In the last Australian elections, it seemed that Pauline Hanson would cer-

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tainly get into parliament. However, although she won more votes on first pref erence than other candidates, she lost on the second preference counts. Rigamoto says that case is a lesson for Fiji. “You should, for example in an open seat, appeal to everyone across the board. It also stresses the fact that every preference counts. You are not only looking at the first, you are looking at the second, the third, all the pref erences in that particular constituency,” he says. Under the new system, which is simi

lar to that of Australia, voters mark their preferences for each candidate. If no candi date has attained 50 per cent plus one upon the counting of the first preferences, then the individual (Person X) with the least number of first preferences is dropped. The second preferences that have been listed on Person X’s supporters’ ballots are added to other candidates that have won them.

Rigamoto says a person’s vote now “goes further than just one, if you like, your vote now has greater value”. But while the can didates are busy on last-minute campaign

ing, the Elections Office has an even bigger task - with compulsory registration of vot ers, compulsory voting, new boundaries and additional open seats. Rigamoto says there are no particular trends for Fiji to follow and as such each step has to be analysed carefully “to make sure we do not get caught during the polling period”. In the past, voters had one designated polling sta tion depending on which area they lived in.

Under the new national regime, however, you could go to two or more polling sta tions. Some voters, he says, can go to twen ty polling stations. Under the previous sys tem, Fiji used to have about 570 polling sta tions. This number has increased 32 per cent to slightly over 750. The reason for this, says Rigamoto, is compulsory voting - “I think it is unfair for us to try to prosecute someone for not voting if we have not made it accessible to that person”. He says it would only take 15 per cent of voters not turning up and it would mean his office would have to pursue about 60,000 people.

The Elections Office has given itself four days to count votes from 71 constituencies.

To do that, there will be three eight-hour shifts of staff operating over 750 polling stations to get in the votes. Another histori cal aspect of the upcoming election is that, for the first time, how-to-vote cards will be allowed into the polling booths. In the past, no campaigning was allowed past a line 50 metres from the booths. According to Australian statistics have found that 90 per cent of people followed the how-to-vote cards issued by their political parties.

Because of this, and the fact that Fiji’s vot ers are used to one tick in the past, Fiji has adopted a similar set-up. In their education al campaigns, the Elections Office is telling Fiji’s voting public the general rule: tick once above the line or mark all below the line. ■