(-/o+) The Present Fiji Electoral System: Where Some Votes Count Three to Four Times more than others
28 Jan. 2009

Two posts worth looking at are in today's Pacific Media Centre blog feedback.
http://pacificmediacentre.blogspot.com/2009/01/refreshing-view-on-pacific-coverage.html Old Pacific-hand Ron Crocombe has some scathing things to say about the Interim Government (-), to which David Robie responds (o+).

I'll limit my comments (o+) to only one of Professor Crocombe's accusations. He is probably correct is saying that most people will continue to vote along ethnic lines, whatever the system, but he does not say that the present system offers little alternative: 46 of the 71 electorates are Communal electorates in which voters vote according to their ethnicity. The remaining 25 are Open seats.

Neither does he say just how unequal this system (which is based on provinces not population distribution) is. In the 2006 election*, for example, there were on average only 9,437 registered voters in Fijian, 4,607 in General Voter, and 5,373 in Rotuman communal electorates. This compared with 16,065 for Urban Fijan electorates and 10,762 for Indo-Fijians. Urban Fijians and Indo-Fijians were grossly under-represented.

These averages hide even further inequalities. The rural Fijian electorates of Bua, Kadavu, Lau, Namosi and Serua each had less than 7,000 registered voters, while more urbanized Ba West had 15,348, and Nadroga/Navosa 19,044.


It should be noted that the former over-represented electorates are among the least "developed" and most prone to influence by chiefs and church ministers. In contrast, the latter under-represented electorates produced two multi-ethnic Fijian parliamentary leaders ousted by racist-driven coups: Dr Timoci Bavadra, Fiji's first Labour Party leader (ousted by the "Rabuka" coup in 1987) and Adi Teimumu Vuikaba Speed, Deputy PM in the Mahendra Chaudhry Labour-led government (ousted by the "Speight" 2000 coup).

It is, of course, an over-simplification to equate patterns of voting with geographic areas, but there is some relationship.

So if each person's vote is to be of equal importance -- as the UN requires -- you wouldn't recommend the Fiji system, whatever its ethnic predispositions.

And this is not even taking into account the one in five voters who in 2006 either did not vote (many because their name was not on the roll) or had their vote declared invalid (because the system is too complicated for many to understand.)

I wonder if Forum leaders are aware of these inequalities, and whether they would tolerate them in their counties.

* For 2006 (and earlier 1999, 200o) election results, see www.elections.gov.fj/results2006.html) and for full analysis by Prof. Robbie Robertson, see pp 360-383 in Walsh: Fiji: an Encyclopaedic Atlas, advertised on this blog site.