Fiji: How Democratic was the old Communal Voting System?

Tabua (whale's teeth). Highly valued culturally.

With the Fiji Elections due on 14 November and the strong likelihood of accusations that it will not be a democratic election, despite the presence of international observers, this could be a good time to recall just how democratic the electoral system was that it replaced. The way Fiji was before the 2006 Coup. (*All figures are based on the 2006 election.)

1. Each voter had two votes, one for a Communal electorate, the other for an Open electorate. 46 of the 71 electorates were Communal, in which voters voted according to their ethnicity; the remaining 25 were Open electorates where every voter voted irrespective of ethnicity.  Both were geographically based.

2. The communal electorates were very unequal as the following table shows.

Communal Electorates	Registered Voters	Number of Electorates	Ratio Voters: Electorates
General	13817	3	4606
Rotuman	5373	1	5373
Fijian	160432	17	9437
Indo-Fijian	299270	19	15751
Fijian Urban	96391	6	16065

x

Source: ACW pn120

General voters (Europeans, Part-Europeans, Chinese, Part-Chinese and other races) were the best represented. It only took 4,606 registered votes to elect one MP. Rotumans followed with 5,373 and ethnic Fijians with 9,437. It took more Indo-Fijians to elect one MP (15,751) and even more ethnic Fijians living in urban areas (16,065). Put another way, it took 70% more urban Fijians to elect one MP than it did rural Fijians. Indo-Fijians and Urban Fijians were demonstrably under-represented.

Note also that the Open electorates had a average number of 19,371 registered voters and that they ranged in size from 15,206 to 24,087.

3. These averages hide even further inequalities. The rural Fijian Communal 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.

4. What is important about these figures is that the former, mainly Eastern and Northern, over-represented electorates are among the least "developed." They are also the more mono-cultural and the least educated. Interaction with other ethnicities and people with different values and ideas is limited. As a consequence, these electorates were the most prone to influence by chiefs and, the usually conservative, Methodist, church ministers.

In contrast, the latter, mainly Western and Central, under-represented electorates were more diverse. Interaction with other ethnicities would occur daily, most schools had pupils of all ethnicities, and one-to-one relationship were generally good. 

 Significantly, these electorates produced Fiji's only multi-ethnic Fijian parliamentary leaders. The first was Dr Timoci Bavadra, leader of the Fiji Labour Party government that was ousted by racist-driven "Rabuka" coup in 1987, and the second, Adi Teimumu Vuikaba Speed, Deputy PM in the Mahendra Chaudhry Labour-led government, ousted and imprisoned by the "Speight" 2000 coup.

5. One in five people of voting age and entitled to vote (21.4%) either did not vote (many because their name was not on the roll) or had their vote declared invalid (because the system was too complicated for many to understand.)

6. Finally, there was little likelihood that the electoral system would be modified in the foreseeable future. Recommendations that the number of Open electorates be increased and Communal electorates decreased had not been acted upon. 

 An ethnic Fijian dominated Lower House, a Senate with half its members nominated by the President on the recommendation of the unelected Great Council of Chiefs, a President appointed by the Council, and the Council itself were built into a Constitution that was unlikely to be changed by this juggernaut of chiefly Fijian influence and power.

-- ACW

Notes
This posting summarises my post of 28 January 2009 (-/o+) The Present Fiji Electoral System: Where Some Votes Count Three to Four Times more than others

* For 2006 (and earlier 1999, 2006) 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.

One sharply different view, berating the 2006 Bainimarama Coup that overthrew the then parliamentary system, by the late Prof Ron Crocombe, and a comment by Prof David Robie, are worth looking at  in this  Pacific Media Centre blog feedback.

http://pacificmediacentre.blogspot.com/2009/01/refreshing-view-on-pacific-coverage.html