pn887. Fiji Elections. The Choice: "Two old men" or Prasad and Rabuka

With elections due any time after the end of next month, the political scene in Fiji is heating up.

Bainimarama and Sayed-Khaiyum's Fiji First have released a budget set to win support by removing many food and household items from paying VAT and increasing the national minimum wage. (see pn885) but this has been criticized by the National Federation Party whose leader Biman Prasad said it was too little too late. 

Speaking at the NFP's annual conference  he said,  "Right now the whole country is trapped in the personal glory-seeking of two tired old men,  Bainimarama and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. ..we have a crushed economy and growing poverty, half of the population can no longer make ends meet. ... Our medical and health services are collapsing [while] those two men have been getting the best medical treatment overseas.

"But our own people cannot get basic drugs or services from the broken-down machines in our hospitals. Let us never forget the coronavirus pandemic, and how hard it hit our country.  Let us never forget that when the crisis was at its height when hundreds died and our health system had collapsed  these two men were nowhere to be seen."

The NFP is forming a coalition with the People’s Alliance Party for the upcoming general election.

People's Alliance leader Sitiveni Rabuka, who attended the NFP conference,  said the two parties have shown that they will be working together at the upcoming elections "to rescue Fiji from the crisis we are in," noting that his relationship with the NFP goes back to when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1990s, most particularly in the formation of the 1997 constitution.

This, incidentally,  is the constitution that entrenched iTaukei chiefly power, constituencies based on race, voting by race, and the chief-led Alliance Party.  Under the Fiji First government it was replaced by the 2013 Constitution that gave all Fijian citizens equal voting rights.

Fiji First announces what it has done. The Opposition what it proposes to do. It will be interesting to follow their campaigns over the next few weeks in what promises to be a close election.. 

-- ACW