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.