Fiji’s parliament installed Sitiveni Rabuka as the new prime minister on Christmas Eve. This marks the end of the 16 years that Frank Bainimarama was in power. However, the handover was chaotic.
Sitiveni Rabuka during a service in Suva. Fiji’s parliament had to vote on his inauguration twice.
Fiji’s new head of government is Sitiveni Rabuka. The 74-year-old’s appointment has ended ten days of uncertainty. The election in the Pacific island nation had not delivered a clear majority for any party. Fiji’s social-democratic Liberal Party (Sodelpa) was the kingmaker, eventually opting for a coalition with Rabuka’s party, the People’s Alliance, and the National Federation Party.
The new government marks the end of the 16-year tenure of Frank Bainimarama, who had led the Pacific nation since 2006. First he seized power with a coup, and in 2014 he was democratically elected for the first time.
The danger of a coup smoldered
Ahead of Saturday’s parliamentary vote, Fiji had endured a few days of uncertainty. The formation of a coalition was actually already certain on Tuesday. But then Bainimarama suddenly called the military for help on Thursday, ostensibly to help the police maintain law and order. Minorities in the country were threatened, it said.
Rabuka wrote down Twitter, one wants to “set the nation on fire along ethnic lines”. He had previously appealed to the population to remain “united as a country” and to follow the law. On Friday, the deputy police commissioner resigned – allegedly in protest against the drafting of the military. Only after another vote with the same result did the situation relax.
Briefly had in Fiji according to the blog «Grub sheet», run by a former journalist and Fijian government advisor, «great fear and concern» prevailed. The stories about the riots were “made up,” the insider claimed. He viewed Bainimarama’s action as an attempt to raise the political temperature to justify a crackdown and allow the ruling Fiji First party to remain in power.
The fear of a coup spread. Presumably to invalidate this and to enable the population to have a quiet Christmas celebration, Parliament met on Christmas Eve. The new head of government Rabuka – like his predecessor Bainimarama – is a former putschist. The military commander had twice seized power in a coup d’état in the late 1980s – for which he has since apologized. Rabuka also ran against Bainimarama in the last democratic elections in 2018, but was unsuccessful at the time.
repressive laws
So far, the dominance of Bainimarama’s Fiji First party has left opposition forces little room to assert themselves politically. The repressive climate after the last coup in 2006 has eased since the democratic elections in 2014 and 2018, according to the American foundation Freedom House. Nevertheless, the ruling party has often interfered in the activities of the opposition, the judiciary is subject to political influence and the brutality of the military and police is a “significant problem”.
Also Amnesty International did not refrain from criticizing Fiji’s “repressive laws”. A report stated that critics had been silenced and the right to assembly restricted.
Poverty, climate change and a geopolitical hotspot
The Pacific state with its 300 islands only gained independence from the former colonial power Great Britain in 1970 and had been a military dictatorship for years. The constitution was not changed until 2013, and democratic elections were held for the first time in 2014. The four coups since 1987 have often had racist undertones. Indigenous Fijians feared losing political control to the economically more powerful Indo-Fijian minority. This makes up about 35 percent of the population. They are descendants of the workers that Britain brought from India to work in the sugar cane fields.
Ethnic conflicts have flared up again in recent weeks. According to official figures, around a quarter of the country’s 900,000 inhabitants live in poverty. The cost of living has exploded in recent months. Climate change is also causing the island state more and more concern. A number of villages have to be resettled due to rising sea levels.
The new administration should also focus on the balancing act that the country, given its strategic position in the Pacific, must attempt between China and countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand, all of which want to increase or at least maintain their influence in the region. Rabuka had already stressed before the election that he preferred a Western-style democracy.