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discrimination in the political sphere is removed Fiji's race issues will be cured. This Adriaan Veenhoven, Stichting & Plurale Samenlevingen, Case Studies on​.
Table of contents

The stereotyped association of Indians with business emerged when some former Indian labourers went into trading, with their numbers later increased by migration of small business people, particularly from Gujarat in western India. Although the majority of Fijians were restricted to agriculture, from the s the goldmining and stevedoring industries became an important source of waged employment for ethnic Fijians.

In recent decades, economic development has drawn Fijians into the towns in search of employment and has led to the growth of a large urban Fijian population. During the s, as decolonisation and independence drew near, Fiji politics began to coalesce around ethnically-based political parties. Fijian chiefly leaders looked towards Malaysia, identified with the social position of the Malay bumiputras 'sons of the soil' , and took Malaysia as a political model. Following the Malaysian example, the Alliance Party was formed out of an arrangement between the Fijian Association founded in the s , the Indian Alliance, created by Indo-Fijian businessmen, and a General Electors' Party set up by European and Chinese businessmen.

Established in , the Alliance Party was led by Ratu Mara and dominated Fiji's politics during the first years after independence in The Alliance Party's ethnic Fijian supporters saw the party as the protector of their interests and as the natural party of government, but it always needed some support among other ethnic groups in order to stay in office.

Sections of the Indo-Fijian community, though divided along economic and cultural lines, came together in to form the National Federation Party NFP and contested the election. Incidents of small-scale ethnic violence in the elections overshadowed negotiations for independence. These clashes helped convince leaders on both sides of the ethnic divide that political compromise would be necessary in the post-independence Fiji constitution, with Indo-Fijians reconciling themselves to an ethnically based electoral system with special representation for the indigenous Fijians.

The constitution provided for a 52 member House of Representatives with 22 seats each for the indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian communities and 8 for General Electors. Electors were given a vote in both Communal and National seats.

New species described as environment changes

The Senate comprised 7 nominees of the Prime Minister, 6 nominees of the Leader of the Opposition, 1 nominee of the island of Rotuma and 8 nominees of the Great Council of Chiefs. Constitutional changes required a two-thirds vote of both Houses. Fiji also inherited from the British a military force which was 98 per cent ethnic Fijian. The Alliance Party held power from independence until the election, based on an accommodation between ethnic Fijian, European and Indo-Fijian groups at an elite level. A formula largely inherited from the colonial period, it melded the interests of the eastern chiefs with Indo-Fijian and European business groups and maintained a mass base in the majority of the indigenous Fijian community.

Increasingly, however, the Alliance model came under challenge from more extreme expressions of ethnic Fijian nationalism and from attempts to build a multiracial accommodation at a mass rather than an elite level. The National Federation Party was, however, internally divided over whether to use its two seat majority to form a government which would inevitably be branded Indian-dominated.

In a second poll called for September , the Alliance campaigned more effectively and won a majority. The FNP's challenge had tapped into dissatisfaction amongst ethnic Fijians about the slow pace of regional economic development, while pandering to a Fijian tendency to blame the Indians for such problems.


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In the elections of resentment in the west of the country against the dominance of eastern chiefs was given expression by the emergence of the Western United Front WUF. The west was the site for most of Fiji's gold mines and the increasingly important tourist industry and saw itself as making a greater contribution to the economy than the politically dominant east.

The WUF was to be less important in the election, but showed again that significant economic and social divisions existed in the indigenous Fijian community. The then President of the Great Council of Chiefs, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, expressed deep sorrow at the apparent loss of chiefly influence and attacked those 'commoners' who criticised their chiefs.

Some Fijian landowners threatened their Indo-Fijian tenants with eviction and several Fijian Senators declared that 'blood will flow' if Indians did not 'cling' to Fijians. The growth of east-west regionalism exemplified the already existing tensions in indigenous Fijian society which were being exacerbated by economic and social change. From the early s, a deterioration in the market for Fiji's exports, mainly sugar, led to economic stagnation, increased unemployment and underemployment and rising urban poverty.

This resentment was also directed towards the Indo-Fijian community which was seen to be more wealthy and educated. Newly urbanised indigenous Fijians came into direct competition with their Indo-Fijian counterparts for scarce jobs.


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On the other hand, many Fijians became involved in the trade union movement where they often cooperated with Indo-Fijian fellow workers. Many Fijians in the west saw the possibility of making common cause with sections of the Indian community against eastern chiefly dominance.

Constitutional and Political Change in Fiji – Parliament of Australia

Therefore, paradoxically, these developments had the effect of increasing some Fijians' resentment against Indians while increasing other Fijians' links with them. Both of these tendencies found expression in the rise of the multiracialist Labour Party from the mids and in the appearance, in , of the militant nationalist Fijian Taukei movement. The formation of the Labour Party was the result of a confluence of factors. The first was the development of the trade union movement from the end of the s.

Post-independence economic development enabled growth and consolidation within the trade union movement, and by the mids about half the waged labour force was unionised. The leader of the Labour Party, Dr Timoci Bavadra, was both a chief of a clan from west Viti Levu island and head of the Public Servants' Association, a combination which symbolised the nature of the party's challenge to the eastern chiefly establishment.

The Labour Party was a coalition of influential ethnic Fijians from the west, ethnic Fijians involved in the trade union movement and Indian members of trade unions and farmers' organisations.

Fiji Islands

It was influenced by an emerging Fijian intelligentsia which espoused a non-racial social-democratic philosophy. Voting generally followed the usual ethnic pattern, but there was a modest flow of ethnic Fijian support away from the Alliance to the Coalition, which received 8. The Alliance also suffered from a low turnout of ethnic Fijians and an increase in support for other Fijian parties and independents. Nevertheless, as provided for under the constitution, the parliament was still composed of 22 indigenous Fijians, 22 Indo-Fijians and 8 General Electors members, and the chiefs retained their constitutionally-guaranteed dominance in the Senate.

The Coalition Ministry was made up of 6 Fijians and 1 part-Fijian and 7 Indo-Fijians, a balance of participation between the two main races never before achieved by a government in Fiji. The government was headed by an indigenous Fijian, and the ministries considered to be essential to Fijian interests, such as Home Affairs, Fijian Affairs, Labour, Land, Forests and Agriculture, were held by indigenous Fijians.

Despite the ethnic balance of the Coalition ministry, there was an immediate backlash amongst radical nationalist Fijians. An organised movement of opposition to the Coalition government, which named itself the Taukei 'Owners of the Land' Movement, soon developed. A wave of rallies and marches in Suva and across Viti Levu declared that Fijians had lost control of their own country. Their numbers were swelled by easterners angry at the toppling of their paramount chief by a minor chief from the west.

Many chiefs called on ethnic Fijians to respect the authority of the new government, but on the first day of parliament, only 5 Alliance MPs defied the crowds outside the parliament building and joined the swearing-in ceremony. One week later, on 14 May , twelve masked men, led by Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, entered parliament and abducted the Coalition members at gunpoint. Rabuka's stated motivations in the coup of 14 May was to protect traditional chiefly-based society. He was, however, also attempting to balance the radicalism of the Taukei Movement with the authority of the chiefs who supported the coup but who were concerned that the Taukei Movement could lead to violence and undermine the post-independence accommodation between the chiefs and Indo-Fijian and European business interests.

But when Ratu Mara, the Governor-General, Ratu Ganilau, and the ousted Prime Minister, Dr Bavadra, drew up the Deuba Accord, under which a caretaker government drawn from both the Alliance and the Coalition would be formed, an outraged reaction from the Taukei Movement induced Rabuka to stage a second coup on 25 September When Ratu Ganilau refused to step down as Governor-General, Rabuka dismissed him, revoked the constitution and declared Fiji a republic. In June the Great Council of Chiefs agreed to a Constitution which provided for a House of Representatives with 70 seats, 37 held by indigenous Fijians, 27 by Indo-Fijians, 5 by other races of General Electors and 1 by a representative of the remote island of Rotuma.

As well as the racial bias in the Constitution, the regional boundaries of seats were weighted to reinforce traditional patterns of influence. While Indian seats had an average of voters against for Fijian seats, there was an even greater weighting given to provincial versus urban Fijian seats - to respectively. Urban Fijian voters totalled In addition, provincial areas which were traditionally most supportive of chiefly candidates received greater representation.

Voters per seat in the various provinces ranged from to Fiji under the Constitution: The Politics of Exclusion. The philosophy underlying the Fiji Constitution of was that previous arrangements were 'inadequate to give protection to the interests of indigenous Fijians' 18 and that such protection could be afforded only if the indigenous Fijian leaders were guaranteed political ascendancy. While the pre balance allowed for a degree of accommodation with Indian interests, even if only at an elite level, the Constitution was motivated by the desire to exclude permanently any possibility of Indo-Fijian parties forming a government.

Political developments since the introduction of the Constitution could be seen as the consequence of the problems inherent in this formula which have suggested that Fijian ascendancy is both politically and economically unsustainable. The first problem was that the heavy electoral weighting given to indigenous Fijian voters still did not make the formation of stable Fijian government an easy task. The removal of the perceived common threat of Indo-Fijian dominance had the effect of exacerbating divisions within the indigenous Fijian community, 19 a tendency worsened by the communal electoral system which set Fijians in political competition with each other.

In the and elections, the successor to the Alliance Party, the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei SVT which roughly translates to Fijian Political Party was unable to form a government in its own right. In the Fijian vote was split between independents and two Fijian-nationalist splinter parties. The SVT, with 30 seats in the 70 seat parliament, was short of a majority.

Rabuka was only able to become Prime Minister with the help of the Labour Party, which agreed to support Rabuka in parliamentary votes of confidence on condition that Rabuka immediately begin a review of the Constitution and undertake reform of tax, land and labour laws. The unlikely alliance between Rabuka and Labour only lasted until June , when Labour withdrew its support and began an indefinite boycott of Parliament following Rabuka's failure to fulfil the terms of their agreement.

Rabuka's government collapsed at the end of the year when seven SVT members voted against the Budget. The SVT survived Kamikamica's challenge and increased its representation to 31 the Fijian Association Party secured 5 seats , but could only form a government by entering into a coalition with the General Voters' Party, which held 4 seats.

The splits in the Fijian vote evident in the elections of and reflected the strains in indigenous Fijian society brought by rapid social and economic change and the growth of new political configurations. The coups were, in part, an attempt to restore the power and authority of the old chiefly-dominated Fijian order. But the trigger of the coups, the Taukei Movement, represented a new kind of urban mass-based politics of non-chiefly Fijians which also represented a challenge to the primacy of the chiefs, even though its self-declared aims were to defend traditional structures.

The coups were led not by a chief, but by a commoner who has had an uneasy relationship with the traditional power-brokers of Fijian politics. Rabuka's second coup of was, after all, a strike against a compromise formulated by the traditional Fijian leadership.

Ethnic politics and inequality in Fiji: understanding the new Constitution

These tensions continued with the contest for the Prime Ministership between Kamikamica and Rabuka, with Kamikamica, supported by Mara, representing a current of thinking which wanted to preserve as much as possible of traditional Fijian political ways. Rabuka's candidacy, on the other hand, depended for its success on seeking support outside established circles of power. Ratu Mara made no secret of his misgivings about Rabuka, calling him an 'angry young man'. Maybe it's part of the Fijian culture that he is a big chief and because he was groomed well by the colonial government.

The profound sense of uneasiness felt by many ethnic Fijians about the future of their own particular social and political arrangements as well as about the future of Fiji as a modern state were exacerbated by international pressures and economic difficulties experienced after and when the political exclusion of the Indo-Fijian community was institutionalised in the Constitution of The coups were very economically damaging to Fiji, with a massive slump in the tourism industry, a flight of educated Indian labour and investment, and a fall in foreign investment and economic and other aid from Western countries.

In October , Fiji was effectively expelled from the Commonwealth, with its membership being deemed to have ended following Rabuka's revocation of the Constitution and deposition of the Queen as Head of State. The economic effects of the coups lessened in the next few years, with tourist arrivals recovering, aid flows gradually recommencing and a series of economic policy reforms allowing the growth of new industries such as garment manufacturing.

Nevertheless, the country's discriminatory constitutional arrangements were regarded with opprobrium in much of the international community and tended to limit the extent of financial and technical assistance from international donors and to deter investors who feared racially-based instability. Business investment, government administration and the provision of professional services also continued to suffer from the ongoing exodus of Indo-Fijians and people of other races.

Symbolic of Fiji's international isolation was its exclusion from the Commonwealth, a situation which was particularly distressing to members of the chiefly elite, who placed high value on links with the British Crown. Although Fiji had declared itself a republic, its flag retained the Union Jack and Queen Elizabeth's image continued to appear on the country's coins. During his terms as Prime Minister, Rabuka has made contradictory moves which have, on the one hand, alienated the Indo-Fijian community while, on the other, indicating that he is willing to move Fiji away from the politics of exclusion towards a new multiracial accommodation.

In October , for example, in an Australian television interview he made remarks that suggested he supported the repatriation of Indo-Fijians to India. Yet on a number of occasions he has made offers to the opposition parties to form an all-party government of national unity or to include representatives of these parties in Cabinet. In general, however, most observers have concluded that Rabuka has been moving towards a conciliatory position, despite the often strident criticism of Fijian nationalist groups. Such an interpretation has been strengthened by the outcome of the Constitutional Review and the subsequent amendments to the Constitution.

Re-thinking the Fijian Man - Jope Tarai - TEDxSuva

HRQoL is increasingly acknowledged as useful in informing health personnel and policy makers about the impacts and potential predictors of health problems. Existing pediatric studies of this relationship have primarily been conducted in Australia, USA or other high- or upper middle-income countries that is, higher income countries , namely Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Jordan, Singapore and Japan.

The Republic of Fiji is one of the Pacific Island countries where overweight and obesity in adults, as well as children, have increased steadily over recent decades. Fiji is a low middle-income country www. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between weight status and HRQoL in secondary school children in Fiji, by age, gender and ethnicity. All children in the selected schools were invited to participate. After written consent was obtained from both children and a parent, the students completed questionnaires at school, and anthropometric data height and weight were collected by trained research staff.