SACKABLE: If Rabuka becomes Prime Minister, there is NOTHING stopping him from sacking the THREE SODELPA MPs (especially Aseri Radrodro with whom he has a long running family feud) and replace him with Ro Kepa who is fourth in waiting under the d'Hondt system, and is PAP's choice for President and High Commissioner to London
*It is most likely that the 'Minister for Everything' will be 'Minister for Something(s) only' in a new coalition government. In fact, the FFP MPs must ensure, and demand, that the humbled and humiliated Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum's many portfolios are stripped and shared equally among the elected FFP MPs and its COALITION Partner. |
*It is no doubt that the SODELPA defectors to PAP 'stole' thousands upon thousands' of the party's votes [including PAP leader Rabuka], leaving SODELPA to now re-build its grassroots base. The last EIGHT left behind the party in tatters when they fled as soon as Parliament was dissolved and election announced.
*They left the party foul-mouthing its leader, the members, and the party - describing it as 'A HOUSE OF GHOSTS'
*Now, they are begging SODELPA to support Sitiveni Rabuka as Prime Minister, the very man who resigned from Parliament as SODELPA leader and ran away to form PAP.
*He was followed by Lynda Tabuya, SODELA's Opposition Whip, and many other high-profile DEFECTORS.
*SODELPA MUST CHOOSE WHAT IS BEST FOR THE PARTY AND NOT WHAT IS BEST FOR PAP, NFP and RABUKA and PRASAD.
After all, FFP has 26 seats, PAP 21, and NFP, 5.
*It must not buy into the 'Khaiyum Card', despiteTabuya claiming during the hustings that 'a Vote for Gavoka is a vote for his son-in-law Khaiyum to become Prime Minister. Don't vote for SODELPA. Its a wasted VOTE'.
*It is most likely that the 'Minister for Everything' will be 'Minister for Something(s) only' in a new coalition government.
*In fact, the FFP MPs must ensure, and demand, that the humbled and humiliated Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum's many portfolios are stripped and shared equally among the elected FFP MPs and its COALITION Partner.
*As a result, SODELPA has nothing to fear if it chooses FFP at its Management Board Meeting today.
*A three party coalition is a recipe for instability, and the three SODELPA MPs will be surrounded and controlled by the DEFECTORS, including Sitiveni Rabuka, who wants to be Prime Minister of Fiji.
*In 1992 and 1994 he had conned both Mahendra Chaudhry and Jai Ram Reddy respectively to support him to become Prime Minister.
SODELPA must banish the PAP 'Ghosts' who want them in their 'Ghost House'.
TODAY IS HOBSON'S CHOICE, and the CHOICE COULD BE FFP
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL RATHER THAN THIRD CLASS WITH PAP-NFP
From the Archives, The Daily Post, 2001
By VICTOR LAL,
King Makers - Chaudhry and Reddy make ‘Deal with the Devil’, Sitiveni Rabuka, 1992,1994
The new 1990 Constitution was overtly racist and biased in favour of i-Taukei Fijians. In the new 70 seat Parliament, Fijians were allocated 37 seats, Indo-Fijians 27, General Voters 5 and Rotumans 1. The Senate had 24 seats for Fijians, 9 for other races and 1 for Rotumans. In addition, all the key government posts - the presidency, prime ministership and heads of the judiciary, military, public service-had to be held by Fijians. A quota of at least 50 per cent Fijians was set for new recruitment into the public service.
Another important feature of the distribution of Parliamentary seats was the gerrymandering of the 37 Fijian constituencies because many urban Fijians had voted for Bavadra’s government in the 1987 elections. Thus rural Fijian voters were given 32 constituencies with the remaining 5 going to urban Fijian voters.
The 1992 Elections
With the new Constitution promulgated and Fijian political supremacy guaranteed, the first general election was held in 1992. The principal parties that entered the election contest were: SVT, FLP, NFP, General Voters Party (GVP) and the Fijian Nationalist United Front (FNUF). Meanwhile, the NFP-FLP Coalition had split up following the death of Dr Timoci Bavadra. The FNUF, led by the late Sakiasi Butadroka, was a coalition of extremists from Fijian nationalist party (FNP) and SVT, which was formed in March 1991 with Rabuka as its political leader. The SVT had the backing of the Great Council of Chiefs.
The SVT was not necessarily a unified political group and the real issue for the party was who was to become Prime Minister after the election: the ‘Father of the Coups’ Sitiveni Rabuka or the reliable, safe, moderate but right-wing Josevata Kamikamica? The political divisions within the Indo-Fijians, who are ‘All Chiefs and No Indians’, was not surprising. As the old coolie saying goes: ‘You put two Indians on a desert island and on your return next day to pick them up, you will find they have become three Indians.’
The FLP, led by Chaudhry, initially threatened to boycott the elections, stating that taking part would be tantamount to endorsing the 1990 ‘racist constitution’. However, at the last minute, the FLP leaders changed their stance and contested the election. The result of the 37 Fijian seats were as follows: SVT 30, FNUF 5 and the last 2 went to Independents. The 27 Indo-Fijian seats were equally shared: the NFP won 14 and the FLP the other 13. The GVP won the 5 seats. The election results created the inevitability of a Coalition government. Although the SVT was theoretically in a position to form a coalition government, Rabuka was not assured of the coveted Prime Ministership.
Some newly-elected SVT parliamentarians had thrown in their lot with Rabuka’s arch political rival, Josevata Kamikamica, a former Finance Minister in the pre-election Interim Government. Rabuka appeared to have 18 votes with Kamikamica only two, Filipe Bole four, and Ratu William Tonganivalu three. However Bole, Rabuka’s former teacher, freed his votes to allow them to support the majority-holder, in this case Rabuka who needed 36 confirmed votes from those who now held seats in the new House to grab the post of Prime Minister.
He went to the Government House asking President Ratu Penaia Ganilau to appoint him as Prime Minister, declaring that he had 42 votes. Ganilau asked Rabuka to demonstrate his support with accompanying signatures to confirm the numbers. Ganilau also was acutely aware that that another high-ranking chief, Ratu Mara, and a number of SVT personalities had been backing Kamikamica. In a cruel twist of irony, both the rival factions of the SVT began to court support from the NFP and FLP, the very parties deposed to ensure Fijian political supremacy in perpetuity.
The SVT, formed to unify the Fijian people, could not agree on who should be its parliamentary leader. Rabuka was shocked to learn that Kamikamica had cut a deal with the veteran Indo-Fijian lawyer and politician Jai Ram Reddy and the NFP, and as a result Kamikamica had 30 votes to Rabuka’s 26. In desperation, the desperately power-hungry Rabuka, who had imprisoned Chaudhry twice, and had terrorised him and his family since 1987, shamelessly turned to the FLP leader for his political survival.
But first Rabuka had to be humbled and humiliated, and reminded that power flows from the fountain of a ball point pen and not from the barrel of a Fiji Military Forces gun with a sticker reading, ‘God Loves You’. So Chaudhry and the FLP laid down the conditions for their support for Rabuka: a review of the Constitution; repeal of several controversial labour decrees, scrapping of the Value Added Tax (VAT) and land tenure reforms. The so-called Methodist preacher, a decorated solider, and a cynically pragmatic Fijian nationalist Rabuka, who desperately needed Chaudhry’s 13 historical votes, agreed to sign a letter committing himself to a deal with the FLP.
The letter read: ‘I acknowledge the proposed outlined in your letter (2 June) delivered this morning. I have considered your proposals favourably and agree to take action on these issues, namely the constitution, VAT, labour decree reforms and land tenure on the basis suggested in your letter. I agree to hold discussions on the above issue in order to finalise the machinery to progress the matter further.’ In return, he got Chaudhry’s 13 votes to take him well in excess of his required 36 for the post of Prime Minister. The FLP however informed Rabuka that it would not be part of the governing coalition. Desperate to remain Prime Minister, Rabuka had accepted all the conditions in writing, only to dishonour them on resuming power. He had managed to secure the support of the GVP, the Rotuman representative Paul Manueli, his former army commander, and 2 independents. Now he had the numbers and the prime ministership in his sulu, Rabuka backed away from the agreement with the FLP.
A spokesman of his insisted that all Rabuka had agreed to do was to discuss the issues that had been raised. There was, he stated, no agreement to do any more than this. As his official biographer John Sharpham recently put it, ‘Rabuka had already learned the art of political double speak (what we in Fiji call aage pichie or liu muri) and was prepared to walk a precarious path to stay in power’.
King Maker makes ‘Deal with the Devil’
What about Chaudhry who had done a deal with Rabuka and delivered him and a faction of the SVT the prime ministership? When Chaudhry was asked if he had done ‘a deal with the devil?’ he responded: ‘No, there was no deal; the fact is we laid down conditions’. He also acknowledged the irony of the situation between the jailed and the jailor. ‘Oh, yes’, he responded when asked, ‘we hope we can enjoy that type of irony, which does not happen very often’. Chaudhry clearly relished the role of king-maker where an Indo-Fijian was called upon to arbitrate and settle question of leadership in the chiefly sponsored SVT.
It is surprising that the SVT had not run to the Great Council of Chiefs, whom they have recently elevated as the guardians of Fijian political aspirations, to settle the question of political leadership within their own ranks.. Meanwhile Kamikamica continued, in a typical Fijian fashion, to harbour his political ambitions against Rabuka. He refused to enter the post-1992 election Rabuka Cabinet, feeling that he would have been a better Prime Minister. Rabuka’s political woes however continued to shadow him in office, notably the ‘Stephen Affair’. Rabuka managed to ward off Chaudhry and his colleagues threatened withdrawal of Labour’s support for him by forming an inter-parliamentary committee to recommend appropriate machinery for considering changes to the 1990 Constitution.
In December 1992 he caused a stir in his own party and a surprise by proposing consideration of a government of national unity (GNU). According to Sharpham, ‘In March 1993 the government sent a paper on the concept to the Great Council of Chiefs, saying that the proposed government of national unity should be considered, but underplayed it as being of major importance. Mara, with other chiefs, questioned the need for such a government, and he led many chiefs who felt the idea had little merit. The chiefs decided to send it out to the provincial councils for their reaction, a move that was designed to quietly bury Rabuka’s proposal. This move was seen by some, to be aided and abetted, it has to be said, by some of the prime minister’s senior colleagues and advisors’. The SVT, and the Caucus complained at not having been consulted. Reddy half-heartedly wondered about numbers and representation. ‘We should have a figure’, he said, ‘that bears some resemblance to their [Indo-Fijian] numbers, contribution and work, and just not a token number’. On the Indo-Fijian political front, the rivalry between the NFP and FLP intensified to the benefit of the NFP.
In October 1993 the NFP candidates had roundly defeated their FLP Indo-Fijian candidates in the municipal elections. The FLP had also fallen out with Rabuka in 1993 when he did not honour his promises in return for the FLP’s support for the premiership in 1992. On the Fijian political front, politics essentially still revolved around Rabuka and his political foe, Kamikamica. Rabuka’s critics seized the adverse aspects of the Report into the ‘Stephens Affair’ and called for his resignation. Rabuka brushed aside the resignation calls and even survived a motion of no-confidence in him. However, six Fijian MPs including Kamikamica, and David Pickering from the GVP, finally succeeded in their dogged pursuit to get rid of Rabuka when they voted with the Opposition against his budget 36-33 (with one abstention).
The dissidents had hoped that Mara might either appoint Kamikamica or Ratu William Tonganivalu to form a new government. Instead, Rabuka exercised his constitutional right to dissolve his government and call for new elections.
The 1994 Elections and Fijian Divisions
It was the second general election under the new racist Constitution promulgated in 1990 after the two military take-overs in 1987 by Sitiveni Rabuka. The election was notable for the fact that the incumbent Prime Minister Rabuka was not expected to do well as dissidents in his party had broken away to form new political parties to challenge his rule. Fiji had undergone several changes prior to the 1994 elections.
The President, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, had passed away, and the Great Council of Chiefs had elected Ratu Mara as his successor. The 1994 election campaign was dominated by intra-ethnic instead of inter-ethnic issues and conflicts and debates centred around communal issues because each group was fighting for communal seats. For the Indo-Fijians, the central issue of the racially biased constitution took a back seat to FLP/NFP rivalry, most of it at a personal level between Chaudhry and Reddy. Chaudhry and the FLP were repeatedly taunted by the NFP for their support for Rabuka in the aftermath of the 1992 election.
The NFP claimed that the support had yielded nothing. The FLP, on the other hand, accused the NFP for being too close to Rabuka, who unwittingly reinforced this image when he announced that he planned to set up a government of national unity with Reddy after the elections. FLP also attacked NFP for being an ‘Indian’ party as opposed to FLP’s multi.racial character. On the Fijian side, Kamikamica hastily launched a new political party, Fijian Association Party (FAP) to challenge Rabuka and the SVT.
The FAP had the tacit support of the President Mara who had openly expressed his support for Kamikamica for the premiership at the Great Council of Chiefs but he was outvoted, in part by Rabuka’s politicised nominees on the Council.
Kamikamica had promised to restore integrity and dignity to Fijian leadership.
By VICTOR LAL,
King Makers - Chaudhry and Reddy make ‘Deal with the Devil’, Sitiveni Rabuka, 1992,1994
The new 1990 Constitution was overtly racist and biased in favour of i-Taukei Fijians. In the new 70 seat Parliament, Fijians were allocated 37 seats, Indo-Fijians 27, General Voters 5 and Rotumans 1. The Senate had 24 seats for Fijians, 9 for other races and 1 for Rotumans. In addition, all the key government posts - the presidency, prime ministership and heads of the judiciary, military, public service-had to be held by Fijians. A quota of at least 50 per cent Fijians was set for new recruitment into the public service.
Another important feature of the distribution of Parliamentary seats was the gerrymandering of the 37 Fijian constituencies because many urban Fijians had voted for Bavadra’s government in the 1987 elections. Thus rural Fijian voters were given 32 constituencies with the remaining 5 going to urban Fijian voters.
The 1992 Elections
With the new Constitution promulgated and Fijian political supremacy guaranteed, the first general election was held in 1992. The principal parties that entered the election contest were: SVT, FLP, NFP, General Voters Party (GVP) and the Fijian Nationalist United Front (FNUF). Meanwhile, the NFP-FLP Coalition had split up following the death of Dr Timoci Bavadra. The FNUF, led by the late Sakiasi Butadroka, was a coalition of extremists from Fijian nationalist party (FNP) and SVT, which was formed in March 1991 with Rabuka as its political leader. The SVT had the backing of the Great Council of Chiefs.
The SVT was not necessarily a unified political group and the real issue for the party was who was to become Prime Minister after the election: the ‘Father of the Coups’ Sitiveni Rabuka or the reliable, safe, moderate but right-wing Josevata Kamikamica? The political divisions within the Indo-Fijians, who are ‘All Chiefs and No Indians’, was not surprising. As the old coolie saying goes: ‘You put two Indians on a desert island and on your return next day to pick them up, you will find they have become three Indians.’
The FLP, led by Chaudhry, initially threatened to boycott the elections, stating that taking part would be tantamount to endorsing the 1990 ‘racist constitution’. However, at the last minute, the FLP leaders changed their stance and contested the election. The result of the 37 Fijian seats were as follows: SVT 30, FNUF 5 and the last 2 went to Independents. The 27 Indo-Fijian seats were equally shared: the NFP won 14 and the FLP the other 13. The GVP won the 5 seats. The election results created the inevitability of a Coalition government. Although the SVT was theoretically in a position to form a coalition government, Rabuka was not assured of the coveted Prime Ministership.
Some newly-elected SVT parliamentarians had thrown in their lot with Rabuka’s arch political rival, Josevata Kamikamica, a former Finance Minister in the pre-election Interim Government. Rabuka appeared to have 18 votes with Kamikamica only two, Filipe Bole four, and Ratu William Tonganivalu three. However Bole, Rabuka’s former teacher, freed his votes to allow them to support the majority-holder, in this case Rabuka who needed 36 confirmed votes from those who now held seats in the new House to grab the post of Prime Minister.
He went to the Government House asking President Ratu Penaia Ganilau to appoint him as Prime Minister, declaring that he had 42 votes. Ganilau asked Rabuka to demonstrate his support with accompanying signatures to confirm the numbers. Ganilau also was acutely aware that that another high-ranking chief, Ratu Mara, and a number of SVT personalities had been backing Kamikamica. In a cruel twist of irony, both the rival factions of the SVT began to court support from the NFP and FLP, the very parties deposed to ensure Fijian political supremacy in perpetuity.
The SVT, formed to unify the Fijian people, could not agree on who should be its parliamentary leader. Rabuka was shocked to learn that Kamikamica had cut a deal with the veteran Indo-Fijian lawyer and politician Jai Ram Reddy and the NFP, and as a result Kamikamica had 30 votes to Rabuka’s 26. In desperation, the desperately power-hungry Rabuka, who had imprisoned Chaudhry twice, and had terrorised him and his family since 1987, shamelessly turned to the FLP leader for his political survival.
But first Rabuka had to be humbled and humiliated, and reminded that power flows from the fountain of a ball point pen and not from the barrel of a Fiji Military Forces gun with a sticker reading, ‘God Loves You’. So Chaudhry and the FLP laid down the conditions for their support for Rabuka: a review of the Constitution; repeal of several controversial labour decrees, scrapping of the Value Added Tax (VAT) and land tenure reforms. The so-called Methodist preacher, a decorated solider, and a cynically pragmatic Fijian nationalist Rabuka, who desperately needed Chaudhry’s 13 historical votes, agreed to sign a letter committing himself to a deal with the FLP.
The letter read: ‘I acknowledge the proposed outlined in your letter (2 June) delivered this morning. I have considered your proposals favourably and agree to take action on these issues, namely the constitution, VAT, labour decree reforms and land tenure on the basis suggested in your letter. I agree to hold discussions on the above issue in order to finalise the machinery to progress the matter further.’ In return, he got Chaudhry’s 13 votes to take him well in excess of his required 36 for the post of Prime Minister. The FLP however informed Rabuka that it would not be part of the governing coalition. Desperate to remain Prime Minister, Rabuka had accepted all the conditions in writing, only to dishonour them on resuming power. He had managed to secure the support of the GVP, the Rotuman representative Paul Manueli, his former army commander, and 2 independents. Now he had the numbers and the prime ministership in his sulu, Rabuka backed away from the agreement with the FLP.
A spokesman of his insisted that all Rabuka had agreed to do was to discuss the issues that had been raised. There was, he stated, no agreement to do any more than this. As his official biographer John Sharpham recently put it, ‘Rabuka had already learned the art of political double speak (what we in Fiji call aage pichie or liu muri) and was prepared to walk a precarious path to stay in power’.
King Maker makes ‘Deal with the Devil’
What about Chaudhry who had done a deal with Rabuka and delivered him and a faction of the SVT the prime ministership? When Chaudhry was asked if he had done ‘a deal with the devil?’ he responded: ‘No, there was no deal; the fact is we laid down conditions’. He also acknowledged the irony of the situation between the jailed and the jailor. ‘Oh, yes’, he responded when asked, ‘we hope we can enjoy that type of irony, which does not happen very often’. Chaudhry clearly relished the role of king-maker where an Indo-Fijian was called upon to arbitrate and settle question of leadership in the chiefly sponsored SVT.
It is surprising that the SVT had not run to the Great Council of Chiefs, whom they have recently elevated as the guardians of Fijian political aspirations, to settle the question of political leadership within their own ranks.. Meanwhile Kamikamica continued, in a typical Fijian fashion, to harbour his political ambitions against Rabuka. He refused to enter the post-1992 election Rabuka Cabinet, feeling that he would have been a better Prime Minister. Rabuka’s political woes however continued to shadow him in office, notably the ‘Stephen Affair’. Rabuka managed to ward off Chaudhry and his colleagues threatened withdrawal of Labour’s support for him by forming an inter-parliamentary committee to recommend appropriate machinery for considering changes to the 1990 Constitution.
In December 1992 he caused a stir in his own party and a surprise by proposing consideration of a government of national unity (GNU). According to Sharpham, ‘In March 1993 the government sent a paper on the concept to the Great Council of Chiefs, saying that the proposed government of national unity should be considered, but underplayed it as being of major importance. Mara, with other chiefs, questioned the need for such a government, and he led many chiefs who felt the idea had little merit. The chiefs decided to send it out to the provincial councils for their reaction, a move that was designed to quietly bury Rabuka’s proposal. This move was seen by some, to be aided and abetted, it has to be said, by some of the prime minister’s senior colleagues and advisors’. The SVT, and the Caucus complained at not having been consulted. Reddy half-heartedly wondered about numbers and representation. ‘We should have a figure’, he said, ‘that bears some resemblance to their [Indo-Fijian] numbers, contribution and work, and just not a token number’. On the Indo-Fijian political front, the rivalry between the NFP and FLP intensified to the benefit of the NFP.
In October 1993 the NFP candidates had roundly defeated their FLP Indo-Fijian candidates in the municipal elections. The FLP had also fallen out with Rabuka in 1993 when he did not honour his promises in return for the FLP’s support for the premiership in 1992. On the Fijian political front, politics essentially still revolved around Rabuka and his political foe, Kamikamica. Rabuka’s critics seized the adverse aspects of the Report into the ‘Stephens Affair’ and called for his resignation. Rabuka brushed aside the resignation calls and even survived a motion of no-confidence in him. However, six Fijian MPs including Kamikamica, and David Pickering from the GVP, finally succeeded in their dogged pursuit to get rid of Rabuka when they voted with the Opposition against his budget 36-33 (with one abstention).
The dissidents had hoped that Mara might either appoint Kamikamica or Ratu William Tonganivalu to form a new government. Instead, Rabuka exercised his constitutional right to dissolve his government and call for new elections.
The 1994 Elections and Fijian Divisions
It was the second general election under the new racist Constitution promulgated in 1990 after the two military take-overs in 1987 by Sitiveni Rabuka. The election was notable for the fact that the incumbent Prime Minister Rabuka was not expected to do well as dissidents in his party had broken away to form new political parties to challenge his rule. Fiji had undergone several changes prior to the 1994 elections.
The President, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, had passed away, and the Great Council of Chiefs had elected Ratu Mara as his successor. The 1994 election campaign was dominated by intra-ethnic instead of inter-ethnic issues and conflicts and debates centred around communal issues because each group was fighting for communal seats. For the Indo-Fijians, the central issue of the racially biased constitution took a back seat to FLP/NFP rivalry, most of it at a personal level between Chaudhry and Reddy. Chaudhry and the FLP were repeatedly taunted by the NFP for their support for Rabuka in the aftermath of the 1992 election.
The NFP claimed that the support had yielded nothing. The FLP, on the other hand, accused the NFP for being too close to Rabuka, who unwittingly reinforced this image when he announced that he planned to set up a government of national unity with Reddy after the elections. FLP also attacked NFP for being an ‘Indian’ party as opposed to FLP’s multi.racial character. On the Fijian side, Kamikamica hastily launched a new political party, Fijian Association Party (FAP) to challenge Rabuka and the SVT.
The FAP had the tacit support of the President Mara who had openly expressed his support for Kamikamica for the premiership at the Great Council of Chiefs but he was outvoted, in part by Rabuka’s politicised nominees on the Council.
Kamikamica had promised to restore integrity and dignity to Fijian leadership.