Talk:Elections in Fiji

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Untitled[edit]

I suggest the pages be renamed [Fiji general election, YEAR] for consistency sake. --Jia ng 01:13, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'll get around to that later. Good idea!Davidcannon 02:02, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wilfred Derksen's edit[edit]

I have reverted the last edit by Wilfred Derksen to the original, although I have kept it at this location. The edit was full of irrelevancies and factual errors. I will write an introduction later which will correct the errors.

The Senate has 32 members, not 34 (as it used to be before the 1997 constitution came into effect).
The President is elected by the Great Council of Chiefs, not a college of chiefs, although it does function as an electoral college. Statistical details of the election are never made public: we are only informed of who has been chosen.
All Senators are technically appointed by the President, not elected. In practice, the President is constitutionally required to appoint 9 on the advice of the Prime Minister and 8 on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition: that's 17 out of 32 who are appointed on nomination, not election. 14 are nominated by the Great Council of Chiefs and 1 by the Council of Rotuma - their nomination could be considered an election, as they vote on it and their vote is binding on the President.
If you want to give details of the electoral system, it should be applicable to all nine elections that Fiji has held. The one you described is applicable only to the last two.
Since the 1980s, Fiji has not had a "two party system." Throughout the 1990s, the Fijian Political Party and the Fijian Association Party competed for the ethnic Fijian vote; the popular vote for the latter was higher than the numbers of constituencies won would suggest. Likewise, the Fiji Labour Party and the National Federation Party competed intensively for the Indo-Fijian vote throughout the 1990s, before the latter's support collapsed dramatically in 1999.
The system does not intrinsically favour ethnic Fijian parties. The 1999 election resulted in a landslide for the People's Coalition, the main component of which was the Into-Fijian-dominated Fiji Labour Party (which one a majority in its own right, by the way). The 2000 election brought about a narrow win to a coalition of two ethnic Fijian parties.
It is not hard for third parties to gain representation, at least not since 1997. Fiji uses the Instant run-off voting system. The 1999 election in particular was a dog's breakfast, as the ethnic Fijian vote splintered among four parties. The Indian vote, however, congealed around the Fiji Labour Party, which for the first time won all 19 Indo-Fijian seats. The splintering of the ethnic Fijian vote allowed the Indo-Fijian dominated People's Coalition to win most of the "open electorates" (25 elected by universal suffrage). In 2001, a different scenario occurred. The National Federation Party (almost entirely Indo-Fijian) directed its second-preferences to the ethnic Fijian Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua, rather than to its fellow-Into-Fijians in the Fiji Labour Party. This allowed the United Fiji Party to win 14 of the 25 open seats, as well as 17 of the 23 seats reserved for ethnic Fijians.

We could incorporate some of these points into the article. I see little need, however, as the linked articles all contain sufficient information.

Last but not least: Wikipedia policy does not encourage cut-and-past moves.

Wilfried's reaction[edit]

I have corrected the faults in the text. Sorry for these faults. I updated the text with the information of Davidcannon. I made it clear that the electoral system is used nowadays. I hope this satisfies you. I didn't plan to cut and paste, but I added text to the original text. Since I manually redirected the page, this cut and paste effect came into being. NTW. I do not understand why I couldn't find my elder text in Wikipedia anymore and cannot find Davidcannon text right now. Gangulf 18:06, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's much better now. I'm sorry I was so scratchy yesterday. I had stomach pains and wasn't in the best of moods with anybody, in real life or online. My reaction wasn't fair, and I apologise.

The reason why you can't find the original text is because I forgot to merge the pages. Rather than cut and paste, we are supposed to (a) delete the destination page, (b) move the source page there, and (c) restore and merge the deleted page with the new one. I forgot that last step. I'll do it now. David Cannon 22:14, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Don't worry - I'll fix the overlapping template[edit]

Attention all - please don't worry about the overlapping template - I'll fix it soon. I have to add some more info to the article text which will put the table below the template where it won't be a problem.