The Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, once said he may not lead his Alliance Party in an upcoming general election.
This was reported in The Fiji Times on Friday, July 4, 1980. Ratu SIr Kamisese made the comment during an interview with a New Zealand journalist, Sue Green in Suva.
Green interviewed him for her newspaper, The Evening Post of Welllington.
The PM said there was no chance of Fiji having an early election. “I don’t know where the rumours have come from,” he said.
Ratu Sir Kamisese said at the next election, the Alliance would win. Its record of 10 years of achievements had shown that it could govern the country again.
But he said he may not lead the party in that election. He said it was “quite possible” he would retire before it.
The next general election was due in mid-1982 and the life of the parliament was to end in 1982.
“Ten years is a long time to be doing a thankless job…I have achieved the peak position of service to my country for 10 years and I think that is enough for anyone,” Ratu Kamisese said.
He said what he wanted to see was a coalition which could represent both the major races in Fiji. “It is not a question of defeat or winning,” he said.
“As far as I can see, our political parties have polarized into racial parties…I don’t think this is right, although I am in the governing party, I don’t think it is good for Fiji.”
The PM said he was impressed by Robert Mugabe who, after winning in Zimbabwe’s elections, asked other parties to join in a coalition.
“To me this is a great statement.” Asked if the defeat of the former Papua New Guinea PM, Michael Somare, would affect Fiji’s relations with that country or Pacific regional co-operation, Ratu Sir Kamisese said it would not.
He said one member would not affect the whole because the cooperation would continue even when present leaders were dead.
He was critical of the suggestion that cooperation might be affected, saying this was typical of the paternalistic, condescending attitude of the NZ press.
“The press talk down to is as if we are run by little dictatorships and if one goes it will all collapse,” he said. Speaking about relations with NZ, Ratu Sir Kamisese said they had never been in danger at any stage during his leadership.
But in the latest negotiations, which was to result in the South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Agreement (SPARTECA) due to be signed at the Kiribati Forum meeting in July 1980., trade relations used need hard bargaining.
Although NZ had drawn up a negative list of items which would not have free access from Fiji, it had given Fiji quite a lot of the things it asked for.
He said Fiji had been trying to persuade Australia and NZ to give free entry to its produce as the European Economic Community had done for the ACP countries.
