Earlier constitutions were designed to keep the two major ethnicities – iTaukei and Indo-Fijian – separate.
Constitutional law expert Professor Anthony Regan made this statement at a public lecture on ‘Constitutional Change in Fiji: Looking to the Future’, which was part of the Fiji National University’s (FNU) Vice-Chancellor’s leadership seminar in Nasinu this week.
Leaning on his expertise, Prof Regan said Fiji had five Constitutions: 1970, 1990, 1997, 2012 (which wasn’t passed) and 2013.
He said while he had not done a survey, he wasn’t aware of other countries that had five or “four and a half” constitutions.
“Processes have not been so good, and the choices made in constitutions overall have not really met the needs of Fiji,” he said.
“And that’s probably what the Supreme Court recently talked about and commented on, the difficulty in interpreting the current constitution.”
He said an important provision of the Constitution was cited as being “literally unintelligible, and not proper English”.
Prof Regan said Fiji’s fractured history of coups and other political problems resulted in constitutions that lasted a noticeably brief time.
“I think that we have to remember that Fiji is a post-colonial state, where 100 years of policy of the colonial regime had significant impacts on the country, most notably in the complex population – iTaukei, Indo-Fijian and others.
“During that colonial period, as the population became more complex, the colonial regime decided to keep them separate.
“So, choices were made back then to continue the same sort of separation of the two main communities and the focus was on rights of the communities.”
Prof Regan said the focus was on communal rights rather than any sense of integration and individual rights.
He said that the same kind of framework then came under attack and under threat when the first real shift of power happened in the 1986 elections, which later led to the 1987 coup.
“In the 1990 Constitution, to a large extent, there was an attempt to keep in place the same sort of dispensation, the same sort of separation of communities and vesting of community rights.”
However, he said the process to forge the 1997 Constitution was open and inclusive and this ultimately pushed the Constitution towards a different framework.
