Constitutional reform in Fiji will be complex and riddled with potential challenges.
Dialogue Fiji executive director Nilesh Lal said this underscored the importance of a marketplace of ideas in helping mould Fiji’s constitution.
“I think when it comes to something as important as changing the constitution, what needs to be accommodated is a marketplace of ideas,” he said.
“That is absolutely important, and of course in the concept of the marketplace of ideas, every opinion is an improvement, that is not to say that all opinions have the same weighting.
“As a leader of a civil society organisation that has worked extensively on constitutional matters. I think we do have some mandate to be talking on this issue.
“Naturally a lot of people have also become apprehensive about the whole idea of constitution change because we don’t really have an idea of what changes the people that are in power at the moment want.
“Nobody has been really upfront about the kind of changes that will happen so naturally there is apprehension.
“The Government needs to obviously work hard to build trust in the process and this will entail working with and getting the buy-in of various interest groups representative of all Fijians.”
He said there was a need for a comprehensive discussion and understanding of the current 2013 Constitution’s strengths and weaknesses.
“I think as much as possible, we need to be encouraging open discourse in the matter, nobody’s views are sacrosanct so to speak.
“Everything should be subject to critical examination and it is very important that when we are engaging in discourse about something as important as changing the country’s supreme rule, then there needs to be an accommodation of a whole range of views and I do hope that people are going to also emerge perhaps and then join the discourse on this very important matter.”
He cautioned against rushing constitutional changes, due to potential issues and the possibility that politicians might use the process for personal gain.
“I think it’s very important not to rush this process because if you’re going to be doing a new constitution, like I’ve said, we have made so many constitutions, but we haven’t been satisfied with constitutions, or at least there have been political actors who have not been satisfied with the constitution, so when they come into power, whether it’s through a coup or even through elections, then they try to change the constitution, that has been put in by their political opponents.”
He said this could cause political instability and would be costly for a developing country such as Fiji.
He said achieving growth at the end of the day needed to be one of the overriding concepts in addition to improving the lives of all Fijians.
