FIJI’s current electoral system has “seriously” undermined democracy and weakened the relationship between voters and their elected representatives, a report by the Electoral Legislation Review Commission says.
Led by former chief justice Daniel Fatiaki, the commission was appointed in 2025 to review key election-related laws, including the Electoral Act 2014, the Electoral (Registration of Voters) Act 2012, and the Political Parties (Registration, Conduct, Funding & Disclosures) Act 2013.
The Fiji Times understands this report has been superseded by the Constitution Review Report — compiled by the seven-member Constitution Review Commission that was appointed in March 2026 this year to review the 2013 Constitution.
The CRC report was considered by Cabinet last week and will go to Parliament soon.
The assessment contained in the 232 page report An Electoral System for the People, From the People, obtained by The Fiji Times, identifies a series of shortcomings in the system introduced under the 2013 Constitution.
“Unfortunately, the current system has numerous disadvantages seriously undermining democracy,” the report states, saying these concerns were also expressed in numerous public submissions received by the commissioners.
Central to the criticism is Fiji’s use of a single national constituency.
The review says having only one constituency prevents communities from identifying a particular MP as their local representative and holding that person directly accountable for their performance.
It also argues the Open List system has further weakened that relationship because parliamentary seats are allocated according to the overall votes received by a party and the ranking of its candidates, rather than simply the individual mandate received by each successful MP.
The report says this “broke the important and necessary link between voters and MPs”.
It argues the system has instead encouraged political parties to campaign heavily on the popularity of their leaders — a phenomenon it describes as the “Big Man” or “Superman” effect.
The report uses FijiFirst’s results from the 2014, 2018 and 2022 elections to illustrate this concentration of votes.
Former FijiFirst leader Voreqe Bainimarama received 202,459 votes in 2014, 167,732 in 2018 and 136,829 in 2022.
The review says this system effectively placed local candidates in competition not only with candidates from other parties but also with their own party leaders and colleagues across the country.
Candidates without the financial and logistical resources to campaign nationally were particularly disadvantaged, it says, with the report identifying women candidates as among those affected.
The review also raises concerns about candidates entering Parliament with relatively small individual vote totals while others who attracted thousands of votes were unsuccessful.
“One dire result for democracy was that those making it to Parliament under their Leader’s umbrella and even ranked by the ‘Open List’ mechanism, often had a couple of hundred votes whereas there were many not elected to Parliament who had more than 5000 votes,” it states.
“This was a gross unfairness pointed out by the public all over Fiji.”
The report argues the system also limits voters’ ability to hold individual parliamentarians accountable at subsequent elections because there is no defined geographical electorate represented by each MP.
It further criticises the mechanism for filling parliamentary vacancies.
Instead of a by-election allowing voters to select a replacement, a vacant seat is filled by the next eligible unsuccessful candidate on the party’s Open List.
The review says this “denied voters the opportunity of voting for the replacement MP”.
The five per cent threshold required for parties to enter Parliament is another major concern identified by the review.
It says 7.6 per cent of votes cast during the 2022 General Election were effectively excluded from parliamentary representation because the parties receiving them failed to reach the threshold.
“This seriously undermines the frequent claims that the system ensured: ‘1 person = 1 vote = 1 value’,” the report states.
The review calculates that 7.6 per cent of the vote would proportionately have represented four parliamentary seats.
It argues those seats effectively flowed to larger parties that crossed the threshold, increasing their share of seats relative to their share of all votes cast.
“As a result, votes for larger parties effectively now have a higher relative value than votes for smaller parties that did not meet the threshold, negating the claim that ‘1 vote = 1 value’,” the report states.
The review says the issue was particularly significant following the 2022 election because four additional MPs could have affected the parliamentary numbers involved in determining who formed government.
The report concludes that the combination of a single national constituency, leader-dominated voting, the Open List mechanism, absence of by-elections and the five per cent threshold has weakened voter representation and accountability under Fiji’s existing electoral arrangements.
