The Vanua ko Lau closed the national submissions on the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2026 yesterday, and called on Parliament to return the Constitution to the people.
The submission before the Special Committee called on Parliament to pass it to its third reading so that the Constitution could be put to the people at the December referendum.
The submission was made under the leadership of the Gone Turaga Bale na Tui Nayau, Sau ni Vanua ko Lau, Tui Lau, Ratu Tevita Lutunauga Kapaiwai Uluilakeba Mara, and his Masi ni Vanua ko Lau.
It was delivered to the Committee by Nukuyasi Maca Tulakepa, of Devobalavu, Nayau.
Its substance was adopted at the Bose Vanua ko Lau in July and endorsed by the Bose ni Yasana ko Lau, and the Bose Vanua ko Lau met again in Suva on Tuesday to approve the submission now before the committee.
“We support it for one reason above all others,” the Tui Nayau said.
“For the first time in our modern history, this Bill returns to the people of Fiji the authority to approve the constitutional order under which they live.
“Whatever view one takes of any clause, that principle alone is worthy of support.”
The land
The Vanua ko Lau said clause 50, which restores entrenched constitutional protection to iTaukei and Rotuman land, is the most important provision in the Bill, and asked that it be retained without dilution.
“If this Bill contained nothing beyond clause 50, the Vanua ko Lau would still support it.
A protection that rests upon the forbearance of the Parliament of the day is not a protection but a courtesy, and courtesies are withdrawn.”
The Vanua ko Lau placed the wider matter before Parliament as counsel rather than caution.
“Security for the iTaukei in their land and honour for the vanua have never been the enemy of anyone else’s security; they have always been its surest foundation.
“A people secure in who they are and where they belong have nothing to fear from making room for others.”
The Senate
The Vanua ko Lau supports the restoration of the Senate and the Bose Levu Vakaturaga under clause 76, and the composition as drafted, saying the Senate is the mechanism through which the protection of land operates.
“The Senate was never a ceremonial chamber. It was the mechanism through which that protection operated, and when the chamber was abolished in 2013 the protection disappeared with it.”
Answering the criticism that fourteen chiefly seats of twenty-three confer a power to block, “Those nine votes are a lock, not a source of legislative power. They cannot enact a law, amend a Bill, or compel either House to act. That safeguard binds the Bose Levu Vakaturaga no less than it binds Parliament, for no individual chief may unlock it alone. A protection removable by an ordinary majority is no protection at all.”
The Bose Levu Vakaturaga. The Vanua ko Lau said it supports the restoration of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga without reservation, noting that an institution standing since 1876, whose members’ forebears ceded this country, was set aside by decree and given no role at all under the 2013 Constitution.
“The Deed of Cession was not a surrender; it was a covenant, entered into with honour and received with honour. Fiji is a republic now, and we do not dispute that. But the office that made the covenant did not end with the Crown’s departure, and neither did the obligation it carries.”
Answering the allegation that the Senate seats nominated by the Bose Levu Vakaturaga serve the iTaukei only at the expense of others, the Vanua ko Lau answered from the record of the chiefs in the history of Fiji. Houng Lee, one of the pioneer Chinese settlers, came ashore at Levuka in 1855, nineteen years before Cession, when there was no colonial government and there were only the chiefs; the girmitiya came in 1879; and Pacific kin came from Rotuma, from Rabi, from Tuvalu and from the Solomons.
“Every one of them was received into a country whose first authority was the chiefs – before anyone compelled it, and before any constitution required it. Every one of them helped build some part of what we now share. Fiji is the work of all of them, and this country belongs to all of them. The chiefly institution has never existed to serve one community alone. At its best, it has served the whole country.”
The Vanua ko Lau set that standard against the example of the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who on receiving the Instruments of Independence in 1970 described the Fiji he meant to build: strong and united, rich in its diversity and tempered with tolerance, goodwill and understanding.
“That remains the Fiji for which the Vanua ko Lau works, and it is the standard by which the chiefly voice in the Senate should be judged.”
Two amendments sought
The Vanua ko Lau asked the committee to amend clause 6 so that Fijian is restored as the ethnic name of the indigenous people, and Fiji Islander adopted as the common name of all citizens. It said the question is one of consent, and that consent was absent on both sides of what was done.
“In 2010 the name was removed from the statute book by decree; in 2013 the name so vacated was conferred upon all citizens. At neither step was the question put to the indigenous Fijians from whom the name was taken, nor to the citizens they were being conferred upon. A matter determined without consent is not settled, and will not rest until it is addressed.”
Fiji Islander, recommended as the common name for all citizens by the Reeves Commission in 1996, was described as a name of reconciliation rather than of restoration. “It takes nothing from any community and confers no preference upon any other. Nationality should unite every citizen; ethnicity should remain with each community that holds it.”
The Vanua ko Lau also asked that the wholesale replacement of the Constitution require, in addition, the approval of the people at a referendum, and that a consultative review of the Constitution be conducted every ten years.
The consultation. On the question most contested before the Committee, the Vanua ko Lau answered from its own record. “Lau is among the hardest places in this country to reach, and the 2026 Constitutional Review Commission came to us in the islands. It sat also in the towns where most of our people now live – a Lauan in Raiwaqa had the same chance to be heard as a Lauan in Tubou. Only then did the chiefs of Lau sit. Our people were heard first.”
Every defect complained of in this process remains curable – by the committee, by the House and finally by the people at the referendum – while the defect in the 2013 Constitution is not. “The current 2013 Constitution was never put to the people. There was no assembly. There was no referendum. It was signed, and it was law the same day.”
Immunity
The Vanua ko Lau said it accepts the opinion of the Supreme Court and does not ask Parliament to depart from the Bill, but asked that one matter be clearly understood.
“The immunities are not created by this Bill. They are carried over from the 2013 Constitution, and the Supreme Court has placed them beyond the amendment power. Voting this Bill down would not remove them. Whatever a member thinks of immunity, it is not a reason to prefer 2013 to this document.”
It asked Parliament not to mistake a legal settlement for a national one. “If immunity is settled while the economic inequalities exploited in 1987 and in 2000 are left untouched, and the drug and health crisis now compounding them is left to deepen, the causes will not have been addressed. Nothing can ever justify the taking of power by force. But those conditions are still among us, and no clause in any constitution will remove them.”
The Vanua ko Lau recalled that the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had put a government of national unity to the country more than once – to the National Federation Party in the early 1980s, where it was not taken up, and again at Deuba in September 1987, where it was agreed under the Governor-General but never took effect – and asked whether the leaders of this Parliament might yet succeed where that generation did not. “A constitution can distribute power. It cannot, by itself, persuade those who hold it to share it. That choice has always rested with our leaders, and it rests with them still.”
Drugs and the health emergency. The Vanua ko Lau placed the drug and HIV emergency now bearing upon the young of Fiji before the committee, and asked that the by-law powers already contained in the iTaukei Affairs Act be made to work again so that a village may act in its own place, that treatment reach the maritime communities, and that Parliament consider whether the penalties available against traffickers are equal to what the country now faces. “A constitution cannot cure an epidemic. But it can say where authority lies, and it can place the institutions nearest to our people in a position to act.”
The opportunity. Following the opinion of the Supreme Court of 29 August 2025, constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of all members of Parliament and a majority of those who vote at the referendum, in place of three-quarters of all members and three-quarters of every name on the electoral roll. “This path was not open in 2023, nor in 2024.” The majority exists now, the Vanua ko Lau said, and “whether it exists in the next Parliament is beyond anyone’s power to promise.”
In closing, the Vanua ko Lau said Parliament’s duty is to let the people answer.
“There is no alternative document before the House. The Vanua ko Lau commends this Bill to you, and asks only that the question be allowed to go where, in a democracy, it ultimately belongs: to the people of Fiji. If it is approved at the referendum, Fiji will have a constitution resting upon the consent of its people. If it is not, the people will at least have been asked – and that is a question this country has never once been allowed to answer.”
“The people of Fiji have waited thirteen years to be asked. And they should now be asked.”
