The 2022 elections have come and gone.
Some obvious results for legitimacy and political stability have been analysed by several commentators like Professor Jon Fraenkel in the Australian Guardian (January 3, 2023) and by Professor Steve Ratuva (The Fiji Times, January 4, 2023).
Prof Ratuva discusses some of the dynamics of the delicate balance after the 2022 elections results and suggests some lessons for the next elections four years away.
Unfortunately, his lessons are predicated on the electoral system being the same.
This is not necessarily going to be the case, and I sincerely hope not.
If there is to be any constitutional reform it will be important for electoral experts to also think about how the electoral system needs to be reformed without going back to the disastrous faulty Alternative Vote system in the 1997 Constitution which I wrote about in 1996 (“Sound Reeves Report but weak electoral system” which you can read in my volume Our Struggles for Democracy in Fiji).
Some pointers may be had by examining the weaknesses of the current electoral system which, while having the advantage of proportionality, had all the weaknesses of having just one constituency.
This allowed the FijiFirst party to foster an electioneering strategy focused on just one candidate (Bainimarama) getting the bulk of the votes of the FFP supporters, and a 5 per cent threshold totally unfair to small parties.
What if SODELPA had not qualified?
The eventual result had 29 seats for the Coalition (The People’s Alliance, NFP and SODELPA) and 26 seats for FFP.
There are many commentators wondering what the result would have been if SODELPA had just failed to get over the 5 per cent threshold.
My rough calculations suggest that FFP would have got 27, PA 22 and NFP 6 (choosing the largest fractions) hence the Coalition would have got 28 seats, just one more than FFP.
But if SODELPA and PA had not split, FFP would have got only 25 seats and PA/SODELPA would have got 25 seats and NFP 5 seats.
Hence the Coalition would have got 30 seats easily forming Government.
The 5 per cent hurdle
While the system is supposed to be proportional, the 5 per cent threshold eliminated three small parties who ought to have been represented in Parliament by strict proportionality: Narube’s Unity Fiji (2 seats), Chaudhry’s FLP (1 seat) and We Unite Party (1 seat).
Table 1 (below) shows the seat allocation if there was no 5 per cent threshold.
FFP would have got only 23 seats, while the Opposition parties would have together obtained 32 seats, easily defeating the FFP Government.
It was only the 5 per cent threshold disqualifying these small parties that made the final result of the 2022 Elections appear to be a close election.
The reality is that 57 per cent of the voters did not vote for FFP but another party, which to them represented the change they wanted.
Sadly, the smaller parties failed to heed all our warnings about the dangers of not reaching the 5 per cent threshold, and condemned Fiji to all that unnecessary trauma just after the 2022 elections.
Votes for Qualifying MPs
Table 2 (right) gives the votes for the top candidates for each party qualifying for Parliament according to the D’Hondt rules (which gives 1 extra MP to FFP that FFP should not have by strict proportionality).
Note that the last qualifying MP for the PA had 1649 votes, which was more than all the FFP qualifying MPs from its eighth MP downwards.
That is, the last PA MP had more votes than 19 of the FFP MPs.
FFP could have stood balabala as candidates – and still they would have been elected to Parliament under Bainimarama’s cover.
The “one constituency” game
Contrary to all the electoral systems which Fiji has had since Independence in 1970, the 2013 electoral system imposed on Fiji by the Bainimarama Government deliberately removed all the local constituencies which had previously empowered local communities to have their own representative in Parliament.
The entire system was designed for the FijiFirst party to base its entire election strategy on just one candidate and number, that of Voreqe Bainimarama.
To that end, no photos or party symbols or party names or candidate names were allowed on the ballot paper.
How utterly ridiculous for a country like Fiji.
In the 2022 elections, FFP focused its advertisements on two candidates, and the result was obvious.
Quite clearly, the FFP was a “one man show” and deliberately planned that way, except that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s candidate
number was almost as prominently displayed as Bainimarama’s candidate number.
It was no surprise therefore that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum got 11 per cent of the FFP votes.
This system has effectively destroyed local democracy since the 2014 elections.
Lack of democratic support for FFP MPs
The lack of popular support for FFP may be seen by contrasting their top 26 candidates’ votes with that of the top 26 candidates from People’s Alliance, who clearly had solid support from the voters.
The black line in the graph shows that, ignoring the top three candidates in each party, every one of the People’s Alliance candidates to the 26th candidate had far more votes than all of the ranked Fiji First Party candidates.
Such a lopsided result would not occur with local constituencies.
PA (and NFP and SODELPA) clearly went for widespread support for all their candidates and not just for their Superman and Super Boy.
What reform?
While Prof Ratuva’s article in The Fiji Times advises on future strategies for small political parties, these are all predicated on the same electoral system being there at the next elections.
I would strongly urge the Coalition Government to take their time and implement electoral reform before the next elections in 2026.
My recommendations for a new system would have the following principles similar to that used in NZ:
(a) as many local constituencies as are needed and convenient for electioneering, without ethnic differentiation (electing say half the MPs in Parliament);
(b) full national proportionality to be derived from a national vote; and
(c) the other half of MPs in Parliament to be drawn from a “Closed List” system which will allow guaranteed gender representation, with alternating males and females on the Closed List.
This could also ensure guaranteed representation for youth.
I made such a proposal to the Yash Ghai Commission in 2012.
This proposal (“Narsey Proposal to Yash Ghai Commission) is described fully in Reading 60 of my Volume 3 community education book Our Struggles for Democracy in Fiji.
It is also available at the USP Book Centre.
Let Fiji not repeat the trauma that it has gone through in December 2022 nor repeat the severe erosion of local democracy and accountability.
