TWO years ago, in 2024, na Bose Levu Vakaturaga (BLV), sat together as the custodians of our vanua, and issued a resolution that cut through the noise with the clarity only intergenerational wisdom can provide.
We declared, unanimously and without equivocation, that the 2013 Constitution “must go.” We warned that this document; imposed after the abolition of our Council and the erasure of iTaukei institutional voice, would continue to shackle Fiji to political instability and prevent us from addressing the crises that truly threaten our people.
At the time, the commentariat scoffed. We were accused of ethno-nationalistic nostalgia, of clinging to veivakaturagataki, of failing to embrace the “modern, common identity” the 2013 Constitution supposedly enshrined.
The Supreme Court, in August 2025, delivered its advisory opinion, declaring the 2013 document the “legally effective” framework of the state.
The legal establishment nodded approvingly. The constitution, they assured us, was here to stay.
And yet, here we are.
Look at this past month alone. While our political class has treated us to yet another installment of political circus—the theatrics, the brinkmanship, the endless jockeying for position that passes for governance—the real crises facing our nation, have continued their slow, silent creep into our communities.
The drug epidemic, once a distant concern, now touches every settlement, every school, every family. The HIV crisis, which experts have warned is reaching emergency proportions, spreads while Parliament debates procedural motions.
The BLV saw this. In 2024, we saw it with the foresight that comes from thinking in generations rather than electoral cycles.
We understood something that our outstanding legal minds seem constitutionally incapable of grasping: a nation cannot build stability on a foundation designed to exclude the very institutions that hold communities together.
The 2013 Constitution was not crafted through consultation; it was imposed through decree. It did not emerge from consensus; it was built on the rubble of a council that had advised Fijian leaders since 1876.
The Supreme Court, for all its legal sophistication, could only answer the question put before it: is the 2013 Constitution legally operative?
The answer, of course, is yes — it has been used to govern for over a decade. But legality is not legitimacy. A document can be “effective” while being profoundly divisive.
A framework can function while failing to inspire loyalty. And a nation can operate under a constitution while watching its youth despair, and its social fabric fray.
The political turmoil of recent weeks is not an aberration. It is the logical consequence of a constitutional order, that reduces governance to a zero-sum game.
When institutions of state are designed without roots in the communities they serve, when traditional voices are constitutionally silenced, when the vanua is reduced to one interest group among many rather than recognised as the foundational reality of these islands — then politics becomes what we now witness: a theatre of self-interest, disconnected from the struggles of ordinary Fijians.
The BLV in 2024, was not making a legal argument. We were issuing a warning rooted in lived experience and intergenerational memory. We understood that constitutional arrangements that marginalise the vanua do not merely offend tradition—they disable the very mechanisms through which the iTaukei have historically organised ourselves, supported one another, and maintained social cohesion. When you remove the BLV from constitutional life, you do not create a blank slate for national unity; you create a void. And into that void rushes exactly what we now see: political theatre, anxiety and the slow erosion of the institutions that actually touch people’s lives.
The drug crisis does not respect constitutional provisions. The HIV epidemic does not pause for Supreme Court rulings. These crises continue because our constitutional framework, for all its legal sophistication, has failed to create the conditions for sustained, focused governance.
We have built a system that rewards political maneuvering over national purpose, that incentivises short-term advantage over long-term planning, that produces endless debate about representation while ignoring the represented.
The BLV’s 2024 resolution was not about ethnicity. It was not about privilege. It was about recognising that a constitution which cannot secure the loyalty of the vanua, cannot secure the stability of the nation.
It was about understanding that legitimacy flows from inclusion, not imposition. And it was about foreseeing that as long as the foundational question of iTaukei constitutional voice remains unanswered, Fiji will continue to cycle through political crises while the real threats to our people multiply.
The Supreme Court has spoken. The legal minds have opined. But the BLV saw what legal analysis alone could not perceive: that a nation cannot thrive on a foundation that excludes its oldest institutions. Two years on, as the political circus continues and our crises spiral, our prophetic voice demands listening to.
Not because we claim perfect wisdom, but because we understand something our current arrangements have forgotten — that constitutions exist to serve communities, not the other way around. And when communities suffer while politicians perform, the document itself stands condemned.
The 2013 Constitution must go. Not because it is illegal, but because it is failing. Not because the BLV demands it, but because the evidence of its inadequacy surrounds us.
The question now is whether we will continue to defend a failing framework, or finally heed the warning issued two years ago by the very institution our nation was built upon.
The choice, as always, is ours.
RO NAULU MATAITINI is a member of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga. These are his personal views and not of this newspaper.
