I am still scratching my head at the almost instant collapse and deregistration of the FijiFirst Party — more a political cult than a party — and the scattering of its MPs earlier this year. I am unlikely to shed any tears over that. But at the same time, anyone interested in real democracy — different from the “true democracy” that FFP’s leaders used to preach — should be reflecting on the current state of things and whether the people of Fiji are entitled to a stronger opposition, both inside Parliament and out. One of the problems with the FijiFirst Government’s “true democracy” was that it was no fun. It was rigid and sanitised, overseen by a humourless Supervisor of Elections who seemed determined to suspend anyone and everyone who fell even one inch out of line. I say “was”. In fact the same rules apply unchanged today —the same rules, ironically, that led to the evaporation of the FijiFirst Party (which never followed those rules anyway). But now we have put some distance between ourselves and the baleful rule of Frank Bainimarama and Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. So this means we should be able to think more like free people, not TIN numbers with a vote. And perhaps it is time to put into perspective the laws that govern our politics.
Political party rules
So let’s start with our political parties. Under the Political Parties (Registration, Funding, Conduct and Disclosures) Act no group of people are allowed to call themselves a “political party” unless they are registered as one. If they do —they can go to jail. To be registered, a political party must have 5000 signed-up members, proportionately spread across each of Fiji’s four divisions. The name of the party must be in English. It can’t be more than five words. It can’t have “an abbreviation of acronym that does not reflect the actual name”. If a journalist calls an unregistered political party a “political party” and not a “proposed political party” — he or she can go to jail. If you’re a member of a political party and want to quit and join another political party you must send your resignation letter not just to the party, but to the Supervisor of Elections. If you join another party before your resignation letter reaches the Supervisor — you can go to jail. Political party constitutions must line up with the Second Schedule of the Political Parties Act. Parties must have “a clearly defined vision and mission”. They must set out their “general organisation structure and management”. They must comply with a Code of Conduct that requires them to “promote consensus building on issues of national importance” and “promote national patriotism and national unity”. Seriously? What do any of these high-sounding platitudes even mean when you put them in a law?
Then there’s the money
Let’s turn to fund-raising. The Political Parties Act says that political parties can be funded only from “membership fees, voluntary contributions, donations, bequests and grants from a lawful source” or income from buildings they own. A political party must disclose to the Supervisor of Elections “full particulars of all funds or other resources obtained by it from any source including the name and address of the source”. This rule was strictly enforced, meaning you couldn’t just hand around a bucket and collect a saqamoli or two. Receipts had to be issued for everything. If you didn’t have a perfect set of books, your party risked suspension. Or if you were a party official – you could go to jail. This could be a problem when the Fiji Elections Office thought it was smarter than you at reading financial accounts. One political party was challenged about why its year end bank statements showed a different balance from its year-end accounts. Most sixth form accounting students know the answer to that — it was in the bank reconciliation statement. SODELPA leader Viliame Gavoka famously grumbled that his party couldn’t sell a roti parcel for $2 without issuing a receipt.
Although now I look again at the “source of funds” rules, maybe SODELPA wasn’t allowed to sell roti parcels at all. Challenges like this did not bother the FijiFirst Party when in Government. A celebrated supermodel from the 1990s famously said “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day”. Fiji First was a bit like that. No coin collections or roti parcel fundraisers for FijiFirst. They had business people just lining up to write $10,000 cheques — the monetary limit for “personal” donations. Some powerful business families enthusiastically gave FFP “personal” $10,000 donations from every family member — even, we were told, two-year-olds. So there generally wasn’t any problem issuing receipts for these. It did become embarrassing later on when these donors’ names were published — until, of course, the law was changed so that those donors’ names didn’t have to be made public.
Campaign rules
This is to say nothing on the laws governing campaigning and voting. There were the normal rules, some of it reasonable stuff. If you ran a campaign ad in a newspaper, you had to identify which party official was responsible for it. No vote buying, no use of government resources for campaigning (even if in 2018 Fiji First issued $14million in “small enterprise grants” in the four weeks before election date). Then, as time went on and the Government became more paranoid, thing started to get a little crazy. The Opposition was getting more critical of the government. They weren’t very impressed with the behaviour of the Supervisor of Elections either. So a new law was passed. Political parties could not publish “false statements” which might influence an election. Nor were they allowed to publish “false statements” about the Supervisor of Elections. Nobody could tell us what a “false statement” was, but if we published “false statements” the Supervisor could tell us to “correct” our “false statements”. And if we didn’t correct our “false statements” — we could go to jail. Then the government decided political parties and candidates couldn’t make campaign promises with “financial implications” unless they provided a written explanation of how they could pay for them. If not — they could go to jail. There was originally a rule saying “no opinion polls in the last week” of the campaign. Then the Fiji Sun published an opinion poll, months before the 2022 election, suggesting that FFP was going to lose. A law change was rushed through Parliament. The rule became “you can only publish opinion polls under Electoral Commission guidelines and if the Supervisor of Elections thinks you have breached the guidelines he can tell you to correct your opinion poll”. If not — you could go to jail. Election day dawned. We, the older generation, can remember back to the days before 2006 when we used to visit our polling stations. Everything was happening there. People were politicking. Each party was camped outside the polling station — well a reasonable distance from it, 300 metres I think — with their supporters, drinking yaqona, wasting other people’s time and watching to see who went to whose sheds. There was noise and colour and good humour. Elections under our current Electoral Act? Not so much. A “media blackout” meant that no one was allowed to publish any political material on the day before polling day. Voting was a sterile, boring process. No political activity was allowed around polling stations. We just had to come in, stand quietly in line, vote and go home. Any breaches of these rules and –we could go to jail. No doubt all of this was to ensure that nothing harmed the purity of our minds when voting. No socialising, no choosing whose goat palau was the best one, no catching up with our friends in the sheds. In short — no fun. And all these are the rules that are still in place.
So now what?
In a free country, nobody should be telling 10 of us, if we want to get together and form a political party, that we can’t. We might all do very badly on election day and lose our deposits, but that’s our problem. Nobody should be telling us, within the laws of defamation or hate speech or other reasonable restrictions, what we should say to other people about politics or what politicians should promise to other people and on what conditions. Nobody should be telling us that our statements are “false” and we must correct them and threatening us with jail if we do. That is completely against freedom of speech. Reasonable rules on fund-raising and public disclosure of donations are a good thing — but not rules which are poorly drafted, which bullying officials can use against people they don’t like and which threaten the financial lifeblood of political parties. The 2026 — or maybe 2027 — elections are no longer that far away. And if we are going to properly encourage wide participation in politics, we have a lot of work ahead of us to change our electoral laws. If we want people to take part in politics, the least we can do is try to keep it interesting, to keep it fun – but most importantly to have rules which allow us to behave like free, independent adults when we are voting for our government. We need time to consult, discuss and listen to each other about what rules should be in place (because there need to be some rules) and which restrictions we can do without. We need to be drafting the new rules, letting the political parties think about how they will work and how the FEO will make them work. So – isn’t now the time to start?
- RICHARD NAIDU is a Suva lawyer. In the old days of elections, he visited every political party shed to keep them guessing. The views expressed in this article are his own.
