Fijian general election, 1987

General elections were held in Fiji between 4 and 11 April 1987.^[1] It was historic in that it marked the first electoral transition of power in Fijian history. The Alliance Party of the longtime Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, was defeated by a multiracial coalition, consisting of the Fiji Labour Party (contesting the election for the first time), the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party, and two smaller parties, the Western United Front and the Fiji Nationalist Party. In the House of Representatives, the coalition won a total of 28 seats to the Alliance's 24, and Dr Timoci Bavadra, the leader of the coalition, became Prime Minister.

Bavadra's 28 member Parliamentary caucus included only 7 ethnic Fijians, all of them elected with predominantly Indo-Fijian support from "national" as opposed to "communal" electorates. (Fiji then had a complex voting system, allocating ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians 22 seats each, with a further 8 reserved for Europeans, Chinese, and other minorities. 12 of the representatives for both indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians group represented "communal" constituencies, elected from closed electoral rolls, while the other 10 represented "national" constituencies, elected by universal suffrage; the 8 minority seats comprised 3 communal and 5 national constituencies). Only six ethnic Fijians, including Dr Bavadra, were appointed to the new cabinet, as opposed to seven Into-Fijians and minority representative. Effective Indo-Fijian domination of the government caused widespread resentment among the ethnic Fijian community, and after less than a month in office, the new government was deposed in on May 14 1987 in a coup d'état led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka.

Results

References