Fijian Nationalist Party
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The Fijian Nationalist Party (FNP) was a political party in Fiji, founded in 1975 by Sakeasi Butadroka, a parliamentarian who defected from the then-ruling Alliance Party, on a "Fiji for the Fijians!" platform. Its support peaked in the parliamentary election of March 1977, when it took 24.4 percent of the popular vote. Though it won only one seat in the 52-member House of Representatives, most of its votes came at the expense of the Alliance, allowing the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party to win a plurality in the House and precipitating a constitutional crisis. The party changed its name in 1992 to the Fijian Nationalist United Front Party (FNUPF), and occasionally won parliamentary seats (three in 1992, one in 1999), but never regained the level of support it had enjoyed in the 1970s.
In the late 1990s, the FNUFP merged with the Vanua Tako Lavo Party, which shared its strong opposition to the constitution adopted in 1997-1998. The merged party, known as the Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party, was implicated by Maciu Navakasuasua, who was convicted of offences related to the Fiji coup of 2000, in the planning of the coup which deposed the elected government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.
