|
2001 Fijian General Election
General elections were held in Fiji in August and September 2001. The Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua party won 18 of the 23 seats reserved for ethnic Fijians and one of three " general electorates" set aside for Fiji's European, Chinese, and other minorities. It also won 13 of the 25 "open electorates," so-called because they are open to candidates of any race and are elected by universal suffrage. The remaining five ethnic Fijian seats, and one open electorate, were won by the Conservative Alliance, one of whom was George Speight who had led the putsch against the lawful government the year before. Chaudhry's Labour Party won all 19 Indo-Fijian seats and eight open electorates. The New Labour Unity Party, formed by defectors from the FLP, won one general electorate and one open electorate. The three remaining seats (one general electorate, one open electorate, and the Rotuman Islanders' seat) were won by minor parties and independent candidates. Background The Constitution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laisenia Qarase
Laisenia Qarase (pronounced ; 4 February 1941 – 21 April 2020) was a Fijian politician. He served as the sixth Prime Minister of Fiji from 2000 to 2006. After the military quashed the coup that led to the removal of Mahendra Chaudhry, Qarase joined the Interim Military Government as a financial adviser on 9 June 2000, until his appointment as Prime Minister on 4 July. He won two parliamentary elections, but a military coup removed him from power on 5 December 2006. He was later imprisoned on corruption charges brought by the military-backed regime. A native of Vanua Balavu Island in the Lau archipelago, he was one of many Lauans to have held top leadership positions in Fiji. Early and personal life Qarase was born in 1941 into the Tota clan in Mavana on Vanua Balavu, the son of Josateki Mate of Mavana village. After attending local schools, he enrolled at Suva Boys Grammar School. Following his education at Suva Boys Grammar School, Qarase left Fiji in 1959 and went on to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fijians
Fijians ( fj, iTaukei, lit=Owners (of the land)) are a nation and ethnic group native to Fiji, who speak Fijian and share a common history and culture. Fijians, or ''iTaukei'', are the major indigenous people of the Fiji Islands, and live in an area informally called Melanesia. Indigenous Fijians are believed to have arrived in Fiji from western Melanesia approximately 3,500 years ago, though the exact origins of the Fijian people are unknown. Later they would move onward to other surrounding islands, including Rotuma, as well as blending with other (Polynesian) settlers on Tonga and Samoa. They are indigenous to all parts of Fiji except the island of Rotuma. The original settlers are now called " Lapita people" after a distinctive pottery produced locally. Lapita pottery was found in the area from 800 BCE onward. As of 2005, indigenous Fijians constituted slightly more than half of the total Fijian population. Indigenous Fijians are predominantly of Melanesian extraction, wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lio 'On Famör Rotuma Party
Lio 'On Famör Rotuma or ''LFR'' (meaning ''"Voice of the Rotuman People"'' in Rotuman) was a political party in Fiji. It sought to represent the interests of the Rotuman people in their main representative constituency, the Rotuman Communal Constituency, which, under the 1997 Constitution, elected a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for all people of Rotuman descent across the nation of Fiji. Although the party never won a seat in Parliament, it tightly contested the parliamentary elections of 1999 and 2001. The party faced some controversy over its short history, primarily related to the mismanagement of funds and donations, and having lost some face did not offer a candidate in the 2006 election. See also *Politics of Fiji The politics of Fiji take place within the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic. Fiji has a multiparty system with the Prime Minister of Fiji as head of government. The executive power is exercised b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Voters Party
A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED Online. March 2021. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/77489?rskey=dCKrg4&result=1 (accessed May 11, 2021) The term ''general'' is used in two ways: as the generic title for all grades of general officer and as a specific rank. It originates in the 16th century, as a shortening of ''captain general'', which rank was taken from Middle French ''capitaine général''. The adjective ''general'' had been affixed to officer designations since the late medieval period to indicate relative superiority or an extended jurisdiction. Today, the title of ''general'' is known in some countries as a four-star rank. However, different countries use different systems of stars or other insignia for senior ranks. It has a NATO rank scal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Peoples Party (Fiji)
The United Peoples Party was a minor political party in Fiji. It represented mainly General Electors and multiracial people, and claimed to follow moderate, centrist policies. From 2001 it was led by Mick Beddoes, the sole member elected from the party to the 71-member House of Representatives in the general election. The party was dissolved in January 2013. History of the UPP The party, originally called the United General Party, was formed in the late 1990s by a merger between the General Voters Party and the General Electors Association, formerly the All National Congress (ANC). This followed an earlier move in which ethnic Fijian members of the ANC had left to join the Fijian Association Party. Both groups were fragments of the old Alliance Party, the party which ruled Fiji from 1967 to 1987. In 2003, the party announced a drive to broaden its base to attract support from Fiji's major ethnic communities, indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians. On 2 August, Beddoes anno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Justice And Freedom Party
The Justice and Freedom Party (JFP) was a minor political party in Fiji. It was formed in 2000 to promote the interests of the Indo-Fijian community, and unsuccessfully contested the 2001 and 2006 elections. It was dissolved in 2013. In the 2001 election the party gained less than 0.1 percent of the popular vote and won no constituencies. With some 76 percent of Indo-Fijians voting for the Fiji Labour Party and 22 percent for the National Federation Party, the JFP was squeezed out. In the 2006 elections, the party intended to run candidates in all 19 communal constituencies allocated to Indo-Fijians, and on 3 April published a manifesto promising to petition the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations to press the United Kingdom and Australia to accept responsibility for bringing Indians to Fiji during the colonial era. It also promised a F$10 million scholarship for Indo-Fijian students. The party would also push for dual citizenship to be allowed for Indo-Fijians l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party
The Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party (NVTLP) was a Fijian political party which championed Fijian ethnic nationalism. It was led by Iliesa Duvuloco, while Viliame Savu served as the party's president. Founding and ideology The party was founded in the late 1990s by a merger of Sakeasi Butadroka's Fijian Nationalist Party and Iliesa Duvuloco's Vanua Tako Lavo Party. Both leaders strongly opposed the adoption of the present constitution, which they publicly burnt when Parliament passed it. The party campaigned on a platform of ''"Fiji for the Fijians and that their rights at all times should be preserved,"'' as Butadroka put it. In April 2006, party secretary Viliame Savu announced that the NVTLP was dropping its demand for the expulsion of ethnic Indians who were born in Fiji. ''"We no longer share that view now because if you Indian or European born here, you will be still a Fiji citizen,"'' he told the Fiji Sun. The party would continue to fight for indigenous r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Party Of National Unity (Fiji)
The Party of National Unity (better known by its acronym of PANU) was a Fijian political party founded by Ratu Sairusi Nagagavoka in 1998; by the time of the military coup of 2006, Nagagavoka remained the President of the party. A well-known member of the party was Apisai Tora. Presenting itself as a multiracial party representing the interests of Ba Province in particular, it formed part of the Fiji Labour Party-led People's Coalition in the general election of 1999, and won four seats in the House of Representatives. It lost all of its seats in the following election, in 2001, but party stalwart Ponipate Lesavua was appointed to the Senate as one of 8 nominees of Opposition Leader Mahendra Chaudhry. Merger with BKV PANU's chief rival for support in Ba Province was the Protector of Fiji, better known locally as '' Bai Kai Viti'' (BKV), with which it merged in 2004 to form the People's National Party (PNP). Following the completion of the merger, PANU and the BKV were both f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fijian Association Party
The Fijian Association Party (FAP) is a former political party in Fiji. It played a significant role in Fijian politics throughout the 1990s, but lost all of its seats in the House of Representatives in the parliamentary election of 2001. The FAP was founded in 1994 by Josefata Kamikamica, head of the Native Land Trust Board and a former Minister of Finance. Following the parliamentary election of 1992, Kamikamica and five of his supporters had left the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei of Sitiveni Rabuka and unsuccessfully challenged him for the Prime Ministership, attempting to build a coalition government with the Indo-Fijian opposition. The party won five seats in the general election of 1994, which was called three years early because of political instability. Following Kamikamica's death from cancer in 1996, ''Ratu'' Finau Mara (the son of then-President ''Ratu Sir'' Kamisese Mara) took over the leadership. In 1998, he was replaced by ''Adi'' Kuini Speed, the widow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bei Kai Viti
The Bai Kei Viti (BKV, sometimes known in English as ''Protector of Fiji'', or ''Fortress for the People of Fiji''), was a political party in Fiji. The party was formed by residents and some chiefs of Ba Province to contest the 1999 elections, but failed to win any seats in the House of Representatives. Following the coup d'état which deposed the elected government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry in 2000, the BKV contested the election held to restore democracy in 2001. This time, they had former interim Prime Minister Ratu Tevita Momoedonu (a defector from the Fiji Labour Party) as their leader, but once again, they won no seats, though they received 2.2 percent of the popular vote. In 2004 the BKV merged with the Party of National Unity (PANU), also a Ba-based party, to form the People's National Party (PNP) under the leadership of former Cabinet Minister Meli Bogileka, and was officially deregistered on 14 August 2005. Bogileka declared that officials from the two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soqosoqo Ni Vakavulewa Ni Taukei
The Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT), occasionally known in English as Fijian Political Party, was a party which dominated the politics of Fiji in the 1990s and was the mainstay of coalition governments from 1992 to 1999. Origins The party was founded in 1990 as the political vehicle of the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), with the declared goal of uniting all indigenous Fijians. A new constitution promulgated in 1990, following two military coups in 1987, abolished the "national" parliamentary seats elected by universal suffrage (which had comprised almost half the House of Representatives); all members henceforth were to be elected by enrolled voters on "communal" electoral rolls that were limited to specific ethnic communities, each of which had an allocated number of seats in the House (37 indigenous Fijians, 27 Indo-Fijians, 1 Rotuman and 5 General Electors (Europeans, Chinese, Banaban Islanders and other minorities). The end to multiracial voting resulted in a trend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instant-runoff Voting
Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the United States (although there are other forms of ranked voting), preferential voting in Australia, where it has seen the widest adoption; in the United Kingdom, it is generally called alternative vote (AV), whereas in some other countries it is referred to as the single transferable vote, which usually means only its multi-winner variant. All these names are often used inconsistently. Voters in IRV elections rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are initially counted for each voter's top choice. If a candidate has more than half of the first-choice votes, that candidate wins. If not, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the voters who selected the defeated candidate as a first choice then have their vot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
