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2006 Fijian General Election
General elections were held in Fiji between 6 and 13 May 2006. The incumbent Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua government, led by Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, was re-elected for a third term in government, opposed by the Labour Party, led by Mahendra Chaudhry, as well as several other minor parties. However, Qarase was later removed from office following a coup d'état. Background The 1997 Constitution of Fiji required general elections for the House of Representatives to be held at least once every five years. Acting President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi issued a proclamation on 2 March 2006, effective from 27 March, dissolving Parliament. The previous parliamentary term had been due to expire on 1 October 2006. The Writ of Elections was issued on 28 March; candidates filed their nominations on 11 April and published their preference lists on the 13th, while voter registration closed on 4 April. Electoral boundary adjustments A major issue to be resolved ahead of the elect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Representatives Of Fiji
The House of Representatives was the lower chamber of Fiji's Parliament from 1970 to 2006. It was the more powerful of the two chambers; it alone had the power to initiate legislation (the Senate, by contrast, could amend or veto most legislation, but could not initiate it). The House of Representatives also had much greater jurisdiction over financial bills; the Senate could not amend them, although it might veto them. Except in the case of amendments to the Constitution, over which a veto of the Senate was absolute, the House of Representatives might override a Senatorial veto by passing the same bill a second time, in the parliamentary session immediately following the one in which it was rejected by the Senate, after a minimum period of six months. Also, the Prime Minister and Cabinet were required to retain the confidence of a majority of the House of Representatives to remain in office. The House of Representatives was suspended by the 2006 military coup. The 2013 C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constituency Boundaries Commission (Fiji)
Fiji's Constituency Boundaries Commission was a civil service body charged under the 1997 Constitution of Fiji with determining the boundaries of electoral constituencies for the House of Representatives. The Commission was established by Sections 75 through 77 of the Constitution. It had three members. One was chosen by the Prime Minister and one by the Leader of the Opposition. The third member was the Chairperson, chosen by the President, after consulting with both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The chairperson must possess the qualifications required of a member of the Judiciary. Barred from membership were persons who are or have been in the preceding four years members of either house of Parliament or of a municipal council, or employed as civil servants. This was to safeguard the political impartiality of the commission. The last commission was appointed in March 2005 for a term of twelve months. Its membership was as follows: * Barrie Sweet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Electors
"General Electors" is the term formerly used in Fiji to identify citizens of voting age who belonged, in most cases, to ethnic minorities. The 1997 Constitution defined General Electors as all Fiji citizens who were not registered as being of Fijian, Indian, or Rotuman descent. Also included were citizens who did qualify to be registered in the above categories, but who chose not to be. Persons of biracial or multiracial ancestry could opt to enroll either as General Electors, or as descendants of any of the other three groups to which they had an ancestral claim. General Electors were thus a diverse electorate, whose members included Europeans, Chinese, Banaban Islanders, and many smaller groups. They were allocated 3 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower and more influential house of the Fijian Parliament. The 1997 Constitution of Fiji was a compromise between what it saw as the ideal of universal suffrage, and the practical reality of the need to protect the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotuma
Rotuma () is a self-governing heptarchy, generally designated a Local government in Fiji, dependency of Fiji. Rotuma commonly refers to the Rotuma Island, the only permanently inhabited and by far the largest of all the islands in the Rotuma Group. Officially, the Rotuma Act declares that Rotuma consists of Rotuma Island as well as its neighbouring islands, rocks, and reefs across the entire Rotuma Group. The dependency is situated around 500 km west of the French islands of Wallis and Futuna and a similar distance north of the Fijian mainland. Its capital is Ahau, a hamlet consisting of a number of Colony of Fiji, colonial-era buildings. Rotuma exists as a dependency of Fiji but itself contains its own socioreligious enclave, pene-enclave known traditionally as ''Faguta'' where the chiefs (of Juju (district), Juju and Pepjei) and their villages adhere to the practices of worship, Fara (Rotuman festivity), festival dates, and French language, French-based writing system of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indians In Fiji
Indo-Fijians () are Fijians of South Asian descent whose ancestors were Girmitiyas, indentured labourers. Indo-Fijians trace their ancestry to various regions of the Indian subcontinent. Although Indo-Fijians constituted a majority of Fiji's population from 1956 through to the late 1980s, discrimination triggered immigration, resulted in them numbering 313,798 (37.6%) (2007 census) out of a total of 827,900 people living in Fiji . Although they hailed from various regions in the subcontinent, just about half of Indo-Fijians trace their origins to the Awadh and Bhojpuri region, Bhojpur regions of the Hindi Belt in northern India. Indo-Fijians speak Fiji Hindi in Fiji also known as 'Fiji Baat' which is based on the Awadhi language, Awadhi dialect with influence from Bhojpuri language, Bhojpuri. It is a koiné language with its own grammatical features, distinct to the Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu, Modern Standard Urdu spoken in South Asia. The major home districts of Fiji's Nor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fijians
Fijians () are a nation and ethnic group Indigenous peoples of Oceania, native to Fiji, who speak Fijian language, Fijian and English language, English and share a common history and culture. Fijians, or ''iTaukei'', are the major indigenous people of the Fiji, Fiji Islands of Melanesia. Indigenous Fijians are believed to have arrived in Fiji from western Melanesia approximately 3,500 years ago and are the descendants of the Lapita people. Later they would move onward to other surrounding islands, including Rotuma, as well as settling in other nearby islands such as 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 Demographics of Fiji, population of Fiji. Indigenous Fijians are predominantly of Melanesians, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Suffrage
Universal suffrage or universal franchise ensures the right to vote for as many people bound by a government's laws as possible, as supported by the " one person, one vote" principle. For many, the term universal suffrage assumes the exclusion of the young and non-citizens (among others). At the same time, some insist that more inclusion is needed before suffrage can be truly universal. Democratic theorists, especially those hoping to achieve more universal suffrage, support presumptive inclusion, where the legal system would protect the voting rights of all subjects unless the government can clearly prove that disenfranchisement is necessary. Universal full suffrage includes both the right to vote, also called active suffrage, and the right to be elected, also called passive suffrage. History In the first modern democracies, governments restricted the vote to those with property and wealth, which almost always meant a minority of the male population. In some jurisdiction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Constituencies
Open constituencies represent one of several electoral models employed in the past in the Fijian electoral system. They derived their name from the fact that they were "open": unlike the communal constituencies, the 25 members of the House of Representatives who represented open constituencies were elected by universal suffrage and were open to members of any ethnic group. Universal suffrage with a common voters' roll was first proposed by the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party (NFP) in the early 1960s, but was opposed by most leaders of the indigenous Fijian community, who were fearful that a common roll would favour Indo-Fijians, who then comprised a majority of the population. The proposal came up again intermittently throughout the 1970s, but nothing came of it. Open constituencies came into being when the 1997 constitution was adopted in 1997–1998. The Constitutional Commission chaired by former New Zealand Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves had recommend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communal Constituencies
Until the abolishment of communal constituencies in the Fijian electoral system in 2014, there was very little cross-ethnic voting in Fiji. In communal constituencies, electors enrolled as ethnic Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Rotuman Islanders, or General electors (Europeans, Chinese, Banaba Islanders, and others) vote for a candidate of their own respective ethnic groups, in constituencies that have been reserved by ethnicity. Other methods of choosing parliamentarians came and went, but this feature was a constant until their final abolition in the 2013 Constitution. History In 1904, the British colonial authorities reserved seven seats in the Legislative Council for European voters; in 1929, provision was made for wealthy Indians to elect one representative also. Although the number allocated to the various ethnic communities varied over the years, the basic manner of election did not change. It avoided electoral competition between candidates of different races. With the con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Group Voting Ticket
A group voting ticket (GVT) is a shortcut for voters in a Ranked voting systems, preferential voting system, where a voter can indicate support for a list of candidates instead of marking preferences for individual candidates. For multi-member electoral divisions with single transferable vote, single transferable voting, a group or party registers a GVT before an election with the electoral commission. When a voter selects a group or party above the line on a ballot paper, their vote is distributed according to the registered GVT for that group. In Australia it is known as group ticket vote or ticket voting. As of 2022, group voting tickets are still used for elections in only two jurisdictions in the country: the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house of the legislature in the Australian state of Victoria, and the Councillor ballot for City of Melbourne local government elections. In South Australia House of Assembly elections, parties can submit preference tickets which a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instant-runoff Voting
Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where Sequential loser method, one or more eliminations are used to simulate Runoff (election), runoff elections. When no candidate has a majority of the votes in the first round of counting, each following round eliminates the candidate with the fewest First-preference votes, first-preferences (among the remaining candidates) and transfers their votes if possible. This continues until one candidate accumulates a majority of the votes still in play. Instant-runoff voting falls under the plurality-based voting-rule family, in that under certain conditions the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, making use of secondary rankings as contingency votes. Thus it is related to the Runoff election, two-round runoff system and the exhaustive ballot. IRV could also be seen as a single-winner equivalent of Single transferable vote, sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Political Parties In Fiji
Prior to the 2006 coup d'état, Fiji had a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which no one party had a chance of gaining power alone, forcing parties to work with each other to form coalition governments. In January 2013 the military regime promulgated new regulations governing the registration of political parties. Parties are required to have 5,000 financial members, obey a code of conduct, and be named in the English language. The existing 16 registered parties were required to re-register under the new rules, but only two – the Fiji Labour Party and the National Federation Party – did so. The rest were dissolved on 15 February 2013 and their assets forfeited to the government. Current parties Registered parties Historical parties Political parties that have played a pivotal role in the past, but are now defunct. * All Nationals Congress – formerly a multiracial party. Split, with some joining the Fijian Association Party (FAP), and others the United ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
