Are we escaping from ethnic arithmetic? Or being led down the Garden Path?

We are all looking forward to elections next year as the way back to a
normal life in Fiji. At the Forum in Tonga Frank gave a clear undertaking
in front of all Pacific Island leaders that elections would be held in
March 2009.

Some of us found this hard to believe, but he did say it. However, the
words had hardly left his mouth when he started talking about the Charter
as a step to be taken before the elections.

In particular, he caused all sorts of confusion when he started throwing
around the idea of abolishing racial electorates. We all know that getting
rid of racial rolls requires a change to the    constitution, so it is
hard to know what Napoleon is driving at with this suggestion. Puzzled by
this, we contacted someone whoknows a lot about the ins and outs of voting
systems and asked for her view on possible changes to the system. She
teaches Government in a major university and has followed the intricacies
of Fiji and Pacific constitutions for a number of years. This is what my
learned friend sent me.

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“Common Roll for Fiji

Under all three constitutions, Fiji’s electoral system has been complex
and difficult for outsiders to understand. It is a credit to Fiji’s
education system that voters have coped with these complexities and the
level of formal voting has been generally high by world standards.

The 1997 Constitution replaced voting on purely communal lines with a
mixture of communal and open voting, doubly complicated by the
introduction of the ‘preferential’ or ‘alternative vote’ system. Fiji’s
retention^of communal voting is quite an anachronism in the 21st century.
For this reason it has considerable academic curiosity value.
If a common roll were to be introduced for all 71 seats in the lower
nouse, what would be the result?

First, it would depend on the electoral system. Would it be based on
single member constituencies or multi-member constituencies? The latter is
generally preferred by academic experts, as opposed to

practicing politicians, because it produces ‘proportional representation’,
meaning that all parties get a chance at gaining representation in
accordance with the size of their vote. Single-member constituencies, a
hangover from British colonial occupation, might produce clear majorities
but nearly always do so at the cost of under-representing minority groups.

Single member constituencies

If single-member constituencies are chosen, the Constituency Boundary
Commission would again face the potentially controversial task of trying
to devise boundaries that have a rational basis while also ‘ignoring’ the
well known communal voting patterns.

This has always proved challenging, particularly when there are both
communal and open electorates to fit into the landscape.

Already some of the Open Seats are artificial. Lomaivuna is joined with
Namosi and Kadavu, rather than, say, adjoining Naitasiri. Presumably, this
is the legacy of attempts to keep constituencies roughly the same size.
However, it has the effect of creating a constituency with an artificially
large ethnic Fijian majority. A constituency like this ‘disadvantages’ the
major ethnic Fijian political party, as it means that the ethnic balance
in other electorates is tilted more towards Indo-Fijians than it would
otherwise be. An example such as this suggests that the Constituency
Boundary Commission under previous governments did not attempt to bias the
system towards ethnic Fijians.

Common roll

If all seats are based on Common Roll, there would be less need to resort
to geographically separated areas as Lomaivuna and Kadavu. So, in this
respect at least, the task for the Constituency Boundary Commission would
be easier.

Given that the Indo-Fijian population is concentrated heavily in three
regions, it would be difficult to avoid the concentration of Indo-Fijians
in a few electorates, with the potential to deliver huge majorities for
Indo-Fijian parties in each seat. As a consequence of this, however, the
number of seats won by ethnic Fijian dominated parties would be
artificially higher. Any kind of rigging of boundaries in favor of
Indo-Fijians, would have to be something conspicuously artificial to
succeed.

Based on population as confirmed in the 2007 Census, Central Division
would have 29 Common Roll constituencies, rather than the 9 Open
constituencies at present. With so many units to play with it would be
easier to fit them into natural geographic units.

Given that ethnic Fijians now constitute 62 percent of the population of
Central Division, while Indo-Fijians have fallen to less than half this,
at 30.1 percent, 29 single member constituencies based on Common Roll
could potentially deliver a huge majority to any ethnic Fijian dominated
Party.

On the other hand, the now much more equal numbers of ethnic Fijians and
Indo-Fijians in the Western Division mean that, even with single member
constituencies, the probability of an even balance of seats is greater.
Eight seats in the urban areas of Lautoka, Nadi and Ba would all be very
safe seats for an Indo-Fijian based party, but many of the other seats in
rural areas in the Western Division would have ethnic Fijian majorities.

Because of the potential distortions of single-member constituencies many
academic observers favor proportional representation via multi-member
constituencies. This avoids the distortion resulting when a 51 percent
majority in several single-member seats could deliver all of those seats
to one party, with no representation for the parties making up the other
49 percent. The National Federation Party has long been under-represented
in Fiji because of this factor peculiar to single-member constituencies.
In 2006, the NFP picked up 14 percent of the vote in Indo-Fijian Communal
Constituencies, but did not win a single seat. In 1999, they had 32
percent of the vote without a seat.

With multi-member constituencies it is possible to achieve proportional
representation because parties can share the seats, even if they fall
short of 51 percent of the vote. The downside of this is the risk of
political instability resulting from the lack a clear majority for any one
party. However, if one party can’t get a clear majority, it is forced to
consider the option of cooperating with other parties, which could be good
thing in light of the multiparty cabinet provisions in the 1997
Constitution.

Proportional representation could therefore potentially divide the 71
seats in Fiji’s Parliament into four administrative divisions as follows:

Central Division 29
Eastern Division 4
Western Division 27
Northern Division 11

If race remains a dominant factor influencing the way people vote, the
first and most dramatic impact of a proportional system based on common
roll would be to wipe out representation from any party not based on the
two major communities. The 5720 Rotumans in the Central Division, for
example, would never muster enough votes on their own to elect a Rotuman
member. In Eastern Division, the 2000 Rotumans on their home island would
be far out-numbered by the 35,000 ethnic Fijians.

The General Electors, Chinese, Europeans and people of mixed race would
have to throw all of their combined weight behind one or two candidates to
have any chance of one of their number being elected

on the basis of communal support. Their best prospect would be the Central
division where they are concentrated and form 5.5 percent of the
population, mostly in Suva.

Under the 1997 Constitution they have 6.5 percent of Communal seats.
Compared with their 3.7 percent share of population, this is significant
over-representation. In short,people from the small minority communities
would find it hard to gain election, except through membership of parties
dominated by the two major races, where they probably have limited
influence.

Under the proposed common roll system there would be an in-built bias in
favour of the majority community. For example, based on the 2007 Census,
if their share of seats was proportional to their share of the population,
any ethnic Fijian party would dominate the Parliament, with 41 out of 71
seats. On the same basis, an Indo-Fijian party could probably get only
about 27 seats, which would be proportional to their share of the
population.

For the Indo-Fijian Community, which currently has 19 guaranteed communal
representatives, plus a significant share of those elected in Open
electorates, common roll may be seen as a backward step. Given current
birth rates, even without the effects of migration, the Indo-Fijian share
of the population will continue to fall and, under common roll,
Indo-Fijians would face the prospect of falling representation, unless
ethnic Fijians vote for parties they perceive to be Indo-Fijian dominated.

Under the current constitution Indo-Fijians will always have 19
representatives, a share of communal representation out of proportion to
their share of the population, but not as disproportionate as the General
Electors share. It is General Electors, Rotumans and Indo-Fijians whose
interests appear to be protected by the communal voting established under
the 1997 Constitution.

It is worth bearing in mind that the last change in the electoral system
followed a detailed process of inquiry, with submissions from all
interested parties. There is clearly no time for this process to be
repeated and still adhere to the announced election time frame.”

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Hmm, I think the professor has given us something to think about there.
The big question it raises is: why is the Interim Government talking about
changing the electoral system? This is the mystery. They know it is not
possible without changing the constitution via a two thirds majority of
Parliament. They know it will not end the pattern of racial voting. They
know it will probably wipe out representation from the minority
communities.

I can only think of two reasons. It could be they have some plot to throw
up all the difficulties of changing the system so that everyone thinks
let’s have lot’of inquiries before we have an election. The result of this
would be the illegal government continues governing, hoping everyone gets
used to them and they can win enough friends by using the power of
government to look after any group or interest that offers themselves for
sale (Meanwhile the country goes down the drain.)

The only other possible reason for going down this track is pure
stupidity. They haven’t thought things through. Or maybe, like everything
with this government it’s a combination of the two. One of the two heads
of the Bainimahendra monster has a cunning plan, the other just finds his
mouth moving and hears sounds, with little understanding of the plot in
progress.

NAVOSAVAKADUA