Fiji's first election in eight years: Why so many coups in paradise?
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- Updated: 17 Sep 2014
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An estimated 600,000 Fijians took to the polls on Wednesday as the country held its first election since a military coup in 2006.
There are hopes the election will mark a genuine return to a democratic era for this South Pacific island nation, whose record of coups has seen it labeled a "Bainimarama Republic," after the name of its military leader, and whose turbulent domestic politics sits sharply at odds with the idyllic image that draws hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.
"It's been highly anticipated. There's the expectation that after eight years this will be the defining moment for re-democratization in Fiji," says Steven Ratuva, a Fijian academic who is a senior lecturer in Pacific studies at the University of Auckland.
But in a country that has experienced four coups d'etat in the past 27 years, not everyone is optimistic.
"I'd describe it as a return to a very fragile democracy dependent on the whims and fancies of essentially one or two individuals," says Fijian academic Brij Lal, a professor of Pacific and Asian history at Australian National University.
Why does Fiji have so many coups?
At the heart of the country's political instability, said Ratuva, are ethnic tensions between the country's indigenous majority, predominantly Melanesians, who are believed to have arrived on the islands 3,500 years ago, and Indo-Fijians.
The latter group are mainly descendants of indentured laborers brought from India by Fiji's former British colonial rulers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to work on the sugarcane plantations. In the 2007 census, indigenous Fijians accounted for about 57% of the population, Indo-Fijians for about 38%.
These tensions were particularly exacerbated by the previous political system, in which ethnicity was politicized and politics was a zero-sum game, says Ratuva.
Fiji's first coup in 1987 saw an elected, Indian-dominated coalition overthrown by indigenous Fijians, leading to the implementation, and later withdrawal, of a constitution that guaranteed indigenous political supremacy.
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An estimated 600,000 Fijians took to the polls on Wednesday as the country held its first election since a military coup in 2006.
There are hopes the election will mark a genuine return to a democratic era for this South Pacific island nation, whose record of coups has seen it labeled a "Bainimarama Republic," after the name of its military leader, and whose turbulent domestic politics sits sharply at odds with the idyllic image that draws hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.
"It's been highly anticipated. There's the expectation that after eight years this will be the defining moment for re-democratization in Fiji," says Steven Ratuva, a Fijian academic who is a senior lecturer in Pacific studies at the University of Auckland.
But in a country that has experienced four coups d'etat in the past 27 years, not everyone is optimistic.
"I'd describe it as a return to a very fragile democracy dependent on the whims and fancies of essentially one or two individuals," says Fijian academic Brij Lal, a professor of Pacific and Asian history at Australian National University.
Why does Fiji have so many coups?
At the heart of the country's political instability, said Ratuva, are ethnic tensions between the country's indigenous majority, predominantly Melanesians, who are believed to have arrived on the islands 3,500 years ago, and Indo-Fijians.
The latter group are mainly descendants of indentured laborers brought from India by Fiji's former British colonial rulers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to work on the sugarcane plantations. In the 2007 census, indigenous Fijians accounted for about 57% of the population, Indo-Fijians for about 38%.
These tensions were particularly exacerbated by the previous political system, in which ethnicity was politicized and politics was a zero-sum game, says Ratuva.
Fiji's first coup in 1987 saw an elected, Indian-dominated coalition overthrown by indigenous Fijians, leading to the implementation, and later withdrawal, of a constitution that guaranteed indigenous political supremacy.
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- published: 17 Sep 2014
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