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General elections were held in Fiji between 23 and 30 May 1992. [1] It was the first election held since two military coups in 1987 had severed Fiji's 113-year-old constitutional links with the British Monarchy, and later Fijian Monarchy, and ushered in a republic.
Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean about 1,100 nautical miles northeast of New Zealand's North Island. Its closest neighbours are Vanuatu to the west, New Caledonia to the southwest, New Zealand's Kermadec Islands to the southeast, Tonga to the east, the Samoas and France's Wallis and Futuna to the northeast, and Tuvalu to the north. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about 18,300 square kilometres (7,100 sq mi). The most outlying island is Ono-i-Lau. The two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, account for 87% of the total population of 898,760. The capital, Suva, on Viti Levu, serves as the country's principal cruise-ship port. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts, either in Suva or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi—where tourism is the major local industry—or Lautoka, where the sugar-cane industry is paramount. Due to its terrain, the interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited.
The Fijian coups of 1987 resulted in the overthrow of the elected government of Fijian Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, the deposition of Elizabeth II as Queen of Fiji, and in the declaration of a republic. The first coup, in which Bavadra was deposed, took place on 14 May 1987; a second coup on 28 September ended the monarchy, and was shortly followed by the proclamation of a republic on 7 October. Both military actions were led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, then third in command of the Royal Fiji Military Forces. Depending on perspective, one may view the event either as two successive coups d'état separated by a four-month intermission, or as a single coup begun on 14 May and completed with the declaration of the republic.
The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom, its dependencies and its overseas territories. The current monarch and head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who ascended the throne in 1952.
The 1992 elections were the first to be held under the new electoral system, which was deliberately biased in favour of ethnic Fijians. National constituencies, elected by universal suffrage and comprising almost half of the House of Representatives under the 1970 constitution, were abolished, and for the first time, all members of the House of Representatives were elected from communal constituencies on closed electoral rolls, for registered members of a particular ethnic group. 37 seats were allocated to ethnic Fijians and only 27 to Indo-Fijians, despite the near-equality of their numbers in the population; one seat was reserved for a representative of the Rotuman Islanders, with five constituencies reserved for General electors (an omnibus category for various minorities including Europeans, Chinese, and Banaban Islanders).
Fijians are a nation and ethnic group native to Fiji, who speak Fijian and share a common history and culture.
National constituencies were a former feature of the Fijian electoral system. They were created as a compromise between demands for universal suffrage on a common voters' roll, and for a strictly communal franchise, with Parliamentary constituencies allocated on an ethnic basis and elected only by voters enrolled as members of specific ethnic groups.
The concept of universal suffrage, also known as general suffrage or common suffrage, consists of the right to vote of all adult citizens, regardless of property ownership, income, race, or ethnicity, subject only to minor exceptions. In its original 19th-century usage by political reformers, universal suffrage was understood to mean only universal manhood suffrage; the vote was extended to women later, during the women's suffrage movement.
The Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei led by Sitiveni Rabuka, who had instigated the 1987 coups, won 30 of the 38 seats reserved for ethnic Fijians and Rotuman; the remaining five were won by the extremist Fijian Nationalist Party of Sakeasi Butadroka. The 27 Indo-Fijian electorates were almost equally divided, with the National Federation Party winning 14 seats and the Fiji Labour Party 13. All five of the "general electorates" were won by the General Voters Party.
The Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT), occasionally known in English as Fijian Political Party, was a party which dominated politics in the 1990s and was the mainstay of coalition governments from 1992 to 1999.
Sitiveni Ligamamada Rabuka, OBE, MSD, OStJ, is best known as the instigator of two military coups that shook Fiji in 1987. He was later democratically elected as Prime Minister of Fiji, serving from 1992 to 1999. He went on to serve as Chairman of the Great Council of Chiefs, and later served as Chairman of the Cakaudrove Provincial Council from 2001 to 2008. He was elected to this position on 24 May 2001 and re-elected for another three-year term on 13 April 2005. On 24 June 2016, Rabuka was elected as leader of the Social Democratic Liberal Party, succeeding Leader of the Opposition Ro Teimumu Kepa, who publicly disapproved of Rabuka's nomination to replace her. On 26 November 2018, Rabuka was appointed as the leader of the Opposition to Parliament, following the 2018 election defeat. Rabuka was the only nomination for the position and his nomination was moved by Ro Teimumu Kepa and seconded by Biman Prasad.
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 5.3 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, but never regained the level of support it had enjoyed in the 1970s.
