The Fiji Labour Party, also known as Fiji Labour, is a political party in Fiji. Most of its support is from the Indo-Fijian community, although it is officially multiracial and its first leader was an indigenous Fijian, Dr. Timoci Bavadra. The party has been elected to power twice, with Timoci Bavadra and Mahendra Chaudhry becoming prime minister in 1987 and 1999 respectively. On both occasions, the resulting government was rapidly overthrown by a coup.
The United Fiji Party was a political party in Fiji. It was founded in 2001 by Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase as a power base; it absorbed most of the Christian Democratic Alliance and other conservative groups, and its endorsement by the Great Council of Chiefs (Bose Levu Vakaturaga) caused it to be widely seen as the successor to the Alliance Party, the former ruling party that had dominated Fijian politics from the 1960s to the 1980s. It drew its support mainly from indigenous Fijiians.
The Alliance Party, was the ruling political party in Fiji from 1966 to 1987. Founded in the early 1960s, its leader was Kamisese Mara, the founding father of the modern Fijian nation. Widely seen as the political vehicle of the traditional Fijian chiefs, the Alliance Party also commanded considerable support among the Europeans and other ethnic minorities, who, although comprising only 3–4% of Fiji's population, were over represented in the parliament. Indo-Fijians were less supportive, but the Fijian-European block vote kept the Alliance Party in power for more than twenty years.
Brigadier-General Ratu Epeli Ganilau, MC, MSD, is a Fijian former military officer and politician. His career previously encompassed such roles as Commander of the Fiji Military Forces and Chairman of the Bose Levu Vakaturaga. On 15 January 2007 he was sworn in as Minister for Fijian Affairs in the interim Cabinet formed in the wake of the military coup which deposed the Qarase government on 5 December 2006.
General elections were held in Fiji between 15 and 29 April 1972, the first since independence from the United Kingdom in 1970. They were characterised by the lack of rancour between racial groups, typical of the 1966 general election and the 1968 by-elections.
General elections were held in Fiji between 10 and 17 July 1982. The paradoxical results were both a triumph and a setback for the Alliance Party of the Prime Minister, Kamisese Mara. The Alliance received 52% of the popular vote, only slightly down on its previous total, but won only 28 seats, eight fewer than in the previous elections of September 1977. Part of the reason for this discrepancy was that the slight surge in support for Mara's Alliance in the Indo-Fijian community, from 14 percent to 16 percent, was not sufficient to translate into seats in Fiji's communal electoral system, and did not therefore off-set losses among the ethnic Fijian community, particularly in the west of the country. The Western United Front of Osea Gavidi won only two seats, but split the vote, allowing the National Federation Party (NFP), with which it tactically allied itself, to gain seven seats for a total of 22. The NFP, which had split into two factions before the previous elections, had been reunited.
The National Federation Party is a Fijian political party founded by A.D. Patel in November 1968, as a merger of the Federation Party and the National Democratic Party. Though it claimed to represent all Fiji Islanders, it was supported, in practice, almost exclusively by Indo-Fijians whose ancestors had come to Fiji between 1879 and 1916, mostly as indentured labourers. However, in the 2018 general election, the party recorded a considerable change in its support base due to the inclusion of more indigenous Fijian candidates.
Filipe Nagera Bole CBE, CF was a Fijian politician who hailed from the village of Mualevu on the island of Vanua Balavu in the Lau Group. He had a reputation as one of Fiji's few politicians untainted by scandal, and was noted for his moderate views. In October 2003, he endorsed calls for an end to racially segregated voting, saying that electing all members of the House of Representatives by universal suffrage would make voters and politicians think of the common national good, rather than communal interests.
The National Alliance Party of Fiji (NAPF) was a Fijian political party. It was formally registered on 18 January 2005 by Ratu Epeli Ganilau, as the claimed successor to the defunct Alliance Party, which ruled Fiji from 1967 to 1987 under the leadership of the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Ganilau's father-in-law. Others involved with the party included university lecturer Meli Waqa as party secretary, and Manu Korovulavula as treasurer. The Deputy Leader was Hirdesh Sharma. The party was launched publicly at a mass rally in Suva on 8 April 2005.
Ratu Naiqama Tawake Lalabalavu is a Fijian Paramount Chief and the current speaker of the parliament. He had served as the leader of the opposition.
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.
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 Grand Coalition for Fiji, formerly known as the Grand Coalition Initiative Group, was a coalition of five predominantly indigenous Fijian political parties in Fiji, forged for the purpose of contesting the general election scheduled for 2006 under a single umbrella and forming a coalition government subsequently. Efforts to unite the ethnic Fijian parties were in part a response to their electoral defeat in 1999, when they had been split, enabling the Indian-backed FLP to win a landslide victory. Nevertheless, Tomasi Vakatora, the chairman of the Grand Coalition, publicly stated in February 2006 that it was open to sharing preferences with the predominantly Indian parties. By the time of the election, however, the coalition was virtually defunct.
General elections were held in Fiji between 6 and 13 May 2006.
The New Nationalist Party was a Fijian political party with a strongly nationalist platform, arguing for the paramountcy of indigenous Fijian interests and of the Christian faith, professed by the great majority of indigenous Fijians but relatively few Indo-Fijians, who comprise some 38 percent of the country's population. The party, a splinter from the Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party, was registered on 1 June 2001 and claimed to be the heir to the legacy of the late Sakeasi Butadroka and the Fiji Nationalist Party.
Attar Singh is a Fijian trade unionist of Indian descent. As of January 2007, he is the General Secretary of the Fiji Islands Council of Trade Unions (FICTU), one of two major umbrella bodies for trade unions in Fiji.
The Green Party of Fiji was a political party in Fiji. The party was formed in November 2008 by former interim regime Cabinet Minister Bernadette Ganilau. Like other green parties, the party followed principles of "ecological wisdom, social justice and non-violence, participatory democracy and sustainability".
The Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) is a Fijian political party. The party was formed in January 2013 after the dissolution of the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua. The party currently has no party leader.
General elections were held in Fiji on 14 November 2018. The result was a victory for the ruling FijiFirst party of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, which received just over 50% of the vote and 27 of the 51 seats in Parliament, a loss of five seats. The main opposition party, Social Democratic Liberal Party, gained six seats, whilst the National Federation Party retained its three seats.
