Fiji's Bainimarama formally becomes elected PM

Transcript

Frank Bainimarama who has been running Fiji since staging a coup in 2006 is now the country's new democratically elected prime minister.

This follows historic elections on Wednesday last week which saw his Fiji First Party win a large majority of the seats.

Sally Round is there.

Monday has been a day of ceremony here in Suva, after five days of counting the Elections Office wound up its duties in the morning, and a ceremony in front of officials from the multi-national observer group who have also wound up their mission. It announced the results of this landmark election. The authorities confirm that Frank Bainimarama's party has a comfortable majority with just over 59 percent of the vote. So his party, Fiji First, gets 32 seats in the 50-member parliament. 15 seats have been confirmed by Sodelpa, Ro Teimumu Kepa, and three seats to the National Federation Party, its leader is the economist Biman Prasad. None of the other parties managed to get a look in into this new-look parliament. The Fijian Elections Office proudly announced a low-rate of invalid votes, just under one percent, and they compared that with the last election in 2006 which saw just over 6 percent of invalid votes cast. And the turnout was high, just about 84 percent.

Pacific Studies scholar Steven Ratuva told me that Fiji First's appeal across the ethnic divide was a major reason for its success.

STEVEN RATUVA: One of the reasons was that Fiji First was able to provide that national appeal, for everybody. While Sodelpa was only focussing and appealing to a particular ethnic group. So that's the contrast. Also the technique of election was very different as well. While the Sodelpa was focussed on dividing up the single constituency, national constituency, into 50 sub-constituencies for their particular candidates to go and do their campaigns. It worked to some extent because the results showed in various localities, Sodelpa did very well. But outside those localities, they didn't. So for the Fiji First, a lot of the focus was on the leader of the party. In fact, when they were campaigning, they were campaigning just for Bainimarama, not even for the party, and not even for themselves, the individual candidates. What they were doing was taking advantage, full advantage, of this open proportional representation system, which some political scientists refer to as the rockstar system. In other words you have to be a rockstar to attract votes. And what they were doing was making Bainimarama into a big rockstar. Also, the fact they were in power, and they were able to make use of the government resources like infrastructure development, used successfully in generating support and vote amongst the rural people. And of course the manifesto that came out towards the end, people said was too late, but it promised so much, some say very hypothetical stuff, in relation to free electricity, free water and lease of 99 years for the squatter settlements. That was something which actually shifted the urban votes towards Fiji First. And also for the Indo-Fijians since the 1987 coup and since the 2000 coup they've been looking for something and that is political security. And even by voting for an Indo-Fijian leader, it won't give them that security. In 1999, Chaudhry had a chance to lead but he was overthrown in the coup, there was a backlash by the ethnic Fijian nationalists. Now for them, security can be provided most effectively by an indigenous Fijian who provides them with a political space, and that support, and that's why there was a large-scale shift towards him.

Steven Ratuva says the election is a defining moment for Fiji.

STEVEN RATUVA: "Yeah, it's a time for reinvention. In other words, to put into place democratic institutions which were destroyed, overshadowed, undermined after the coup. Which means the new government will have to learn a lot of new lessons. Only one of them has been in parliament before. Parliament is a totally different culture altogether. You are subject to scrutiny, you're subject to accountability, you're subject to formal opposition, which is different from the last eight years of you know, military backed coup. So therefore, what you're going to see is that transition and re-adaptation by the new government to be able, now they have the legitimacy, now it's time to transform that legitimacy into something which is practical, something which is applied in reality.

How difficult will that be for Frank Bainimarama himself?

STEVEN RATUVA: It should not be difficult at all if people are prepared to do it. Because political transition is not difficult. In politics, you learn on the job from day one and it's easy to learn. Because politics is very fluid, being a politician is something you earn on the spot, you learn through experience. So most of these guys who are going into the new cabinet have already been ministers anyway, have already been senior government officials, so it's a matter of re-adapting to the new work environment. Some of the policies will continue, like infrastructure development, tourism, economic development. But the difficulty they will face is the process of implementation, because in the past they were just pushing things through because they had total control, but this time the civil service rules. There are processes to be followed, parliament has to make laws and they have to be part of the voting rather than imposing decrees. Now they have to create legislation through the democratic process of parliament.