Chiefs and Indians: Elections and Politics

the military coups of 1987 and the sixth since 1970, when the islands became independent from Great Britain. For many people in Fiji and out-side, the elections were welcome, marking as they did the republic's first tentative steps toward restoring parliamentary democracy and interna-tional respectability, and replacing rule by decree with rule by constitu-tionallaw. The elections were a significant event. Yet, hope mingles eerily with apprehension; the journey back to genuine representative democracy is fraught with difficulties that everyone acknowledges but few know how to resolve. The elections were held under a constitution rejected by half of the pop-ulation and severely criticized by the international community for its racially discriminatory, antidemocratic provisions. Indigenous Fijian po-litical solidarity, assiduously promoted since the coups, disintegrated in the face of the election-related tensions within Fijian society. A chief-spon-sored political party won 30 of the 37 seats in the 7o-seat House of Repre-sentatives, and was able to form a government only in coalition with other parties. Sitiveni Rabuka, the reluctant politician, became prime minister after gaining the support of the Fiji Labour Party, which he had over-thrown in 1987, and despite the opposition of his predecessor and para-mount chief of Lau, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. In a further irony, a consti-tutional system designed to entrench the interests of Fijian chiefs placed a commoner at the national helm. On the other side of the political divide, the triumphant 1987 coalition of the National Federation Party (NFP) an