Rabuka Guarantees Change After Profitable Shut Fiji Election – The Diplomat

Oceania | Politics | Oceania

Sitiveni Rabuka has received an in depth election in Fiji and is promising change because the South Pacific nation’s first new chief in 16 years.

His win got here after three political events introduced late Tuesday they might kind a coalition. That adopted days of negotiations after final week’s election.

Rabuka’s victory brings to an finish the lengthy reign of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who seized energy in a 2006 army coup and later refashioned himself as a democratic chief by introducing a brand new structure and profitable elections in 2014 and once more in 2018.

Rabuka can also be a former coup chief. He led Fiji’s first army takeover in 1987 and later served seven years as an elected prime minister within the Nineteen Nineties.

Bainimarama and Rabuka had been deadlocked at 26 seats apiece after final week’s election. The small Social Democratic Liberal Occasion (SODELPA) held the remaining three seats and the steadiness of energy, and determined late Tuesday in an in depth vote of its personal to go along with Rabuka.

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Rabuka’s Folks’s Alliance Occasion received 21 seats and the affiliated Nationwide Federation Occasion received 5 seats, whereas Bainimarama’s Fiji First celebration secured 26 seats.

SODELPA had mentioned Indigenous affairs and schooling had been amongst their high priorities within the negotiations, though they didn’t instantly announce what concessions they’d been capable of extract from Rabuka.

Rabuka thanked the Social Democrats for “giving us the dignity” of forming the subsequent authorities of Fiji.

“A authorities we hope that may carry the change that individuals had been calling out for over the previous couple of years,” Rabuka mentioned at a information convention. “It’s going to be an onerous activity. It won’t be simple, and it was by no means simple to attempt to dislodge an incumbent authorities. We have now executed that, collectively.”

Within the days after the election, when the vote gave the impression to be going in opposition to Rabuka and there had been a glitch within the app that individuals used to observe the vote rely, Rabuka had mentioned he had no religion within the integrity of election officers and referred to as for a nationwide petition.

However on Tuesday evening, he mentioned that though his celebration had skilled some difficulties with elections officers firstly, it now wished to thank them.

“That they had anticipated opposition and grievance from us, they usually obtained it,” Rabuka mentioned. “However now that it’s throughout, I’m certain we are able to all flip our again on that, work collectively, kind a authorities, and inform the folks of Fiji they’ll have a really merry Christmas.”

Fiji is thought overseas as a vacationer paradise dotted with pristine seashores and full of pleasant, relaxed folks.

Nonetheless, the previous few years have proved robust for a lot of within the nation of slightly below 1 million, after tourism evaporated when COVID-19 hit and the economic system tanked. The World Financial institution estimates the nation’s poverty charge is about 24 p.c.