National Federation Party (Fiji)
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The National Federation Party is a Fijian political party founded by A.D. Patel in 1963. Though it claimed to represent all Fiji Islanders, it was supported, in practice, almost exclusively by Indo-Fijians whose ancestors had come to Fiji, mostly as indentured labourers, between 1879 and 1916.
The party played an important role in the negotiations that led to Fiji's independence from the United Kingdom in 1970. Their original demand for a universal franchise threatened to stall the independence process, but at a conference in London in April 1970, Sidiq Koya, who had succeeded to the leadership on Patel's death in 1969, eventually negotiated a compromise with Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the leader of the Alliance Party, the main ethnic Fijian-dominated party. According to this compromise, ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians would each be allocated 22 seats, with 12 representing Communal constituencies (comprising voters registered as members of a particular ethnic group) and a further 10 representing National constituencies (distributed by ethnicity but elected by universal suffrage) in the 52 member House of Representatives. A further 8 seats would be reserved for General electors (Europeans, Chinese, and other minorities); 3 of these would be "communal" and 5 "national."
The inability of the NFP to make significant inroads into the ethnic Fijian vote kept the party in opposition in the years following independence. In the March 1977 election, however, a split in the ethnic Fijian vote enabled the NFP to win a plurality in the House of Representatives. Internal dissension, however, prevented the party from forming a government, as the party fractured over disputes about the leadership and the allocation of ministerial positions. The Governor-General, Ratu Sir George Cakobau, reappointed the defeated Prime Minister, Ratu Mara, and ordered a new election for September that year, in which the NFP was heavily defeated. For more information, see Fiji Constitutional Crisis of 1977.
The party recovered sufficiently to come close to winning the 1982 election. By the mid-1980s, however, they had concluded that the ethnic Fijian community was not ready to accept an Indo-Fijian Prime Minister. For the 1987 election, therefore, they formed an electoral coalition with the Fiji Labour Party under the leadership of Timoci Bavadra, an ethnic Fijian. The coalition won the election, but the new government was overthrown a month later in a military coup led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka.
A new Constitution was promulgated, providing for a built-in ethnic Fijian majority in the legislature. This condemned the NFP to permanent opposition status. When the government agreed to revise the Constitution in 1997, however, the NFP, now led by Jai Ram Reddy, played a key role in the ensuing negotiations, which resulted in the removal of the guaranteed ethnic Fijian majority from Parliament. In the election that followed in 1999, the NFP surprised many observers by forming an electoral coalition with the Fijian Political Party, led by their former enemy, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka. This may have been a tactical mistake: many Indo-Fijians had not forgiven Rabuka for his role in the overthrow of the Bavadra government and the subsequent drafting of a constitution that they widely considered to be racist, and the NFP, for the first time in 36 years, lost all of its seats in the House of Representatives.
The NFP contested the 2001 election, on a platform calling for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to look into the Fiji coup of 2000, the removal of Value added tax from basic items, reduction of telephone and postal bills, national healthcare insurance for all workers, and consolidation of the independence of the judiciary. Its fortunes sank further, however. The NFP ended up with only about ten percent of the popular vote and only one parliamentary seat - which it subsequently lost in a court challenge. The party's refusal to agree to a preference deal with its one-time ally, the Fiji Labour Party, also worked against it. (Fiji has a system of preferential voting, similar to Australia's).
There have been signs of a modest revival of fortunes for the NFP. Municipal elections in October 2003, for which the party formed an electoral coalition with Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's United Fiji Party (SDL), gave the party control of six municpalities, either in its own right or together with the SDL. Its more significant victories included gaining control of the Nadi Town Council and reelecting Chandu Umaria as Mayor of Suva.
Recently, the party has attempted to modernize itself. Under the presidency of Dorsami Naidu, the party has made an effort to broaden its appeal to women and the disadvantaged. On 11 April 2005, Naidu announced that that NFP now regarded itself as a multiracial party and would attempt to win the support of all ethnic communities in Fiji.
In 2005, the NFP has been at the forefront of opposition to the government's controversial proposal to establish a Reconciliation and Unity Commission, with the power (subject to presidential approval), to grant compensation to victims of the coup d'état that deposed the elected government in 2000, and amnesty to persons convicted of offenses related to it. On 14 May 2005, Naidu called legislation to establish the commission "an act of terrorism", and on 20 May he went on to call for public demonstrations against the bill, which he said was "just a cover for providing amnesty to people who committed the May 2000 coup crime acts."
External link
- NFP profile on Goasiapacific website (http://www.goasiapacific.com/specials/fiji/partyprofiles_nfp.htm)