Chaudhry could be blamed if govt fails

Samisoni Pareti
Constitutional lawyer Jon Apted believes Fiji’s multiparty cabinet need not be abandoned due to an ugly and nasty dispute threatening to tear the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) apart.

Apted says even if one or more Labour MPs who are in Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase’s cabinet are expelled from the FLP, Qarase is constitutionally-bound to continue with the unusual style of government.

“Of course, if Labour expels two of its members from the party, their numbers in parliament will be reduced and therefore the proportion of their entitlement in cabinet will as a consequence be reduced too. Yet Qarase will still be required to give Labour their required representation in cabinet.”

Apted, who was a legal adviser to the Constitutional Review Commission whose report formed the basis of Fiji’s 1997 constitution, said the law is clear on the status of MPs who are expelled by their party.

“They are straight away deemed to have been suspended from parliament and have 30 days to challenge their expulsion. What is not clear however is when these MPs lose their positions in cabinet, the moment of their expulsion from the party, or only when they lose their challenge in court,” Apted clarified.

The question of Labour’s participation in the multiparty cabinet has been raised after Labour leader, Mahendra Chaudhry, instigated disciplinary actions against five of his senior colleagues, two of whom are amongst the nine Labour ministers in Fiji’s 36-member cabinet.

The five included all of FLP’s three vice presidents: Krishna Datt, who’s also minister for labour; Poseci Bune who holds the environment portfolio; and former Labour senator Dr Atu Emberson-Bain. All three plus Labour backbenchers Felix Anthony and Agni Deo Singh face charges of rebellion and publicly challenging Chaudhry’s leadership.

Media reports suggested the public dissent within Labour stemmed from dissatisfaction over Chaudhry’s choice of eight Labour nominees to the Upper House of Parliament, or the Senate.

A day after presenting his list to Opposition leader Mick Beddoes for conveyance to the Office of the President, Chaudhry left for an overseas trip. Bune as his deputy, backed by Datt and others, seized the opportunity to accuse Chaudhry of unilaterally determining the party’s senate nominees.

The group also attempted to change the senate line-up, claiming some nominees had questionable records with one or two being close relatives of Chaudhry. The dispute was played out in public and even a fierce argument between two party MPs was captured on national television.

Chaudhry, backed by party president who is also one of his Senate nominees Jokapeci Koroi, hit back on his return from overseas. He refused to meet with the dissidents and Koroi rejected the five’s demands to convene a special management board meeting of the party to sort out their differences.

Both Chaudhry and Koroi said the five would appear before FLP’s supreme body, the national council, to explain their actions. Clearly, with all his three vice presidents ganging up against him, the last thing on the man’s mind would be to convene a meeting of a body in which he may not have majority support.

His backing lies in the national council where over half of the voting councillors are sugarcane farmers, Chaudhry’s power base, given his other position as general secretary of the National Farmers Union.

In a strange twist of the party’s constitution, party MPs can attend the council meetings but only as observers as they do not have voting rights.

It is easy for some to conclude that this unprecedented massive opposition to the Labour leader only began from his Senate nominees.

But senior party members told the magazine that their differences with Chaudhry were nothing new. The only new thing about the saga was the fact that this time, those differences spilled out into the public arena for all  to know.

“I have fought with Mahen over decisions about the party for a long time,” an executive member of the party who fear disciplinary action if named told ISLANDS BUSINESS.

“I have raised questions about party policies on gender, on selection of party workers, on issues relating to nepotism, on opening up the party more to democratic ideas and ideals, and so on. But in all those cases, we have been able to contain those disputes and differences within the four walls of party meetings.”

Another senior party member said the latest round of differences could be traced back to Labour’s participation in the multiparty cabinet. The official said despite his claims of support for the concept, Chaudhry was personally opposed to FLP joining Qarase’s government.

“The only reason why he allowed our participation was because he knew he didn’t have the numbers. He must have been surprised and somewhat annoyed to learn that even some of his newer MPs were keen to see Labour join the SDL cabinet.”

These Labour MPs believe Chaudhry’s annoyance deepened when he failed to get re-appointed as opposition leader.

They also believed that judging from the performances of some Labour ministers in cabinet, Chaudhry had deliberately put some of his own into the Qarase government to push his own personal agenda. One of these is believed to be energy minister, Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi.

After all, it was his public denouncement of the government’s affirmative action programme in parliament that triggered the debate on the need for ground rules on the workings of a multiparty cabinet. When Labour deputy leader and cabinet colleague Bune admonished Vayeshnoi’s outburst on national television and asked Chaudhry to rein in the outspoken member, the Labour leader would hear nothing of the complaint only to tell reporters that he endorsed the MP’s remarks.

As this magazine had observed after Fiji’s general election last May, Chaudhry—a stubborn but hardworking trade unionist—is not only a fighter but a survivor as well.

The coups of 1987 and 2000 only served to harden his resolve and fighting spirit. Many who had mustered the courage to challenge him have discovered only too late that it only succeeded in sealing their fate from the party.

Labour stalwarts Dr Tupeni Baba and John Ali would testify to this. History has further shown that serious allegations thrown against the man, some as damaging as his alleged affair with a former journalist were hard to stick.

Recently, Chaudhry brushed aside fresh claims of nepotism because of his insistence to use his lawyer son Rajendra as party legal adviser. But there is one piece of advice that he may find hard to dodge, coming from an unsual source: Fiji’s vice-president.

Addressing a business conference in early June and on the eve of Labour’s first national council meeting after the election, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi urged the Labour leader to reconcile the politician and statesman in him.

“Mr Chaudhry is in a strategic position to destroy the multiparty government,” Madraiwiwi told a meeting of the Fiji Institute of Accountants.

“This can be done by way of an ultimatum from the FLP to its members of parliament who are in cabinet. Alternatively, it will be a gradual erosion of cabinet cohesion by a series of sustained attacks on the government. The consequences will be serious for all of us.

“There will be recriminations and blame cast on all sides. They usually assume an ethnic hue in very short order. The resulting distrust will merely entrench the naysayers on all sides. So there are high stakes and failure has to be the last option available.”

Chaudhry on national television a day after Madraiwiwi’s public address was taken aback by the precise and candid remarks. He told journalists he couldn’t understand what moved Fiji’s second citizen to make such comments.

There is hope however, that the lesson pushed by the vice-president won’t be lost on the veteran politician, that much of the fate of the country’s government rests on what he does in the next few months.