Ron Duncan
The list of contributors to ‘From Election to Coup in Fiji: The 2006 Campaign and its Aftermath’ reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Fiji’s political pundits: there’s Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi and the ‘Yellow Bucket’; both Mahendra Chaudhry and Laisenia Qarase are represented in the lineup; so too are Reverend David Arms, Apolosi Bose, Michael Field, Brij Lal, Graham Leung, Samisoni Pareti, Baro Saumaki, Suliana Siwatibau, Piccolo Willoughby and a host of academics from the University of the South Pacific and their overseas counterparts, including editors Jon Fraenkel and Stewart Firth.

As is to be expected in a book of this breadth and nature, the level of complexity and objectivity varies between chapters but, regardless of where on the scales the authors position themselves, every chapter provides significant insight into one or more aspect of the situation prevailing before, during and soon after Fiji’s May 2006 election. Deliberated in the context of the election are a myriad of factors-race, religion, gender, economics, sociology, constitutionality, history, geography, ethics, polity and personality. Their interaction in the uncertain atmosphere that prevailed no doubt influenced the campaign and election and, ultimately and arguably, lit the fuse leading to the December coup.

Each chapter provides important clues and grounds for speculation as to what combination of factors led to the election outcome and possibly triggered the campaign’s calamitous aftermath.

Would, for example, reform of the electoral system—as is suggested by Arms, Seniloli and others—have improved the representativeness, and thereby, acceptance, of electoral outcomes? Was the final result determined by the conduct of the election: conduct discussed by Hassall and Bolenga and by Chaudhry and, in an amusingly novel way, by Geraghty? Are the patterns of party allegiance, considered by Fraenkel, Firth, Durutalo and Pareti, static, shifting, or merely cycling? Did the influence of religious movements, detailed by Newman and by Jonathon Prasad, help bring communities together or tear them apart? If the international call for more women in parliament—on this occasion coming from Nicholl and Siwatibau—had been heeded, would the consequences have been less adversarial? How does the complex Fijian chiefly system, described by Tuimalaeli’ifano, remain relevant to governance in a globalising world? What can we learn about the impact of regional pressures such as those analysed in the case studies by Anderson, Tuitoga, Saumaki, Bose and Fraenkel, and the ever-anonymous but ever-provocative ‘Yellow Bucket’? Were voters swayed more by the economic and social policies of the political parties, compared by Biman Prasad, or by the military’s pre-election public relations campaigns in the villages, described by Ratuva? Was one single issue, the contentious RTU Bill, examined by Bhim, uniquely catalytic in terms of the outcomes? Is it possible, as intimated by Norton, to learn lessons from overseas? Must we accept that, as posited by the editors, Fiji runs the risk of facing a perpetual legitimacy crisis or can we still, like Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi in the immediate post-election period, find reasons not to despair?

For those seeking immediate, irrefutable answers to these questions, From Election to Coup in Fiji is a disappointment. For the book does not, could not and, wisely, avoids the trap of claiming to provide simple answers to the host of highly complex, critical questions generated by Fiji’s 2006 election.

—By Professor Ron Duncan
Executive Director, Pacific Institute
 for Advanced Studies in Development and Governance,
University of the South Pacific.