FIJI should now get used to the political culture of coalition, says award-winning academic and University of Canterbury pro-vice chancellor Professor Steven Ratuva.
He said this would be the norm for the future under the current proportional representation electoral system.
He said while the PR system encouraged coalition, “it also has the potential for messy and unstable political arrangements”.
“Israel has exactly the same electoral system as Fiji,” Prof Ratuva said.
“Israel has a one national constituency PR system, exactly like ours, but the only difference is that they have a closed party list system while ours is open.
“Also they have a lower threshold of 3.25 per cent compared to 5 per cent in Fiji and this allows for a lot more smaller parties to win.
“However, because of the extreme ideological positions of different political parties, Israel has been struggling to keep coalition governments together.
“In less than four years, between 2018-2022, they’ve had five snap elections for the Knesset — the Israeli parliament — as coalitions break apart.”
He said Fiji would not want to go down that route.
“That’s why we need to put in place a coherent and comprehensive coalition strategy, to balance out the interests of individual parties as well as serve national interest and stability.
‘Get used to the political culture of coalition’, says Ratuva
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