This week there was universal praise for former National Federation Party leader Jai Ram Reddy, who died on Monday.
Mr Reddy is credited for working together with former Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka after the 1987 military coup to produce the widely acclaimed 1997 Constitution.
That Constitution included the unique “multi-party Cabinet” rule, by which the winning party was required to offer to the next biggest party a place in Government, including Ministers in Cabinet, to encourage power-sharing.
But an honest “elephant in the room” question needs to be asked: why was this great political leader rejected by the voters at the 1999 general elections?
Not only that – why was his entire team of National Federation Party candidates also rejected by the voters of Fiji?
Honest answers to these two questions reflect not on Mr Reddy (and his NFP colleagues, including me) but on Fijians of Indian descent voters.
They preferred to listen to a few adversarial political leaders who took advantage of the fervent communalism of the voters, most of whom failed to appreciate the multiracialism and spirit of co-operation Mr Reddy preached.
A similar situation will face Fiji’s voters soon.
They should think deeply about the old adage: ‘Those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to repeat them’.
That old political adversary of Mr Jai Ram Reddy is now but a shadow today.
But now there is another political party in government, with two equally adversarial leaders, who totally attack and ridicule all Opposition political parties, despite offers of help and even constructive suggestions for better policies.
Will today’s voters learn from history?
Reddy’s lesson
In 1999, I was a Member of Parliament and Shadow Finance Minister for the National Federation Party, then the main Opposition to Sitiveni Rabuka’s Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT) Government.
I well remember an internal NFP discussion about what strategy we should follow for the 1999 election: compete or co-operate?
There was a strong view that we should energetically fight all the political parties, including the SVT and Mr Rabuka to obtain votes for ourselves.
That view was that we should remind voters of the huge pain and trauma caused to Fijians of Indian descents by the 1987 coup.
But Mr Reddy’s views were that it was only because of the full co-operation of Mr Rabuka, and his leadership of the SVT, that enabled the Fiji Parliament to peacefully move on from the biased 1990 Constitution to the 1997 Constitution with its multiparty Cabinet rules.
How, said Mr Reddy, could we then attack the SVT during the political campaigning?
Moreover, how could we then expect to co-operate with them in multi-party government after the election?
I fully supported those views.
Mr Reddy refused to attack Mr Rabuka’s SVT.
He chose to co-operate rather than compete.
I myself campaigned together with SVT candidates like Ratu Inoke Kubuabola and Ratu Sakiusa Makutu and others, all over Fiji.
NFP’s main opposition, the Fiji Labour Party, took the adversarial approach.
They reminded Fijians of Indian descent voters about the harm that Mr Rabuka’s 1987 coup had done to them.
FLP attacked NFP for co-operating with the SVT.
FLP and its pugnacious leader were elected by the voters to form Government.
Mr Reddy, an extremely capable and principled politician, was rejected by the voters, despite his personal financial sacrifice in serving Fiji in Parliament.
Lessons for today
Let us therefore not forget the responsibility of Fiji’s voters in rejecting Mr Jai Ram Reddy’s spirit of co-operation at the ballot box.
The NFP was totally wiped in the 1999 elections, an outcome unheard of in the world of politics.
Mr Reddy left the Fiji Parliament, never to return.
This outcome was not surprising to me.
I had long campaigned for a proportional voting system Jai Ram Red for today which would eliminate the “winner gets all” syndrome possible in the Alternative Vote System which the Reeves Commission had recommended and which Parliament adopted.
This was what delivered the skewed outcome in the 1999 elections.
Sadly, even the multi-party Cabinet was not put into practice by the winning party.
The SVT was excluded from Cabinet.
The 2000 coup took place a year later.
And when the Republic of Fiji Military Forces regained control, it did not restore Mahendra Chaudhry’s government. And the rest is history.
It is a historical irony that today’s NFP leader, Professor Biman Prasad, is facing a similar situation for his spirit of co-operation with Mr Rabuka.
Professor Prasad was a capable professor of economics who sacrificed his high-paying USP job in 2014 to serve Fiji in Parliament.
He has for eight years attempted to co-operate with the Fiji First Party.
He has offered constructive views in Parliament, criticising where criticisms were due, such as on the uncontrolled rise of public debt and on any number of other important public policies.
He has been relentlessly ridiculed in Parliament by the Prime Minister and his Minister for Economy, whose qualifications and work experience, by any stretch of the imagination, do not compare favourably with Professor
Prasad’s.
Even on the Bainimarama Government’s refusal to pay the Fiji Government’s liabilities to the University of the South Pacific, Professor Prasad has been attacked by junior Ministers such as Premila Kumar who should know better.
Minister Kumar once served as the head of Fiji’s Consumer Council.
She would have excoriated any business which took goods or services from a supplier without paying for them.
With the rise of the People’s Alliance Party, Mr Rabuka seems to have gathered the support of the bulk of the indigenous Fijian voters and a reasonable proportion of Fijians of Indian descent voters.
Professor Prasad, with an excellent slate of multiracial candidates, has publicly announced that NFP will co-operate with Mr Rabuka and the PA.
Will Fiji’s voters embrace this national spirit of co-operation between a former coup leader and an Opposition party that has historically opposed all coups?
Or will the next elections be a repeat of the 1999 Elections?
Have Fiji’s voters learnt from history?
• Prof WADAN NARSEY is an Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and a former Professor of Economics at the University of the South Pacific where he worked for more than 40 years. The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of this newspaper.
