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Intense anti-Chaudhry sentiment surfaces as Fiji polling ends
Fiji`s coup-deposed prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry was poised on Friday to win a mandate to return to office -- but was also facing an intense, almost obsessive last-minute campaign to keep him out.
Fiji's coup-deposed prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry was poised on Friday to win a mandate to return to office -- but was also facing an intense, almost obsessive last-minute campaign to keep him out.
Senior diplomatic sources in Suva were predicting confusion in the week ahead, with no clear picture of the eventual outcome. They say the outcome may eventually depend less on what the country's 451,000 voters have decided, and more on how an ageing traditional Ratu or chief, President Josefa Iloilo, wants to handle it.
The constitution gives him remarkable discretion, only telling him to appoint a prime minister who in his opinion has the support of the house, with no method given for determining who has this support. The Fiji Sun newspaper on Friday headlined a report ambush, saying Fijian indigenous parties were working on a document of unity aimed solely at keeping Chaudhry, the island's first ethnic Indian premier who was deposed in a racially-motivated coup last year, out of office.
A week of polling ends on Saturday evening and counting will begin Monday to produce a 71-seat Parliament, thus restoring the democracy lost on may 19 last year when George Speight and a gang of special forces soldiers seized Chaudhry and his government hostage for 56 days. Election week has been incident free, and the capital is the calmest it has been for over a year.
Bureau Report
Senior diplomatic sources in Suva were predicting confusion in the week ahead, with no clear picture of the eventual outcome. They say the outcome may eventually depend less on what the country's 451,000 voters have decided, and more on how an ageing traditional Ratu or chief, President Josefa Iloilo, wants to handle it.
The constitution gives him remarkable discretion, only telling him to appoint a prime minister who in his opinion has the support of the house, with no method given for determining who has this support. The Fiji Sun newspaper on Friday headlined a report ambush, saying Fijian indigenous parties were working on a document of unity aimed solely at keeping Chaudhry, the island's first ethnic Indian premier who was deposed in a racially-motivated coup last year, out of office.
A week of polling ends on Saturday evening and counting will begin Monday to produce a 71-seat Parliament, thus restoring the democracy lost on may 19 last year when George Speight and a gang of special forces soldiers seized Chaudhry and his government hostage for 56 days. Election week has been incident free, and the capital is the calmest it has been for over a year.
Bureau Report