Suva, Aug 07: Fiji's Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and rival deposed Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry will go back to the Supreme Court over a dispute on the make-up of the cabinet, a news daily reported today. Neither party would comment today, saying only that consultations were continuing.
The Pacific nation has been in a political hiatus since July 18 when the Supreme Court issued a judgment telling Qarase that his Cabinet must include members of the rival Fiji Labour Party, deposed in a coup in 2000.
Fiji's current Constitution, the third since independence in 1970, requires the winning party in an election to invite into Cabinet members of rival parties in proportion to the total vote in general elections. Qarase resisted giving Cabinet seats to FLP, which won 27 parliamentary seats. Chaudhry went to court and won in both the high court and court of appeal and on July 18 a five-man Supreme Court panel ruled Qarase must invite Labour into Cabinet.
The constitutional requirement for a multi-party Cabinet was an attempt- in a country which has so far suffered three coups and a military mutiny- to end racial politics. Around 44 per cent of the 840,000 people here are descendants of Indian contract workers imported by the British in the 19th and early 20th century.
The daily quoted political sources saying that Qarase and Chaudhry could not agree on the makeup of the Cabinet. Qarase was offering 14 seats in what will be a 36-seat Cabinet, while Chaudhry wants 17.
The paper said they will ask the Supreme Court to decide. Bureau Report