FIJI'S MULTI-PARTY CABINET: IS THE HONEYMOON

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 SUVA 000254

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/29/2016
TAGS: PGOV FJ
SUBJECT: FIJI'S MULTI-PARTY CABINET: IS THE HONEYMOON
ALREADY OVER?

Classified By: DCM Ted Mann. Reason 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) Summary: The creation of a multi-party Cabinet
following the May elections has given rise to a groundswell
of hope and optimism that Fiji's rival SDL and Labor parties
might finally cooperate for the good of the nation. Across
the political spectrum, there have been calls for a new, less
confrontational political culture. PM Qarase and others,
including high figures with the Labor Party, have declared
their willingness to strive to work together. However, the
reality of nine Labor ministers in a majority SDL Cabinet is
even now raising important issues for the Labor Party and
particularly for its autocratic leader, Mahendra Chaudhry.
Chaudhry's apparent initial tolerance of the multi-party
construct is now fading, and he has set about re-establishing
party discipline among his party's Cabinet ministers. The
ministers have been warned of their commitment to the Party's
manifesto, which stands in sometimes stark contradiction to
that of the SDL. Chaudhry's pulling back has exposed a rift
with other leaders in the party, some of them ministers in
the new Cabinet, who say they want to focus on collaboration
in the Cabinet, not confrontation. They have challenged
Chaudhry over nominations to the Senate, setting the stage
for an intra-party dispute that is likely to have
ramifications for their -- and Labor's -- future role in the
multi-party Cabinet. End Summary.

A Surprising, Hopeful Beginning
--------------


2. (C) In the wake of the May 6-13 general elections, as
voters and observers alike considered the implications of the
narrow win by incumbent PM Laisenia Qarase's SDL United Fiji
Party, the PM surprised the nation with a generous offer of
substantive cabinet positions to the SDL's chief rival, the
Fiji Labor Party (FLP). Under the constitution, the
governing party is obliged to offer cabinet positions based
on their relative strength in the polls to all parties that
received ten percent or more of the popular vote.
Ironically, in the days before his offer, Qarase told the
media he did not believe that the multi-party powersharing
required by Fiji's 1997 constitution could actually work in
practice. Indeed, five years before, following the 2000
elections, he made a mockery of the provision by offering the
FLP a portfolio of wholly non-substantive ministries,
including some proposed solely to fulfill the legal
requirement. The FLP balked, demanded better, went to court
and won, but eventually opted to stay in opposition. This
time around, on May 18 Qarase caught all by surprise with an
offer to the FLP of seven front-line ministries, including
labor, agriculture, health, commerce and industry, energy,
and environment, out of a cabinet of 17.


3. (C) FLP Secretary General Mehendra Chaudhry accepted the
offer immediately and then asked for still more. After some
wrangling and a significant expansion of the cabinet, Labor
now holds 9 of 24 ministries. With some skeptical
exceptions, the public response to the hybrid cabinet, with
its promise of compromise and powersharing, has been
overwhelmingly positive. From all quarters have come calls
on the Government and Labor to embrace and make the new
arrangement work for the good of the nation. Despite
lingering skepticism and some flourishes of old-style
confrontational rhetoric, a general sense of hope and
hesitant optimism took hold. Former ambassador to the United
States and newly named Speaker of the House of
Representatives Pita Nacuva told Ambassador Dinger that he
sees a markedly changed atmosphere in Parliament and hopes to
encourage it further. Despite his earlier public skepticism,
Qarase too has been publicly talking up the multi-party
cabinet, now becoming known on the street as the MPC. Its
success, he said, is now his personal undertaking. Qarase
told the Ambassador on June 21 that he remains upbeat about
the MPC. Labor's participation in the MPC would, he said,
allow the two parties to hammer out common policies within
the relative privacy of the cabinet.


4. (C) Much editorial ink was spilled in the weeks following
Labor's acceptance of the Cabinet positions over who would
fulfill the role of the Opposition, so key to the Westminster
system. For a time Chaudhry claimed that he and the other
FLP MPs outside Cabinet could play that role, despite their
nine party colleagues being now firmly ensconced in the
government's new Cabinet. Eventually the two-member
Parliamentary faction of the United People's Party of Mick
Beddoes formally rescinded its alliance with the FLP and
claimed the role for itself. Beddoes too reported a new tone
in Parliament. He told the Ambassador he found Qarase open

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to discussion and less inclined to engage in the combative
Westminster style debate typical in post-independence Fiji.
Beddoes said he had proposed to Qarase and Chaudhry that the
three of them meet regularly for kava-drinking sessions to
get more comfortable with one another and informally discuss
issues needing action. However, despite the general
feel-good atmosphere and the formal assumption by the UPP of
the mantel of the loyal opposition, Chaudhry and the 21 other
Labor MPs outside the Cabinet have continued to speak and act
as part of the opposition.

Cracks Appear in the MPC Foundation
--------------


5. (C) On June 15, the first sign surfaced that some of the
MPC's innate contradictions are still to be solved. After
just four weeks of optimism and encouraging words from all
sides, Labor PM Lehk Ram Vayeshnoi, FLP deputy secretary
general and the newly named minister of energy and mineral
resources, told his fellow parliamentarians and the nation
alike that for him, the Labor Party manifesto would guide his
decisions in cabinet, not any obligation to Qarase and the
MPC. He reminded Labor MPs, including those serving in the
Cabinet, that they had run for election on the FLP's
manifesto and were bound by its policies. He called on
Qarase to withdraw controversial legislation opposed by
Labor, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Bill and a
fishing rights bill favoring indigenous Fijian communities.
Despite several public remonstrations from his fellow FLP
cabinet ministers for having stepped out of line, Vayeshnoi
refused to retract his stance, even after a one-on-one with
Qarase about cabinet procedures. FLP chief Chaudhry
initially sidestepped the controversy, saying in public only
that Vayeshnoi, and by implication all FLP ministers,
retained the right to speak his mind.


6. (C) In the wake of the controversy over Vayeshnoi's
remarks, Qarase worked to maintain the sense of cooperation
and optimism. He told Parliament an analysis of his SDL
party's manifesto and that of the FLP had found significant
areas of policy "convergence." The atmosphere in cabinet is,
he said, "cordial and mutually supportive." He announced
that he would be proposing a cabinet committee to promote
cooperation and overcome party policy differences within the
cabinet. Qarase invited Chaudhry to an urgent June 28
meeting to discuss Cabinet procedures and guidelines to
facilitate cooperation, but Chaudhry declined due to
scheduling conflicts. According to FLP contacts, he was
scheduled to depart that day for a full-expense paid trip to
Taiwan.

Labor Splits Over Cabinet Role and Party Discipline
-------------- --------------


7. (C) In recent days, a split in the FLP ranks has become
more and more apparent. According to sources in the party,
on June 22, an unidentified FLP member, apparently prompted
by Chaudhry, tried to convince Labor backbenchers to stage a
walk-out during a parliamentary address by Labor MP and new
Minister of Labor Krishna Datt. The ploy failed but it
revealed a growing divide between a group around Chaudhry and
other members of the FLP's leadership. Datt is a member of
the party's management board and part of a small but
influential group that is increasingly challenging Chaudhry's
autocratic rule. The rift widened some at a June 24 meeting
of Labor's national council. In a discussion paper,
Chaudhry reminded members that, whereas the FLP's management
board and the party's parliamentary caucus had accepted
Qarase's initial offer of Cabinet seats, the national council
-- where Chaudhry holds sway -- is the governing body of the
FLP and should have made the decision. (Note: According to
numerous media reports at the time, Chaudhry himself also
accepted the offer. End note.)


8. (C) In his discussion paper, Chaudhry wrote that the
Vayeshnoi controversy made it urgent to draw up "firm
guidelines and ground rules" to govern the relationship of
the FLP and the SDL government. "Central to the whole issue
is the question of loyalty and obligation to the Party," he
wrote. According to Chaudhry, the party constitution makes
clear that "No member, whether an MP or Cabinet minister, is
above the Party," and every member "must uphold the
principles and objectives of the Party," which finds its
expression in the party manifesto. This is bound in time to
bring the FLP ministers into conflict with their SDL
colleagues policies. In that case, the paper notes, "it is
quite in order for a Labour member of the Cabinet, and
backbenchers, in the context of a multi-party Cabinet to

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express opinions and adhere to policies that may be in
conflict with that of the ruling party."


9. (C) Adding to the gathering contradictions surrounding the
MPC construct, Solicitor General Nainendra Nand was reported
in the press June 27 as saying that Qarase's invitation was
to the FLP as a whole and, thus, all its members are
effectively members of the government, and bound to vote
collectively. This is true for the FLP ministers, he said,
but also extends to FLP backbenchers outside the Cabinet.
This was rejected by Senator Anand Singh, the FLP's legal
advisor and a former attorney general. Singh told the
Embassy that, in his view, non-ministerial FLP members are
not part of the government. In apparent contradiction to
Chaudhry's portrayal of party discipline, Singh said that FLP
ministers may differ with their SDL colleagues within
Cabinet, but once an issue comes to the floor of the House,
they must either support Cabinet's decision or abstain; they
may not vote against a Cabinet bill.

Labor Rebels Challenge an Autocrat
--------------


10. (C) The growing rift between Chaudhry and the small group
of FLP management board members around Datt and party deputy
leader Poseci Bune was splashed across the front pages of
Fiji's daily newspapers June 29. In the days before his
June 28 departure overseas, Chaudhry had submitted to
Opposition leader Beddoes a list of FLP nominees to the
Senate, without clearing the list with the party's management
board. Bune wrote to Beddoes asking him to withhold the list
and to Chaudhry demanding an explanation why the list had not
been cleared with the management board. A party contact told
the Embassy that the Chaudhry list, in addition to having
been drawn up without the knowledge of the management board,
failed to include a party stalwart who had sacrificed his
candidacy in the recent elections in favor of union leader
Felix Anthony, another of the management board rebels with
Datt and Bune. According to the source, this quid pro quo
had been agreed to before the election and failing to fulfill
the deal would undercut Anthony's and the other's authority,
a point that would have been well known to Chaudhry.


11. (C) In his absence, FLP President Jokapeci Koroi defended
Chaudhry's right to draw up the list and insisted the five
management board rebels have no right to speak for the whole
9-member board. She said she had directed Beddoes to forward
the original list. Beddoes was quoted in the Fiji Times as
having told Bune he must produce proof that he has the right
to demand that Chaudhry's list be withdrawn. According to
press reports, the five management board members planned to
compile their own list and ask Beddoes to submit in place of
Chaudhry's. A visibly angry Anthony told a television
reporter that the issue came down to democracy within the
party. "For too long, the party has preached transparency
and openness but not practiced them."

Comment
--------------


12. (C) Comment: The novelty and promise of the MPC strikes a
positive chord in many -- perhaps a majority -- in Fiji,
tired of the contentious political debate between the
governing SDL and the rival FLP. This promise is
increasingly looking to be a victim of a power play by
Chaudhry, who is seeing his stern control over the party
eroded. If he cannot enforce party discipline among the
Labor ministers in Cabinet, he faces a steadily declining
role in a party that most, but certainly not all FLP voters
see as almost synonymous with him. It is hard to see how the
cooperation and compromise that has to be at the heart of a
functioning multi-party Cabinet can be squared with
Chaudhry's rigid insistence on maintaining Labor's identity
as resolute opponent of the SDL. Even if FPL infighting can
be overcome, the MPC will continue to face serious
challenges. Qarase has told the Ambassador and others that
he is determined to reintroduce the controversial
Reconciliation and Tolerance Bill, sooner rather than later.
The FLP party leadership under Chaudhry is almost certain to
demand that the FLP ministers withhold their support of the
bill, even in a significantly improved form. This is certain
to present Qarase with a challenge with regard to Cabinet
discipline. How he will react is not clear at this point,
but it could easily provoke a life and death crisis in the
MPC. End Comment.
DINGER