Fiji has new government with three parties coalition
People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka (left) attends a church service in Suva, Fiji on December 18, 2022. Final results showed Fiji’s tumultuous general election deadlocked on December 18, with two rival leaders failing to win a clear majority of seats in parliament.
Fiji will have a new leader for the first time in 16 years after a national election resulted in three parties joining up in a coalition to form a government in the Pacific island nation, dislodging Frank Bainimarama’s Fiji First party.
The Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) announced on Tuesday it had decided to form a coalition with Sitiveni Rabuka’s People’s Alliance and the National Federation Party.
The decision came after two days of deliberations and rival presentations by former prime minister Bainimarama and the People’s Alliance party, as a national election saw a deadlock.
At a livestreamed news conference, Rabuka thanked the people of Fiji. “They have voted for change and we have given them that,” he said.
National Federation Party leader Biman Prasad told reporters: “Today the leaders of the People’s Alliance party, the National Federation Party and the Social Democratic Liberal Party agreed to form a new government.” A Pacific trade and transport hub with a population of 900,000, including a sizeable Indian ethnic group, Fiji in 2013 removed a race-based electoral system.
Bainimarama, who came to power in 2006, won seperately democratic elections in 2014 and 2018.
