Graphic: Campbell/Scoop

Pacific Scoop:
Opinion – By Scott MacWilliam in Canberra

The current regime in Fiji has correctly identified one vote one value as an important democratic principle which should underpin electoral reform.

The system used under the 1997 Constitution for the 1999, 2001 and 2006 elections grossly distorted the weight given to votes as between different constituencies.

This is is malapportionment, but not gerrymandering. (The latter involves the specific drawing of electorate boundaries to benefit a particular party or individual candidate, and was not a major feature of the Fiji electoral system.) Read more »

Regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama ... "bans are little more than an inconvenience, but mark Australia and New Zealand out as particularly mean-spirited and petty". Photo: Selwyn Manning, Scoop

Pacific Scoop:
Analysis – By Scott MacWilliam

Now that New Zealand has started to recognise the need to change its previous hard-line against the military regime in Fiji, a range of suggestions are being made about the most appropriate policy changes.

One move, proposed recently by Croz Walsh, is for the removal of travel sanctions which have discouraged some of Fiji’s most talented people from applying for government positions. Read more »

Fiji's peacekeepers ... stopping their recruitment for international duties is "not the only form of stupid sanctions". Photo: UN

Pacific.Scoop
Opinion – By Scott MacWilliam in Canberra

In its most recent editorial supporting the Australian government’s “smart” sanctions policy toward the Fiji government, the Canberra Times (5 November 2009) encourages a continuation of one particular policy.
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Scott MacWilliam on a strategy rethink for Fiji. Photo: ANU

Pacific.Scoop
Opinion – By Scott MacWilliam in Canberra

The latest development in ANZ-Fiji relations shows clearly why the model of sanctions being imposed on the South Pacific nation-state encourages tit-for-tat, ill-conceived moves by all parties.

While one view is that ANZ governments have been deliberately egging on the Fiji military government to become ever more extreme, this seems a less likely explanation than another possibility.
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