Fiji polls shaping up to be battle of personalities
An observer of Fiji politics says the Fiji election will mostly be a battle of personalities and leadership.
Transcript
An observer of Fiji politics says the Fiji election will mostly be a battle of personalities and leadership.
Three political parties and the yet to be registered regime-backed Fiji First have now confirmed who will lead them in the September polls and the Labour Party is still to confirm Mahendra Chaudhry after his conviction last week.
Auckland University's Steven Ratuva told Sally Round despite Labour being in a leadership crisis, there is now a core line-up of capable leaders for people to choose from who could be described as superstars in their own field.
STEVEN RATUVA: In this particular election, the way in which the electoral system is designed, votes will mostly revolve around popularity of parties and popularity of leaders so leadership does count a lot in terms of attracting the votes to a particular political party. If you have a party without any leadership profile nationally, then it's going to be a struggle. First of all you only have one constituency and secondly voters will have to vote for only one person and that one person they're going to vote for is going to be very much determined on the popularity of the person and that's where the party leader popularity comes in. The vote which comes to that particular person goes to the party and it's shared by everybody. So you might have a situation where the leader can get up to 50% of all the votes for the party which will then be distributed because of the distribution of seats. So, in terms of attracting voters to a particular party, you need somebody to be a "superstar" to solicit the votes. That's the whole political psychology behind this electoral system.
SALLY ROUND: So do you think these could be described as superstars?
RATUVA: In their own way, yes superstars in their own way. Felix Anthony (of the People's Democratic Party) has been the trade union superstar. Bainimarama has been, as prime minister, a superstar in his own right. Then you have Ro Temumu Kepa, who is a very prominent high chief and leader of the Sodelpa party, and in the National Federation Party, you have Biman Prasad who has been a superstar in his own right as an academic. So it's going to be a battle of superstars in a way in relation to how political parties can configure their mobilisation strategies around soliciting votes through the appeal of the leaders.
ROUND: How does this compare with leadership line-ups in the past elections of Fiji?
RATUVA: In the previous system, the pressure on leadership to be nationally attractive now is much more than before because of the nature of the electoral system. Before there were very good leaders, political party leaders as well, but the pressure was not as much on them as it is now in terms of projecting the image of the party out. Before it was more or less shared as a result of the nature of the electoral system.
ROUND: So Fiji in essence has a good choice before it?
RATUVA: All those parties have good leaders so the Fiji public will have a good choice of five to choose from and they're all capable in their own way and as the process of campaigning goes - some of those leaders are new, some have been there for some time - they're going to consolidate their skills and their capabilities even more. You're going to see some of these leaders competing for even more stardom against each other. I believe there's a good choice of leaders that we have.
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