NFP's suspension questionable, says academic

Transcript

A Fijian academic says the members of Fiji's suspended National Federation Party have a case to challenge their suspension from parliament in the courts.

Last week, the party was suspended by the supervisor of elections, Mohammed Saneem, for thirty days over apparent concerns about the auditing of the party's accounts.

The Speaker of Parliament, Jiko Luveni, then followed that by suspending the party's three MPs from parliament, apparently on advice from the Solicitor General's office.

But Dr Steven Ratuva, who is the director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at New Zealand's Canterbury University, told Jamie Tahana the legality of their suspension from parliament is questionable.

STEVEN RATUVA: I think the punishment was a bit harsh because the decree itself outlines two possible responses to any offense under the decree the first is to issue a warning and require the party to conform to the decree within a specified time and the second one is suspension. But I would have thought that they would have gone for the first one because it is just the first year after the election that this has happened. This would have given time for political parties in the spirit of the new constitution, in the new nation building to rectify the situation and then move on from there. And also the decree also states that if a party is suspended. The members of parliament will continue to be in parliament. Now the decision to suspend them from parliament as well is very, very legally contested and I am not really sure where that is coming from.

JAMIE TAHANA: So the three MPs of the NFP do have grounds to challenge us legally as it appears they are looking to do?

SR:  Yeah I think there is going to be a legal challenge I think there is a very grey area in there because a decree section 27 subsection 6 says that although the political party may be suspended the members of parliament will still be members of parliament. And I think the spirit of that particular provision has to do with the fact that parliamentarians are elected directly from the people not from the party. You may suspend the party but you really can't suspend the individual parliamentarian by virtue of the fact that they were directly elected by the people. So this, that area has to be clarified.

JT: Yeah so if it is not actually mentioned in the political parties decree, under what law or rules is Jiko Luveni looking at when she says there is the grounds to suspend these three members of parliament?

SR: Well I am not really sure where this is coming from, although it came from the legal opinion of the solicitor general but again these things have to be clarified when the court case if ever there is going to be a court challenge to that?

JT: There is suggestion around some of the opposition in Fiji that this is a calculated attempt to  remove the NFP. Does it seem like that?

SR: Well of course it is subject to interpretation or in the case of Fiji I mean the attention between the political parties and the way in which even parliamentary politics after 2014 election has been quite interesting. So at one point the National Federation Party had threatened to boycott parliament. And of course one would suspect that the powers that be, in this case the Fiji First, would be looking for opportunities to get back. After all the 2013 constitution and the decrees including the political party decrees where very much a construction of those involved in the party. So their is certainly that perception, that perception won't go away it will remain as part of the political discourse in Fiji in the next few years.