The Hindu : Fiji Indians offered 14 Cabinet posts

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 24, 2003

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International

Fiji Indians offered 14 Cabinet posts

SUVA (Fiji) July 23. Fiji's Nationalist Prime Minister caved in Wednesday to a Supreme Court order to offer a proportion of seats in his Cabinet to the ethnic Indian-dominated Labour Party, but also expanded the Cabinet so that the current indigenous Fijian Ministers can keep their seats.

The Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, said Labour would be offered 14 seats in the Cabinet, but that the body would be expanded from 21 members to 36. Ethnic Fijians will retain their majority with 19 seats. The other three Ministers include an ethnic Indian Minister and a Minister who is part Fijian and part European.

In a strange twist to the nationally televised announcement, Mr. Qarase then urged the Labour leader and political rival, Mahrendra Chaudhry, not to fill the 14 new seats, saying it would be a ``recipe for unstable and ineffective'' Government.

Mr. Qarase said that Labour could not be trusted to cooperate in implementing government policies which it had been ``relentless and vocal'' in attacking for the past two years.

Labour doesn't have any seats in the current 21-member Cabinet despite occupying about one-third of the seats in Parliament. By contrast, indigenous Fijians have 19 Cabinet seats.

In a ruling last Friday, the Fiji Supreme Court said Mr. Qarase was required by the constitution to offer the Labour Party up to eight Cabinet posts, a number based on the 27 seats it holds in the troubled Pacific nation's 71-seat Parliament. — AP

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