Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama’s party has lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since the resumption of democratic elections in the country in 2014 and the formation of a coalition government will be necessary.
His party, Fiji First, has won 26 seats, two short of a majority in the country’s 55-member legislature. The People’s Alliance party, a coalition led by his main rival, Sitiveni Rabuka, won 21 seats. The Social Democratic Liberal Party (Sodelpa), won three deputies, according to official results collected by Fijilive.
Sodelpa leader Viliame Gavoka, former president of the Fiji Rugby Union, now becomes a key figure as a possible minority partner in a coalition led by Bainimarama provided he manages to overcome his aversion to the rapprochement with China exhibited by the prime minister.
Bainimarama thus faces for the first time government negotiations in this Pacific archipelago. The now prime minister, it should be recalled, seized power after a coup in 2006 and then legitimized his government with electoral triumphs in 2014 and 2018.
It remains to be seen what position the country’s opposition leader, Rabuka, who will probably continue to play this role in view of his fierce criticism of the election campaign, which he has described as fraudulent to the point of calling for the intervention of the army, will adopt.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
