What if the electoral system had been different?
The eventual result had 29 seats for the Coalition (The People’s Alliance, NFP and SODELPA) and 26 seats for FFP.
There are many commentators wondering what the result would have been if SODELPA had just failed to get over the 5 per cent threshold.
My rough calculations suggest that FFP would have got 27, PA 22 and NFP 6 (choosing the largest fractions) hence the Coalition would have got 28 seats, just one more than FFP.
But if SODELPA and PA had not split, FFP would have got only 25 seats and PA/SODELPA would have got 25 seats and NFP 5 seats.
Hence the Coalition would have got 30 seats easily forming Government.
The 5 per cent hurdle
While the system is supposed to be proportional, the 5 per cent threshold eliminated three small parties who ought to have been represented in Parliament by strict proportionality: Narube’s Unity Fiji (2 seats), Chaudhry’s FLP (1 seat) and We Unite Party (1 seat).
Table 1 (below) shows the seat allocation if there was no 5 per cent threshold.
FFP would have got only 23 seats, while the Opposition parties would have together obtained 32 seats, easily defeating the FFP Government.
It was only the 5 per cent threshold disqualifying these small parties that made the final result of the 2022 Elections appear to be a close election.
The reality is that 57 per cent of the voters did not vote for FFP but another party, which to them represented the change they wanted.
Sadly, the smaller parties failed to heed all our warnings about the dangers of not reaching the 5 per cent threshold, and condemned Fiji to all that unnecessary trauma just after the 2022 elections.
Votes for Qualifying MPs
Table 2 (right) gives the votes for the top candidates for each party qualifying for Parliament according to the D’Hondt rules (which gives 1 extra MP to FFP that FFP should not have by strict proportionality).
Note that the last qualifying MP for the PA had 1649 votes, which was more than all the FFP qualifying MPs from its eighth MP downwards. That is, the last PA MP had more votes than 19 of the FFP MPs.
FFP could have stood balabala as candidates – and still they would have been elected to Parliament under Bainimarama’s cover.
The “one constituency” game
Contrary to all the electoral systems which Fiji has had since Independence in 1970, the 2013 electoral system imposed on Fiji by the Bainimarama Government deliberately removed all the local constituencies which had previously empowered local communities to have their own representative in Parliament.
The entire system was designed for the FijiFirst party to base its entire election strategy on just one candidate and number, that of Voreqe Bainimarama.
To that end, no photos or party symbols or party names or candidate names were allowed on the ballot paper.
How utterly ridiculous for a country like Fiji.
In the 2022 elections, FFP focused its advertisements on two candidates, and the result was obvious.
Quite clearly, the FFP was a “one man show” and deliberately planned that way, except that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s candidate number was almost as prominently displayed as Bainimarama’s candidate number.