In a matter of less than a year, the FLP became the primary opposition party, even though it did not have a single seat in Fiji’s parliament. It was consistent in its criticism of Alliance Party approaches to public policy-making and to specific issues and policies. Its allegations of government corruption proved to be popular. Some National Federation Party (NFP) parliamentarians, the long-established opposition party whose support base was Indo-Fijian sugar cane farmers and small businessmen, openly identified with the FLP.

Just before the 1987 election, a coalition was cobbled together between the FLP and the NFP.^[14] This coalition narrowly defeated the Alliance Party, which had ruled Fiji since independence.^[15] However, the defeat was not accepted by many leaders or supporters of the Alliance Party. The Taukei Movement, or indigenous land-owners’ movement, emerged, comprising Alliance MPs, chiefs, Methodist ministers, public servants and ethnic chauvinists. This ‘nationalistic’ movement began a campaign of destabilization that included marches, road blocks and fire-bombing of offices and businesses, and provided the pretext for the first military coup d’état in May of that year.^[16]

With the overthrow of the month-old FLP/NFP government, the deposed prime minister, Dr Timoci Bavadra, led a broad-based, multi-ethnic pro-democracy movement until his untimely death in 1989.^[17] After a short interlude, during which Bavadra’s widow, Adi Kuini, led the FLP, Mahendra Chaudhry became the face of the party. He has, over the last 18 years, assumed absolute control by promoting his loyalists, marginalizing others, and removing dissenters.

Chaudhry’s road to success has been accompanied by divisions in just about every organization and movement that he has been involved in. The trade union movement is now deeply divided between those who support Chaudhry and those who do not. Of the close to 43,000 workers who belong to trade unions (of 112,000 formal sector workers), 24,783 belong through their trade unions to the umbrella body the FTUC, and 18,143 are members of trade unions which broke away from FTUC to form the Fiji Islands Council of Trade Unions (FICTU).^[18] The latter body, comprising 15 unions, was formed in August 2002.^[19] FICTU’s President is Maika Namudu of the Fijian Teachers Union and its General Secretary is Attar Singh of the Fiji Post and Telecommunications Employees Association.

The primary reason for the split and the formation of the second umbrella organization was the close connection between the FLP and the FTUC leadership. Indeed, Chaudhry had successfully manœuvred his protégés into FTUC executive positions, marginalizing and alienating those he suspected of having ties with other political parties or who did not readily follow his wishes. Those subjected to this treatment and others not inclined to be in the Chaudhry camp formed FICTU. According to one commentator, ‘The fall of the union movement can be traced back to the formation of another national body, the Fiji Islands Council of Trade Unions (FICTU). Again, this came about as a result of the politically motivated attempt by Felix Anthony, Rajeshwar Singh and others to continue to treat FTUC as an arm of the Fiji Labour Party’.^[20]

The FTUC, led by Felix Anthony and Daniel Urai and backed by the powerful Public Service Association, has been engaged in a bitter struggle against FICTU. Anthony has repeatedly asserted that FICTU is illegal and strongly protested its recognition by the then SDL government.^[21] FICTU’s presence was questioned at the International Labor Organization’s (ILO’s) 91st session in Geneva in 2003 by FTUC officials. The ILO’s Credentials Committee discussed the FTUC and Fiji government submissions. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) joined in the fray on the side of FTUC. Because Attar Singh, the then general secretary of the Transport Workers Union, had been nominated to be an observer at the conference by Fiji’s ministry of labour, the ILO Credentials Committee did not regard the FTUC/ICFTU’s objection as justified; but the Committee expressed its concern about ‘incomplete delegations’ and the need to remedy this.^[22]

A war of attrition is on-going between the two umbrella organizations. In early 2004, the FLP and the FTUC sought to wrestle control of the leadership of two key trade unions from FICTU. Dr Ganesh Chand, FLP MP, contested the position of secretary of the Bank Employees Union against Pramod Rae, who had been acting secretary. Chand was soundly defeated. Daniel Urai, another FLP MP, contested the position of general secretary of the Fiji Post and Telecommunications Employees Association against Attar Singh. Singh won with an overwhelming majority. It is noteworthy that both Rae and Singh have close connections with the NFP and are vocal opponents of Chaudhry.^[23]

The tussle between Chaudhry’s men and NFP supporters has also been taking place among farmers. The older farmers’ union leaders had supported the idea of the NFU, initiated by the FTUC to organize rural workers in 1978.^[24] In the early period, James Raman, the then secretary of the FTUC, was chair of the NFU, and Chaudhry, as assistant secretary of the FTUC, became its first secretary. The objective was to establish the NFU and hand it over to the farmers. Raman relinquished his position to a respected farmer, Girja Prasad. However, Chaudhry held on to the secretary’s position and replaced Prasad with his own man.

By the time sugar cane farmers loyal to NFP and NFP leaders realized that Chaudhry had used this initiative to secure a firm political base it was too late. The FCGA was formed to counter the influence of Chaudhry and his NFU. Prasad observed that, ‘The Fiji Cane Growers Association was formed by the supporters of the National Federation Party partly because they felt that the National Farmers Union had become a branch of the Labour Party’.^[25]

Through the NFU, Chaudhry has gained considerable support for the FLP and has won all the rural ‘Indian’ communal seats in the last three general elections. The FCGA leadership has sought to gain lost ground by frontal attacks on Chaudhry’s policies and integrity. For instance, as leader of the opposition in 2005, Chaudhry opposed the SDL’s efforts to reform the sugar industry and yet now, as minister of finance and the sugar industry, he pushes strongly for reform. He had previously maintained that the Indian Sugar Technology Mission’s recommendation for restructuring the industry was based on an overly ambitious sugar production target of 430,000 tonnes, pointing out that sugar production had declined to 270,000 tonnes. He pointed to expiring farm leases, to the increased costs of inputs, including fertilizer, and to the impending reduction in sugar prices (from F$55 per tonne to F$43 per tonne) as the EU phased out preferential access and stopped paying well above world market price for sugar from countries such as Fiji. He argued that poor infrastructure and obsolete machinery in the mills would work against the costly reform. He said ethanol production was uneconomic. He made out that the reform was a costly waste of money. Yet, he reversed all of these positions after he joined the interim administration and took responsibility for the sugar industry.

The sugar industry, including the farmers, hoped that the injection of F$350 million of EU funds would assist in the rejuvenation of sugar cane farming and sugar production, as well as cushion the impending 36 per cent reduction in the price of sugar. However, the EU withheld its aid to the industry because of the 2006 coup. When FCGA’s Bala Dass made an issue of the plight of farmers, who he said would need subsidies to keep the sugar price at F$55 per tonne – something that Chaudhry had said previously – Chaudhry called him a ‘professional whiner’. Dass in turn said that Chaudhry had a ‘master’s degree in making false promises’.

Kamal Iyer, in a cogently argued article, quoted Chaudhry’s 2006 budget speech in which he had vigorously opposed the sugar reform initiative of Qarase’s SDL government, and his contradictory position in the post-coup era. Iyer, intrigued by Chaudhry’s conversion from anti- to pro-sugar reformer, raised the following rhetorical questions:

He concluded his piece by expressing his support for Dass: