Fiji's politics: a constitution nobody voted on and how to change it

How the current constitution came into force

The constitution Fiji is governed under was never put to a vote. After the 2009 abrogation of the 1997 constitution, the interim government set up a commission to consult the public, then rejected the text the commission drafted and brought its own into force on 7 September 2013. International IDEA, in its 2025 explainer, describes it as made by a small group of unelected officials who had come to power by coup, and never submitted to the people or their elected representatives. Britannica records that the government of the day stressed its independent judiciary and the civil and political rights it set out, and that international human rights groups criticised it for granting immunity to coup participants and for allowing freedoms to be suspended in a declared emergency.

The text broke with the ethnic arithmetic of every earlier constitution. Section 5 states that all citizens of Fiji shall be known as Fijians, and the preamble declares "common and equal citizenry". Elections moved from communal rolls to a single national roll. At the same time section 28 entrenched the old protection of land: iTaukei land, and Rotuman and Banaban land, remains with its customary owners and may not be permanently alienated except to the state for a public purpose, to which it reverts once the state no longer needs it.

Chapter 10 carries forward the immunities granted after earlier coups. Section 155 keeps alive the immunity in the 1990 constitution, section 156 continues a 2010 decree limiting liability for "prescribed political events", and section 157 grants further immunity to office-holders in the presidency, the cabinet, the military, the police and other bodies. Section 158 bars any court from hearing a challenge to them.

How Parliament is elected

Parliament has one chamber. Its members are elected for four years by open-list proportional representation, with the whole country voting as a single constituency. Each voter casts one vote for one candidate, votes for a party's candidates are pooled, and a party or independent needs 5% of the national vote to win a seat. Seats then go to a party's candidates in the order of their personal votes. Every citizen aged 18 or over may register.

Section 54 fixed Parliament at 50 members for the first election and leaves the size of later ones to the Electoral Commission, which reviews it at least a year before each election so that the ratio of members to population stays the same. Australia's foreign ministry describes a 55-seat Parliament in its current country brief and expects the next election between August 2026 and February 2027.

The threshold and the national roll changed the parties. Under the 1997 constitution the House of Representatives had 71 members, 46 of them elected from communal rolls: 23 Fijian, 19 Indo-Fijian, one Rotuman and three general electors. Its cabinet had to include every party with more than eight seats, a rule Wikipedia's account of the period says was never strictly applied. The 2013 text drops that requirement and the Senate with it.

Who chooses the prime minister and the president

Under section 93 the leader of a party that wins more than 50% of the seats becomes prime minister by taking the oath. If no party does, the Speaker calls for nominations at the first sitting and Parliament votes on them, a nominee needing the support of more than half of its members. The prime minister chairs the cabinet and decides its size, and ministers answer to Parliament individually and collectively. Parliament runs four years from its first sitting; the president may dissolve it early on the prime minister's advice, but only after three years and six months, or earlier on a two-thirds vote of the members.

The president is chosen by Parliament from two names, one put forward by the prime minister and one by the leader of the opposition. If three rounds of voting produce no majority, the prime minister's nominee is appointed. A president serves three years and may be reappointed once. The office is largely formal, but its reserve powers have been tested. On 27 May 2000, in the middle of the Speight crisis, President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara announced that he was assuming executive authority, and Wikipedia's politics of Fiji records that he was forced to resign two days later by the military commander.

What the Supreme Court said about changing it

Section 160 required any amendment, however small, to pass Parliament with three-quarters of all its members and then win the votes of three-quarters of all registered voters in a referendum, counting those who stayed at home. Section 159 put the immunity chapter and the amendment rules themselves beyond any amendment. International IDEA calls the result "notoriously difficult to change".

In March 2025 the government introduced a bill to lower the bar, and it failed to win three-quarters in Parliament. On 6 May 2025 the cabinet used section 91(5) to ask the Supreme Court for an opinion. At the hearings of 18 to 20 August 2025 the parties split three ways, in IDEA's summary. The government argued that the amendment rules made change impossible and should be struck down, and the National Federation Party supported it. The Fiji Labour Party, an opposition group in Parliament and the Fiji Law Society argued that the rules had not been fully tested and should stand. The People's Alliance Party, Sodelpa and a third group argued that the 2013 constitution was invalid and the 1997 one should be restored.

The court, six judges of whom four came from New Zealand and Australia, gave its opinion on 29 August 2025. It held the 2013 constitution legally effective, because it had framed government for 12 years, three elections and more than 400 laws. It also held that there was no workable way to amend it, and read sections 159 and 160 down. An amendment now needs two-thirds of all members of Parliament, at least 30 days between second and third readings, a committee report, and then a majority of those who vote in a referendum. The immunities stayed protected, which the court explained as being in the interests of stability. Fiji has never held a constitutional referendum, and IDEA noted that Parliament would first need a law on how to run one.

How the courts were rebuilt after the coups

Judicial power rests in three courts set up by the constitution: the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, whose decisions are final, with magistrates' courts below them. The Court of Appeal did not exist before the 1997 constitution. The courts have been at the centre of each crisis since 2000. On 15 November 2000 the High Court ordered the 1997 constitution restored, and in March 2001 the Court of Appeal confirmed it in the case known as Republic of Fiji Islands v Prasad, which the Supreme Court drew on again in 2025. After the 2006 takeover the military dismissed the chief justice, and when the Court of Appeal ruled the interim government illegal in April 2009 the president dismissed every judge; some were reappointed and some were not.

Foreign judges are part of the system. Three New Zealand judges have sat as visiting members of the Supreme Court since 2023, and a former chief justice of the High Court of Australia, Robert French, was sworn in as a visiting judge in August 2025 after earlier service on the court from 2003 to 2008.

Where the military stands under the constitution

Section 131 gives the Republic of Fiji Military Forces "overall responsibility" to ensure "at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians". The commander is appointed by the president on the advice of the Constitutional Offices Commission, which the prime minister chairs. The wording matters in a country where the military took power in 1987 and 2006 and declared martial law in 2000; the history article follows each of those.

Britannica describes a force with land and naval elements that, before 1987, had a mostly ceremonial role and did much of the rebuilding after natural disasters, and that after the coups added internal security to those tasks. Wikipedia gives its strength as 3,500 active soldiers and 6,000 reservists, including a naval unit of 300, and notes Fiji's long record of service in United Nations peacekeeping missions.

Where chiefs and provinces fit the system

The country is divided into four divisions, each under a commissioner appointed by the central government, and 14 provinces with provincial councils. Rotuma is a dependency with its own island council. Suva, Lautoka and nine other towns elect city or town councils. Alongside that runs a separate iTaukei administration, in which councils oversee a hierarchy of provinces, districts and villages and deal with matters affecting iTaukei communities.

The Great Council of Chiefs, the Bose Levu Vakaturaga, was set up under Governor Gordon in the 1870s. Under the 1997 constitution it elected the president and 14 of the 32 senators. The interim government suspended it in April 2007 and abolished it in March 2012. Australia's foreign ministry now describes it as a constitutional body of 51 councillors: three from each of the 14 provinces, three from Rotuma and six nominated by the minister for iTaukei affairs.

Land runs underneath all of it. Over 80% of the land is held by iTaukei clans under collective ownership. Indo-Fijian cane farmers lease the land they work, generally on terms of ten years, and many have pressed for renewable 30-year leases, while many iTaukei fear that a government led by Indo-Fijians would erode their control. Wikipedia's politics of Fiji names land tenure as one of the main issues behind the ethnic contention in Fijian politics.

Who Fiji stands with abroad

Fiji joined the United Nations on 13 October 1970, three days after independence, and joined the Commonwealth the same year. The Commonwealth suspended its membership three times: from October 1987 to October 1997, from June 2000 to December 2001 and from December 2006 to September 2014. Fiji was a founding member of the Pacific Islands Forum, set up in 1971, whose secretariat sits in Suva; it was suspended from the Forum on 2 May 2009, readmitted on 22 October 2014 and chaired it in 2022. It joined the UN Human Rights Council in October 2018.

Its two closest partners frame the relationship in Fijian words. Australia's Vuvale Partnership, from the word for family, was signed on 16 September 2019 and renewed on 18 October 2023, and it covers defence, policing, border security and cyber security as well as aid. New Zealand's framework is the Duavata Partnership, and in 2024 the two governments set a goal of NZ$2 billion in two-way trade by 2030. In May 2024 Fiji said it would sign and ratify the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. The record lists its other groups: the Alliance of Small Island States, the Group of 77, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the World Trade Organization.