Black Friday poll date for Fiji

Commodore Frank Bainimarama, Fiji’s army chief and self-imposed prime minister, has out of the blue named a date for when Fiji is to hold general elections – and it’s a Black Friday.

Bainimarama told journalists on Wednesday, the country is to go to the polls on March 13, 2009 at 10am.

But perhaps not taking him seriously, the mainstream media did not play it up much. The Fiji Times reported it on page five today, while a rugby story occupied the front page.

Bainimarama’s sudden preciseness was lost on most of the media – only the Fiji Times reported his comments, until it was picked up by the radio stations this morning.

Bainimarama has previously been vague on an exact date for an election. After the joint Pacific Islands Forum-Fiji Working Group on the return to democracy released its report in June suggesting Fiji could go to elections as early as the last quarter of 2008 or the first quarter of 2009, Bainimarama only went so far as to say the interim regime had accepted the report “in principle.”

Apart from the little omen of elections being scheduled for a Black Friday (and as far as my young mind can recall, Fiji’s elections have begun on a Saturday), a constitutional expert has labelled the date as unrealistic.

Dr Brij Lal, one of the framers of the 1997 Constitution, expressed “deep doubts” to Radio Australia because the mechanisms for an election had not even got under way, including the filling of the top posts.

He said the Supervisor of Elections was yet to be appointed, a census has not been conducted, the electoral roll not yet updated, and the Constitutional Boundaries Commission not appointed.

The national census will be held in mid-September, while no word has come yet of the other electoral appointments.

Lal said while Bainimarama has continually spoken of the “pre-conditions” before an election could be held, including the completion of his “clean-up campaign” of the government bureaucracy, and the Fiji Labour Party saying last week an election was not a priority, he was baffled by the sudden announcement.

“I think there is something else that is driving the interim administration,” Lal told Radio Australia.

Perhaps that something else is pressure on the cash-strapped regime to commit to a date.

In March, Fiji’s military-led regime promised the European Union it would make a firm commitment to a return to democracy in return for promised aid amounting to some 200m euros (about $430m at today’s rates) for the sugar industry and other areas.

Semesa Karavaki, the sacked supervisor of elections, told the Fiji Times Online there was more to an election than the announcement of a date.

If Fiji does indeed to the polls on March 13, 2009 it will be two years and three months since Bainimarama seized power on December 5, 2006.