Fiji Delays

The face of the Fijian junta, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the acting Prime Minister, has announced yet another delay in any election process to restore democratic representation to the government of the South Pacific nation.

First though, he has announced a need to scrap the old constitution and write a new one. That process is said to take until 2013... and then elections can follow the next year.

The good news about that would be getting rid of the ethnically-divided means of electing representation in the 1997 Constitution... and that does need to happen if there is ever to be a practicable concept of "Fijian" as a nationality, not a hyphenated part of some identity... but...

The distinct possibility that such things are being said to draw out the tenure of the junta is real.

As this author has argued recently in other examples, the basis of Rule-of-Law governance is the Constitution *as it exists*. You follow what you have, and it changes by a process of amendment or replacement (whichever is allowed; one of them certainly is).

Fiji would be well served by a new Constitution. Let's let a constitutionally formed government perform that process.