Fiji PM rules out election after landmark case

3.30pm

SUVA - Racially divided Fiji lurched towards political stalemate on Wednesday when Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase ruled out calling a general election or making a major cabinet reshuffle ordered by the Supreme Court.

"It's too costly and the house will end up in the same scenario after the elections," Qarase said, ruling out an election in brief comments to Reuters before a televised national address.

Fiji's Supreme Court ordered Qarase last Friday to reshape his indigenous government to include at least eight members of ousted leader Mahendra Chaudhry's ethnic Indian-dominated Fiji Labour Party.

Qarase said after meeting Chaudhry, who was deposed in a coup by nationalist gunmen in May 2000, that his preferred option would be for the Labour leader effectively to ignore the court's ruling and stay on as opposition leader to balance the South Pacific nation's parliament.

The only other option he said was to expand the existing 22-member cabinet to 36, creating minor posts for Labour members in a move he described as too costly and "political suicide".

"We will have an ineffective government and it will be political suicide for my party," Qarase said. Last month he had vowed to stand by the court's ruling.

Qarase was speaking on Wednesday after his first meeting with Chaudhry since the landmark Supreme Court ruling.

He said Chaudhry had agreed to discuss the two options with his party later in the day. Chaudhry was likely to respond to the offer after those talks, he said.

Fiji's 1997 constitution seeks to moderate long-standing racial tensions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians by including power-sharing provisions.

Chaudhry was elected the former British colony's first ethnic Indian prime minister in 1999 but was deposed a year later in a coup led by failed businessman George Speight, who is now serving a life sentence for treason.

Qarase was installed by the military as a caretaker leader after the coup and won democratic elections in September 2001.

- REUTERS