NZ welcomes Fiji supreme court ruling

5.00pm

UPDATE - Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff has welcomed the Fiji Supreme Court's ruling that the government must include ethnic Indian MPs from ousted leader Mahendra Chaudry's Labour Party.

Mr Goff said he was pleased that a final ruling had been given.

"It is now up to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry to give effect to the court's decision."

Mr Goff said Mr Qarase's repeated statements that he would abide by the court's decision were an important signal that the Fiji Government recognised the importance of upholding the constitution.

"Some commentators have questioned whether the multi-party cabinet provision is workable," he said.

"Regardless of how individual politicians might feel about any particular provision, the constitution is paramount and must be upheld."

Mr Goff told NZPA the court decision was unambiguous and unanimous.

"What is important to New Zealand is that the constitutional provision, and the interpretation of that by the Supreme Court, is upheld," he said.

"Basically, the court decision said it could work, it says power sharing is possible.

"But the possibility of it working and it actually working are two different things."

From the New Zealand Government's perspective, what mattered was that the Fijians worked it through themselves.

Mr Qarase, who has ruled out holding snap elections, said today that he would abide by the unanimous ruling by five Supreme Court judges. Chaudhry said he expected a telephone call from the prime minister later on Friday.

There was no immediate public reaction after the decision, which was delivered amid tight security in the capital Suva. Police appealed for the calm to continue in the racially divided South Pacific nation.

"The security forces are pleading with the general public to receive the decision calmly. Let the courts and the politicians do their job," Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes said.

The decision means that Qarase must invite up to eight Labour Party members into cabinet. Fiji's 1997 constitution seeks to moderate long-standing racial tensions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians by including power-sharing provisions.

Political observers said the decision left Qarase with three options: offer Labour MPs minor posts as assistant ministers, reshuffle cabinet entirely to appoint Labour MPs to senior posts such as the ethnic affairs portfolio or call a snap election.

Qarase last month vowed to stand by the court's ruling but said he did not want a costly election with Fiji's tourism and sugar-based economy still trying to recover from the buffeting it took during the bitter 2000 coup.

Chaudhry's party won 28 seats in the 70-seat parliament in 2001 elections, with Qarase's Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua party holding 33 seats.

Qarase maintains he had invited Chaudhry's party into the cabinet but the offer was withdrawn because Indian-dominated Labour put unacceptable policy conditions on the invitation.

Friday's Supreme Court ruling threw out an appeal by Qarase's government against an earlier order by a lower court order that he must still include members of Chaudhry's party.

Chaudhry was elected Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister in 1999.

In May 2000, failed businessman George Speight and a group of armed nationalists, unhappy that the economic might of ethnic Indians was being matched by political clout, stormed parliament and took him and most of his multi-ethnic government hostage.

Chaudhry was released 56 days later and the Fiji military installed an all-indigenous government led by Qarase, who won democratic elections in September 2001.

Speight is serving a life term in prison for treason.

Britain ruled Fiji before independence and brought ethnic Indians to the South Pacific islands in the late 1800s to work on sugar farms. They make up 44 per cent of the 800,000 population.

- REUTERS