Fiji election of 1987
The general election of April 1987 was Fiji's fifth since the country had gained its independence from the United Kingdom seventeen years earlier. It was historic in that it marked the first electoral transition of power in Fijian history. The Alliance Party of the longtime Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, was defeated by a multiracial coalition, consisting of the Fiji Labour Party (contesting the election for the first time) and the National Federation Party. In the House of Representatives, the coalition won a total of 28 seats to the Alliance's 24, and Dr Timoci Bavadra, the leader of the coalition, became Prime Minister.
Bavadra's 28 member Parliamentary caucus included only 7 ethnic Fijians, all of them elected with predominantly Indo-Fijian support from "national" as opposed to "communal" electorates. (Fiji then had a complex voting system, allocating ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians 22 seats each, with a further 8 reserved for Europeans, Chinese, and other minorities; about half of representatives for each ethnic group represented "communal" constituencies, elected from closed electoral rolls, while the other half represented "national" constituencies, elected by universal suffrage). Only four ethnic Fijians, including Dr Bavadra, were appointed to the new cabinet. Effective Indo-Fijian domination of the government caused widespread resentment among the ethnic Fijian community, and after less than a month in office, the new government was deposed in on May 14 1987 in a coup d'état led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka.
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