As people have a chance to give their opinions on the country’s electoral laws, the Fiji Law Reform Commission Chair and former Chief Justice, Daniel Fatiaki and Commissioner Professor Wadan Narsey don’t agree with bringing back the ethnic-based voting system.
They highlighted this during fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan when asked whether they would get rid of things like race-based voting.
Fatiaki says the Commission he is chairing is very unlikely to recommend that we go down that route as the nation has developed enough to be able to vote as a nation rather than on ethnic lines.
He says this does not mean that people feel uncomfortable voting for their own.
Professor Narsey says we have moved beyond those ethnic constituencies and people can also think about one statistical result of a proportional system.
The Commissioner says there are a lot of people who came into the Parliament under the 'Superman' umbrella, but there is a mixture of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.
Fatiaki and Professor Narsey are part of the Commission to review the electoral system of Fiji.
We had also sent questions to different party leaders to get their responses to the comments made by the Electoral Reform Chair and Commissioner.
They are yet to respond.
Nationwide consultations for the electoral law reforms start on Monday.
You can watch the full Straight Talk video on our website fijivillage.
