Professor Steven Ratuva

Fiji’s coalition government has the potential to succeed but only if the focus shifts from political survival to tackling the country’s development needs.

This was strongly suggested by political sociologist and renowned local academic Professor Steven Ratuva.

He claimed each member party of the Coalition Government was more focused in ensuring continuity – which has led to a focus on maintaining the coalition’s stability rather than addressing national issues.

The director of Canterbury University’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies argued that a more strategic approach with attention to political and national priorities was necessary for the coalition to overcome internal tensions and deliver meaningful progress for Fiji.

He said the coalition government faced inherent challenges in managing internal differences especially as the next election approaches.

Prof Ratuva pointed out that while coalitions have the benefit of representing a broad spectrum of political positions, they could also be unstable as seen in several European cases.

The current coalition, he claimed, was holding together due to shared interests, and at the apex of this was political survival.

“We’ve talked about some of those issues of poverty, health, unemployment, and so forth. When you have that kind of situation, then it’s important that we should come up with a coalition strategy which addresses some of the fundamental issues of coalition, some of the challenges and how we can rectify some of those issues moving forward.”

Prof Ratuva pointed out that the emphasis on political survival has diverted attention from pressing concerns – issues that required immediate and focused attention.

He said while coalitions could be difficult to manage, there were successful examples from around the world that Fiji could draw lessons from.

Prof Ratuva said the government must prioritize long-term national development over short-term political survival.

On the topic of leadership within the coalition, Prof Ratuva was cautious in his evaluation.

He said that assessing the effectiveness of individual ministers was challenging, particularly when the overall focus was on maintaining coalition unity.

However, he emphasised the importance of ensuring that each minister had the capacity to manage their responsibilities effectively, particularly in critical areas that required sustained leadership.