Cabinet (Fiji)

Fiji has the Westminster system - executive authority is vested nominally in a President, but exercised in practice by a Cabinet of Ministers, presided over by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is formally appointed, but not chosen, by the President: the President must appoint as Prime Minister someone who can control a majority of votes in the House of Representatives. In practice, this is normally the leader of the largest political party or coalition in the house. If there is no clear majority in the House of Representatives, however, the President's role becomes more important: he or she must assume the role of arbitrator and open negotiations with the leaders of the various political parties, in the hope of finding someone whom a majority will accept as Prime Minister. In the event of that failing to take place, the President must dissolve the House of Representatives and call an early election.

Cabinet Ministers are formally appointed by the President, but he is constitutionally required to do so only on the advice of the Prime Minister. An unusual feature of the Fijian constitution is its provision for a compulsory coalition cabinet - even if one party has a parliamentary majority in its own right. Every political party with more than 8 seats in the 71-member parliament must be offered a proportionate number of cabinet posts. If the Prime Minister wishes to give cabinet posts to members of a party with fewer than 8 representatives, he must do so at the expense of his own party, not of other parties in the coalition.

Since the election of 2001, Mahendra Chaudhry, the leader of the Fiji Labour Party, has been involved in litigation against the Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, on the grounds that Qarase has unconstitutionally refused to include the Labour Party in the Cabinet. On 18 July, 2003, Fiji's Supreme Court ruled that the exclusion of the Labour Party was in breach of the Constitution, and demanded that the situation be rectified. Amid appeals, counter-appeals, and negotiations, the situation has still not been resolved as of February 2004.

As of February 2004, the Cabinet was as follows.

{| border=1 align=left |Portfolio||Minister||Political Party |- |Prime Minister||Laisenia Qarase||United Fiji Party |- |Attorney General And Minister For Justice||Qoriniasi Bale||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Finance And National Planning & Communications||Ratu Jone Kubuabola||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Education||Ro Teimumu Vuikaba Kepa||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Commerce, Business Development & Investment||Tomasi Vuetilovoni||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Home Affairs And Immigration||Joketani Cokanasiga||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Foreign Affairs And External Trade||Kaliopate Tavola||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Tourism||Pita Nacuva||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Regional Development||Ilaitia Tuisese||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Fisheries And Forests||Konisi Yabaki||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Agriculture, Sugar And Land Resettlement||Jonetani Galuinadi||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Health||Solomone Naivalu||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Lands And Mineral Resources||Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu||Conservative Alliance |- |Minister For Women, Social Welfare & Poverty Alleviation||Asenaca Caucau||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Transport And Civil Aviation||Josefa Vosanibola||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Local Government, Housing, Squatter Settlement & Environment||Mataiasi Vave Ragigia||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Labour, Industrial Relations And Productivity||Kenneth Zinck||New Labour Unity Party |- |*Minister For Public Enterprises And Public Sector Reform||Irami Matairavula||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Works And Energy||Savenaca Draunidalo||Independent |- |Minister For Youth, Employment Opportunities And Sports||Isireli Leweniqila||Conservative Alliance |- |Minister For Multi-Ethnic Affairs||George Shiu Raj||United Fiji Party |- |Minister For Information & Media Relations||Simione Kaitani||... |- |}