Mahendra Chaudhry
Mahendra Pal Chaudhry is a Fijian politician and the leader of the Fiji Labour Party. Following a historic election in which he defeated the long-time former leader, Sitiveni Rabuka in a landslide, the former trade union leader became Fiji's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister on 19 May 1999, but exactly one year later, on 19 May 2000 he and most of his Cabinet were taken hostage in the Fiji coup of 2000 by coup leader George Speight. Unable to exercise his duties, he and his ministers were sacked by President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara on 27 May; Mara intended to assume emergency powers himself but was himself deposed by the military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama.
After 56 days in captivity, Chaudhry was released on 13 July and subsequently embarked on a tour of the world to rally support. He was one of the leading voices raised in opposition to the Qarase government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, which he said was just a mechanism to grant amnesty to persons guilty of coup-related offences. In January 2007, he was appointed as Minister of Finance, Sugar Reform Public Enterprise and National Planning in the interim Cabinet of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, following another coup. Chaudhry was also co-chair of the task force focusing on economic growth within the National Council for Building a Better Fiji. In August 2008, he left the government and became an outspoken critic of it.
Family background
Mahendra Chaudhry was born in an Indo-Fijian family in the town of Ba in Fiji. His paternal grandfather Ram Nath Chaudhry was from a Hindu family of the village of Bahu Jamalpur in Haryana, India and arrived in the British Colony of Fiji in 1902, as an indentured labourer, to work on Fiji's sugarcane plantations. On his arrival in Fiji he disputed the agreement to work in the plantations and was employed as a store manager until he started his own business. He later returned to India with his wife, Ram Kalia, who died 22 September 1930 at the age of 45, and whom he had met and married in Fiji. His daughter, Raj Kumari also went to India with them. His sons Ram Gopal and Krishan Gopal Chaudhry remained in Fiji. Mahendra was Ram Gopal's eldest son and one of his 15 children. Mahendra's maternal grandfather was from the Indian state of Kerala, and had settled in Fiji in the early 1900s.He worked as a government auditor, then as secretary of the Fiji Public Service Association during its 1973 strike, and later as vice-president of the Fiji Trades Union Congress. He also served on the board of the Fiji National Provident Fund until 1986.
In 2004, Chaudhry received the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, which is granted to members of the Indian diaspora to honor their contributions to the countries of which they are members. Chaudhry was the first Fijian citizen to receive this award.
Political career
Cabinet member after 1987 election win
Chaudhry helped to launch the Fiji Labour Party in 1985, and served as its assistant secretary. The Labour got its first chance to test its popularity in the by-election for the North Central Indian National Seat in December 1985, following the resignation of Vijay R. Singh. FLP decided to field Mahendra Chaudhry, who was also the general secretary of the National Farmers Union, as its candidate. Chaudhry lost the election by only 204 votes.He was elected to Parliament for the first time in the 1987 general election and appointed Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in the coalition government of Timoci Bavadra. This government held office for barely a month; on 14 May, Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka deposed the government in the first of two military coups. In the aftermath of the coup he was repeatedly detained by the military. In January 1988 in his role as PSA secretary he led a strike by Suva firefights, which the military regime declared illegal. He was subsequently elected general secretary of the FTUC, and in this role led union resistance to the military regime. In June 1988 he was detained by the police and interrogated over the seizure of several tons of Soviet-made weaponry, but no charges were laid. He subsequently warned the military regime that Australian and New Zealand unions would be asked to take action against Fiji if the harassment of unions continued.
In June 1990 he led the National Farmers Union of Fiji in a boycott of the sugar cane harvest, threatening international action if the army used force. Later that month he led opposition to the military's draft constitution. His home was subsequently attacked by a gang of masked men, who smashed windows and damaged his car. In July 1991 he threatened a national strike by FTUC unions against the regime's proposal to jail those disrupting essential industries; the threat was successful, and the regime's industrial decree was revoked.
Leader of Labour Party from 1991
Chaudhry remained active in the Labour Party, and assumed leadership of the party in 1991 from Adi Kuini Bavadra, widow of Timoci Bavadra who had died in 1989. In 1990 a new constitution had been imposed on Fiji by presidential decree. This constitution discriminated against the Indian community in seats allocated to it in the House of Representatives, by not guaranteeing any seats in the Senate and by restricting Indo-Fijians from holding prominent positions in the civil service. Both the NFP and FLP decided to boycott the elections scheduled for May 1992. At the last minute, the NFP decided to contest the election. Mahendra Chaudhry, then had no choice but to lead the FLP into the election. With little time to prepare for the campaign, the FLP managed to win only 13 of the 27 seats reserved for Indians.After the election, Chaudhry made the controversial decision to support Sitiveni Rabuka in Parliament, in exchange for a promise to review the 1990 Constitution, which Fiji Indians generally regarded as discriminating against them. Rabuka did not follow through on the deal, and Chaudhry and the Labour Party were punished at the parliamentary election of 1994, losing 6 of their 13 seats.
In the mid-1990s, after Rabuka finally did agree to a constitutional review, Chaudhry led campaign to change the electoral system from one based on "communal rolls", to one based on universal suffrage. Eventually, a compromise formula was agreed upon. Meanwhile, the Rabuka government was losing popularity. His admissions of womanizing, together with allegations of corruption in his administration, alienated him from powerful sections of the electorate. Chaudhry, meanwhile, forged the People's Coalition, an electoral alliance consisting of his Labour Party, and two other parties, both led by indigenous Fijians disaffected by Rabuka's administration. Another indigenous-led party, the Christian Democratic Alliance, joined the coalition later.
The 1999 election and the 2000 coup
The 1999 election resulted in a landslide win for the People's Coalition, with 58 of the 71 seats in the House of Representatives. The Labour Party won an absolute majority, 37 seats, in its own right. From the outset, voices both within the coalition and without attempted to persuade Chaudhry to forego the office of Prime Minister in favour of an ethnic Fijian, such as his deputy Tupeni Baba or Adi Kuini Speed, but he refused. President Mara reportedly persuaded indigenous Fijian members of the coalition to accept Chaudhry's leadership. Chaudhry was duly appointed Prime Minister on 19 May 1999. To shore up his support among the indigenous community, Chaudhry appointed indigenous Fijians to two-thirds of all ministerial positions.Few in Chaudhry's caucus had had any previous political experience, a factor that created difficulties for his government. Some Fijian nationalists opposed his administration and stirred up fears in the mostly rural ethnic Fijian population that land reform measures proposed by the Chaudhry government would expropriate their land. Despite widespread fears of civil unrest, the takeover of the parliamentary complex by George Speight on 19 May 2000 happened without warning.
More details concerning the overthrow of the Chaudhry government may be found in 2000 Fijian coup d'état and the linked Timeline, Mutinies, and Aftermath.
The election of 2001 and aftermath
When democracy was restored in 2001, Chaudhry fought a hotly contested election, but was defeated by Laisenia Qarase of the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua. It is thought that attrition within the Labour Party was a factor in his defeat; high-profile party members like Tupeni Baba had split to form the New Labour Unity Party and he had barely survived a leadership challenge. Mutual enmity between his party and the National Federation Party, the only other political party with significant Fiji-Indian support at that time, prevented a preference-swapping deal. In Fiji's system of transferable voting, such a deal would almost certainly have made him Prime Minister again..Chaudhry rebuilt the Labour Party, which won several key by-elections throughout 2004. He challenged in the courts the refusal of the Qarase government to include his party in the Cabinet; on 18 July 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in his favour, saying that the exclusion of a party with more than 8 seats in the House of Representatives violated the Constitution. Appeals, counter-appeals, and negotiations delayed the appointment of Labour Ministers to the Cabinet, however. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled in June 2004 that the Labour Party was entitled to 14 out of 30 cabinet posts. Qarase announced that he would implement the order, but his refusal to include Chaudhry himself in any cabinet lineup continued to stall negotiations on the composition of the cabinet. Late in 2004, Chaudhry announced that the Labour Party had decided to remain in opposition for the remainder of the parliamentary term, seeing no way to resolve the impasse without making unacceptable compromises. By remaining outside of the government, the Labour Party was able to distance itself from unpopular decisions made by the administration, and position itself to challenge the ruling SDL for power in 2006.