Submission says Government Draft largely reproduces the executive concentration of the 2013 Constitution, while introducing new risks around elections, immunity, commencement and institutional independence
Suva, Fiji, 23 October 2026
The Centre for Democracy & Dialogue (CDD) has today made a written submission to the Parliamentary Special Committee examining the Fiji Government Draft Constitution 2026, calling for substantial changes before Bill No. 32 proceeds further.
CDD’s submission argues that while the Government Draft Constitution (GDC) contains some important improvements over the 2013 Constitution, it fails to address the central structural weakness that constitutional reform should have been designed to correct: the excessive concentration of constitutional power in the political Executive.
The submission says an objective comparison of the three constitutional texts shows that, in terms of the distribution of power, the GDC is considerably closer to the 2013 Constitution than to the Constitution Review Commission Draft.
The CRC attempted to disperse power through a politically independent Constitutional Offices Commission, more independent senior judicial appointments, a cap on Cabinet, limits on repeated appointment as Prime Minister, stronger public-service independence, independent constitutional implementation machinery, elected local government and stronger integrity and rights-enforcement mechanisms.
Many of those safeguards have been removed from the Government Draft.
CDD said constitutional reform could not succeed merely by changing institutions and terminology while leaving the underlying distribution of power substantially intact.
“The real constitutional question is not simply how many provisions have changed. It is where constitutional power ultimately sits, who can exercise it, and whether institutions exist that can effectively restrain the Government when that power is abused.”
The submission says the 2013 Constitution contains important democratic achievements that should be retained, including equal citizenship, a common national identity, one person one vote one value, national proportional representation, secularism, a fully elected legislative chamber and constitutional protection of indigenous land, culture and identity.
CDD argues that the principal reform task should therefore have been to retain those democratic foundations while dismantling the excessive concentration of executive power.
Instead, the GDC restores the 2013-style Constitutional Offices Commission with an effective 4–2 government-aligned majority, restores direct Prime Ministerial influence over appointment of the Chief Justice and President of the Court of Appeal, removes the CRC’s Cabinet cap and Prime Ministerial limit, retains significant political involvement in senior public-service appointments and abandons several independent accountability mechanisms.
In several areas, CDD says the GDC also gives the Prime Minister, Executive or governing majority powers beyond those available under the present constitutional architecture.
These include a longer five-year parliamentary term, six Senate appointments on Prime Ministerial advice, Prime Ministerial influence over the chair of the proposed Constituency Boundaries Commission, the ability of Parliament by ordinary law to alter the balance between constituency and party-list seats, and a special urgent-legislation procedure activated by Prime Ministerial certification.
Electoral system creates unnecessary risks
CDD has recommended retaining Fiji’s existing national open-list proportional representation system and single national constituency.
The submission argues that the national system eliminates constituency gerrymandering, ensures every vote has the same value and requires political parties and candidates to seek support nationally rather than constructing geographically concentrated political strongholds.
The GDC instead proposes 33 constituency seats and 22 party-list seats and allows Parliament by ordinary legislation to alter those numbers.
CDD has also raised serious concerns about the proposed Constituency Boundaries Commission. Five of its six voting positions would effectively consist of a Prime Minister-appointed chair and senior State officials, with only one Opposition-appointed member.
CDD said that in an electoral system dependent on constituency boundaries, such a structure creates an avoidable risk of actual or perceived gerrymandering and political manipulation.
The proposed electoral system also does not clearly resolve what happens if a political party wins more constituency seats than its overall proportional entitlement.
CDD said a new electoral system should not be constitutionally entrenched while a basic question about how seats would actually be allocated remains unresolved.
No case for a costly unelected Senate
CDD has also recommended retaining Fiji’s unicameral, fully elected legislature and deleting the proposed 23-member Senate.
The submission notes that the Senate’s ordinary legislative role is limited largely to reviewing and temporarily delaying legislation. It may reject an ordinary Bill once, but if the elected House passes and resubmits it, the Senate must approve it.
CDD therefore questions why taxpayers should be required permanently to fund a second, unelected chamber with such limited ordinary legislative power.
The organisation has proposed instead that particularly important indigenous laws could be protected through enhanced majorities, such as a two-thirds vote in the elected Parliament, together with mandatory consultation with the Bose Levu Vakaturaga where appropriate.
CDD supports strong constitutional protection for indigenous rights, land, culture and customary institutions, but does not support giving an unelected communal institution disproportionate control over national political institutions.
Under the GDC, 14 of the Senate’s 23 members would be appointed on BLV advice, giving it an outright majority in the chamber.
Vice-President has no compelling constitutional function
CDD has also called for removal of the proposed office of Vice-President.
The submission notes that the Vice-President’s principal substantive function is to perform the President’s duties when the President is absent, unable to act or the office is vacant. If the Vice-President is also unavailable, the Speaker performs that role.
CDD argues that this contingency function could simply be performed by the Speaker without establishing another permanent constitutional office with its own appointment, remuneration and administrative structure.
Constitutional permission to hit children should be deleted
CDD has strongly criticised section 40(1)(e), which expressly states that “lawful and moderate chastisement is permissible for the purposes of correction.”
The submission describes the provision as grossly inappropriate in a modern Bill of Rights and says it sits uneasily with the same section’s protection of children from violence and inhumane punishment and its requirement that the best interests of the child be the primary consideration.
CDD has recommended deleting the provision entirely.
New immunity provisions raise profound concerns
CDD has also called for removal of the GDC’s new immunity provisions.
Section 206 would grant broad immunity for direct or indirect participation, appointment or involvement in Government from 5 December 2006 until the first sitting of the first Parliament elected after the new Constitution commences.
CDD says this resets the endpoint used in the 2013 Constitution and creates the possibility that governmental conduct occurring after commencement of the new Constitution could fall within the immunity period.
The concern becomes particularly serious when read alongside the commencement and transitional provisions, under which the existing Prime Minister and Ministers continue in office while the existing Parliament only continues for the balance of its present term.
If the Constitution were commenced before the new electoral system was operational and the existing Parliament then expired, Fiji could face a period of profound constitutional uncertainty in which Cabinet remained but there was no elected Parliament capable of performing legislative scrutiny.
CDD stresses that it does not allege that such an outcome is intended. Its position is that constitutional drafting must make such an outcome impossible.
Commencement provision could create a constitutional crisis
The submission says the commencement provisions themselves require urgent rewriting.
The Bill specifies 31 March 2028 as the commencement date, but proposed section 211(3) also purports to allow the President to proclaim an earlier commencement date.
CDD says there should be one clear commencement date, no discretionary power to bring the Constitution into force earlier, and an express guarantee that commencement cannot occur before all electoral and institutional arrangements are legally and operationally ready.
Draft contains serious errors and internal contradictions
CDD has also raised serious concern about the quality of the constitutional drafting.
Its submission identifies numerous grammatical errors, incorrect cross-references, internal contradictions, ambiguities and unresolved institutional questions.
Among them:
- one provision gives 21 days to file an election petition while another provides six weeks, with different rules on who may file;
- section 200 says Cabinet declares a state of emergency, while subsequent provisions repeatedly refer to a declaration made by the Prime Minister;
- section 207 says the immunity provisions cannot be amended or repealed, while section 209 expressly provides a three-quarter-majority procedure for amending those same provisions;
- sections 212 and 213 use different definitions of “this Constitution”;
- section 229 appears to refer circularly to the very Part in which it appears;
- transitional provisions relating to the Mercy Commission contain questionable cross-references;
- the GDC repeals FICAC’s founding legislation without establishing a permanent constitutional anti-corruption replacement; and
- the child-chastisement clause contradicts the protective purpose of the same children’s-rights provision.
CDD said errors of this nature would be concerning in ordinary legislation, but are far more serious in a document intended to become the supreme law of Fiji.
Important improvements should be retained
CDD’s submission does not reject the GDC in its entirety.
It identifies several reforms that are improvements over the 2013 Constitution and should be preserved, including:
- the much stronger proportionality test that Government must satisfy before limiting constitutional rights;
- express recognition of workers’ right to strike;
- removal of the 2013 Constitution’s special media-regulation limitation ground;
- stronger protection of personal information and data;
- constitutional caretaker conventions;
- a narrower constitutional role for the RFMF and stronger civilian authority;
- stronger land and community consultation provisions; and
- several improvements to constitutional rights generally.
CDD has nevertheless argued that these improvements do not compensate for the failure to address the deeper architecture of power.
“A government Constitution rather than a people’s Constitution”
CDD said its assessment of the GDC is based on the constitutional text and the distribution of legal power it creates, rather than on the motives of any individual or political party.
On that objective analysis, CDD’s conclusion is that the Government Draft, like the 2013 Constitution, remains fundamentally structured around the interests and institutional power of the Government rather than around effective restraints on Government.
The 2013 Constitution’s central weakness is that it gives citizens rights and democratic institutions while simultaneously creating an institutional structure through which the Executive can exercise substantial influence over many of the bodies intended to constrain it.
CDD said the GDC largely reproduces that problem and, in some areas, deepens it.
It therefore risks becoming another government Constitution rather than a people’s Constitution: a constitutional order in which citizens elect a government but lack sufficiently strong institutional safeguards against the abuse, concentration or entrenchment of State power.
CDD said a genuinely democratic Constitution must do the opposite.
It must distribute power, make independent institutions genuinely independent, ensure government cannot determine the composition of the bodies meant to scrutinise it, provide citizens with practical remedies against unconstitutional conduct, preserve meaningful electoral accountability and ensure that no government is placed beyond effective constitutional restraint.
As the submission concludes:
“Fiji should not replace one Constitution simply to reproduce the principal structural defect of the Constitution being replaced.”
CDD has called on the Parliamentary Special Committee to recommend substantial revision of Bill No. 32 before it proceeds further, including a complete technical redrafting and reconciliation exercise.
The organisation has submitted a detailed provision-by-provision amendment schedule setting out the provisions that should be retained, deleted, rewritten or supplemented.
CDD’s position is that Fiji does need constitutional reform, but that reform must result in a Constitution that distributes power rather than concentrates it, protects rights in practice rather than merely in text, and belongs equally to all the people of Fiji.
