Suva City Council
 | This article needs to be updated. (January 2023) |
The Suva City Council is the
wards. Councillors, who are elected by residents, landowners, and representatives of corporations owning or occupying ratable property in Suva, elect a Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor
from among their own members; they serve one-year terms and are eligible for reelection. Since the dismissal of the councillors by the interim military government the City Council is run by a Special Administrator appointed by the Ministry of Local Government.
Electoral history
next municipal elections held in 2002, the Labour Party made significant gains, winning the five seats in the Samabula Ward. The coalition of then-Lord Mayor Chandu Umaria remained intact, however, with Umaria's Ratepayers Alliance (dominated by the National Federation Party) winning 8 seats and its ally, the SDL (the ruling party at the national level), 7. Under a memorandum of understanding, the two parties agreed to hold the Mayoralty for one year each. In 2004, the coalition collapsed, with the 5 FLP councilors teaming up with the SDL to reelect Ratu Peni Volavola
, who had replaced Umaria as Lord Mayor the previous year.
Disagreements over the 2002 memorandum of understanding between the SDL and the NFP thwarted attempts to forge an electoral coalition between them for the
2005 municipal elections. The NFP charged that in making a common cause with the FLP in 2004, the SDL breached the agreement, which it said specified that in the third year, the Lord Mayor should be chosen jointly by the two parties. The SDL denied this, general secretary Jale Baba
saying that there was no such stipulation in the agreement.
Tamavua and Samabula
wards, respectively. The original plan was to postpone the poll in those two wards only, but the Commission decided that it would be a "tidier" process to conduct the whole election simultaneously.
The result of the poll was a landslide win for the SDL, which took 12 of the 20 seats. The party swept the
Tamavua and Muanikau wards, and won 2 of the 5 seats in the Samabula ward, previously an FLP bastion. The FLP retained 3 of its 5 Samabula seats, while the NFP retained its hold on the Central Ward, but lost ground elsewhere. The new SDL-dominated council reelected Volavola to the Mayoralty on 17 November, and chose Josefa Gavidi
as his deputy.
Electoral results
By year
2002
| Party | Votes | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| RA | 8 | ||
| SDL | 7 | ||
| Labour | 5 | ||
2006
| Party | Votes | Change | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SDL | 12 |  5
| ||
| NFP | 5 |  3[a]
| ||
| Labour | 3 | 2
| ||
By ward
| Ward | SDL seats | NFP seats | FLP seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Muanikau | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Samabula | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| Tamavua | 5 | 0 | 0 |
Council membership
The following Councillors were elected in the
municipal elections
held on 12 November 2005.
Suspension of municipal government
In 2009, the Military-backed interim government dismissed all municipal governments throughout Fiji and appointed special administrators to run the urban areas. As of 2015, elected municipal government has not been restored. The special administrator of Suva, along with nearby Nasinu, is Chandu Umaria, a former Lord Mayor of Suva.[1]
References
- Radio New Zealand International. 2 February 2009. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
Notes
- ^ Contested as the Ratepayers' Alliance in 2002.