Bainimarama Drama
In a hotly contested general election in Fiji, incumbent Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and his FijiFirst Party barely won an outright majority in the 51-seat parliament with 50.02 percent of the vote. In only the second election since Bainimarama toppled the prior government in a coup in 2006, he was able to maintain control of the country, albeit with a 10 percent smaller margin than in 2014. In this year’s elections, which a multinational observer group lauded for its fairness, SODELPA, led by former military strongman Sitiventi Rabuka, won 39.85 percent of the vote to become the main opposition party, and the National Federation Party came in third with 7.38 percent. Opposition parties, however, are claiming that provisional results released earlier did not correspond with the results collected by their own agents. Bainimarama ran on the promise of continued economic prosperity and political stability, along with better social services, and will now be at the helm for at least the next four years.
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