Inoke Kubuabola

"Ratu" Inoke Kubuabola is a Fijian politician who served as Leader of the Opposition in 1999 and 2000. He became leader of the Fijian Political Party ("Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei," or "SVT") following its defeat in the 1999 election and the subsequent resignation of its leader, the defeated Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, from Parliament. According to the Constitution, every political party with more than eight seats in the House of Representatives was entitled to representation in the Cabinet, but Rabuka made demands unacceptable to the Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry. Rather than take up cabinet posts on terms acceptable to Chaudhry, the SVT decided to form the Opposition instead.

Political career

As Leader of the Opposition, Kubuabola was constitutionally empowered to choose 8 of the 32 members of the Senate. He sparked controversy by limiting his selection to members of opposition parties; Prime Minister Chaudhry claimed that according to of the Constitution, the nominees of the Leader of the Opposition had to be proportional to party representation in the House of Representatives. Kubuabola countered that that meant proportional representation of opposition parties, not parties represented in the Cabinet. The situation was never resolved during his term as Leader of the Opposition; the coup of 2000 which ousted the Chaudhry government also deposed Kubuabola as Leader of the Opposition. Similar controversies marked Government-Opposition relations since the restoration of democracy in 2001, however, and a number of court cases took place between 2001 and 2004, with a view to clarifying the situation.

In the midst of the political turmoil that followed the 2000 coup, Kubuabola was appointed Minister for Information and Communications in the interim Cabinet formed by Laisenia Qarase. He held this office till September 2001.

Kubuabola retained his seat, the Cakaudrove West Fijian Communal Constituency in the House of Representatives, in the parliamentary election of 1999 but lost it to his nephewRatu Naiqama Lalabalavu of the Conservative Alliance in the 2001 election. That year he also resigned the Chairmanship of the Cakaudrove Provincial Council, which he had led for served years, to Sitiveni Rabuka.

Diplomat

Kubuabola served as Fiji's High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea from 2002 to 2005. In late 2005, he attempted to handle the problem of Fijian security guards, whom some accused of being mercenaries, operating illegally on the island of Bougainville. The incident embarrassed the Fijian government and threatened to strain relations between the two countries.

On 4 May 2006 Kubuabola was posted to Tokyo as Fiji's Ambassador to Japan and Korea, replacing Ratu Tevita Momoedonu.

2000 coup controversies

On 3 January 2006, Kubuabola publicly defended himself agaianst allegations made by Maciu Navakasuasua, who served a prison term for offences related to the 2000 coup, that he had been a party to the planning of the coup. He had been involved in the planning of an anti-government protest march which coincided with the coup, he told the Fiji Sun, but not in the planning of the coup.

Navakasuasua rejected Kubuabola's defence, along with that of present Agriculture Minister Konisi Yabaki and two businessmen he implicated. "Watisoni Nata and Navitalai Naisoro can say whatever they want now because they are simply trying to save themselves now," he told the Sun. "'I was there and I know what was going on."