Manasa Tugia

Manasa Tugia is the Deputy Speaker of the Fijian House of Representatives. He is also a leading member of the Conservative Alliance, a right-wing political party.

Parliamentary speech, 5 August 2003

Source: Daily Post, 5 August 2003. The speech relates to the constitutional provisions for a compulsory multi-party Cabinet, which Tugia opposes.

• "We know that the simplistic, almost childlike naivety or perhaps the intellectual senility of the architects of this concept have not taken into consideration the practical difficulties and impracticalities of sharing power for the sake of sharing power in our society with political parties that are diametrical opposed to each other."

• "The reality of a democracy is that the political party with a majority in Parliament has the mandate to run the country for a selected number of years because of popular choice - that is the nature of good democracy. "The other political parties are left as opposition parties as alternative Government."

• "It (a multi-party cabinet) will waste a lot of public funds, and make up for a weak and unstable Government through internal bickering, and brinkmanship that could see shifting alliance in Government, rising and falling coalition that will undermine the stability of Government. This will have adverse effects on the levels of confidence in the country which certainly will manifest itself in many forms including declining investor confidence and lowering the morale of the citizenry at large."