Tupeni Baba - Political Career

Political Career

Baba was a founding member of the Fiji Labour Party in the mid-1980s and was elected in 1987 to the House of Representatives as a candidate of the Labour-National Federation Party Coalition, which brought Timoci Bavadra to power. A month later, the new government was deposed in a coup led by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka. Baba returned to his academic career, taking a post as a lecturer at the University of Suva, where he remained until 1999, when he was again elected to Parliament and became Foreign Minister and one of two Deputy Prime Ministers in the government of Mahendra Chaudhry. During the coup of 2000 in which most members of the government were kidnapped by George Speight, Baba's courage as one of the hostages earned him considerable public respect.

Baba launched the NLUP in June 2001 after resigning from the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) of former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, who had been deposed in the Fiji coup of 2000. The breach followed months of intra-party infighting, much of which preceded the coup. Large numbers of anti-Chaudhry dissidents followed him out of the party into the New Labour Unity Party. Baba's departure was thought to be one of the reasons why the Labour Party lost the elections held to restore democracy in September 2001; its share of the vote among ethnic Fijians dropped to around two percent. Baba's NLUP captured two seats, although Baba himself was not elected. During the campaign, he called on the electorate not to support his former party, warning that a return to a government led by Chaudhry could result in another coup. For this, he was accused of fear-mongering.