Filipe Bole - Political Career

Political Career

Returning to Fiji, he entered politics and served as Minister for Education in 1986 and 1987. Following two coups d'état in 1987, he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs, holding office till 1988, then served as Minister for Youth and Sport from 1989 to 1992. Bole was elected to the House of Representatives in the election held to restore democracy in 1992, and was subsequently appointed Foreign Minister again. Apart from a brief interruption in 1994, he remained in this post until 1997. Bole was also Deputy Prime Minister for a short time in 1993. He transferred from the House of Representatives to the Senate in 1994 but remained in the Cabinet. While remaining Minister for Foreign Affairs, he concurrently held portfolios as Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism from 1995 to 1996, and as Minister for National Development in 1997. That year, he became Minister for Information, a post he held till 1999 when his Fijian Political Party was defeated in the parliamentary election that May, an election in which Bole himself failed to win the Suva City Fijian Communal Constituency.

In the 2001 election, Bole led the campaign of the Fijian Political Party, but it failed to win any seats. In June 2002, Bole founded the Fiji Democratic Party (FDP) as a merger of some members of the Fijian Political Party, the Christian Democratic Alliance, the Fijian Association Party, and the New Labour Unity Party, but in early 2005, the FDP decided to officially disband and merge into the National Alliance Party, a new party founded by Ratu Epeli Ganilau, as a claimed successor to the defunct Fijian Alliance which ruled the country from 1967 to 1987. Bole went on to assume a leading role as a spokesman for the new party, and unsuccessfully contested the Samabula Tamavua Open Constituency for the party in the 2006 election.