James Ah Koy - Career

Career

Ah Koy's first foray into politics was in 1966, when he stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate. In the early 1980s, he became manager of a family investment company owned by the then-Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, and was subsequently selected by Mara's political party, the Fijian Alliance, as a candidate for one of eight seats then reserved for General Electors in the House of Representatives in the parliamentary election of 1982. In 1991–1993, he led a legal challenge to the law requiring all multiracial people to register on the General Electors' roll, which enrolls all Fijian citizens who are neither indigenous nor of Indian or Rotuman ancestry. The court ruled that as he was registered in the Native Land Register (Vola ni Kawa Bula, or VKB, in Fijian), he was entitled to be registered as a Fijian. He subsequently succeeded getting the law amended to give multiracial people the option of registering on either the General Electors' roll or on an ethnic role (Fijian, Indo-Fijian, or Rotuman) on which any of their ancestors would have been entitled to enroll. This change was later written into the Constitution, and allowed Ah Koy to stand for election from an ethnic Fijian communal constituency. (All seats in the House of Representatives were communal prior to 1999, and 46 of the 71 seats are still communal, elected from closed ethnic roles of voters registered as Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Rotumans, or General Electors).

Ah Koy served as Minister for Commerce, Industry, Trade, and Public Enterprises in the government of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka from 1994 to 1997, when he became Minister for Finance, a position he held till his Fijian Political Party lost the parliamentary election of 1999. He retained his Kadavu Fijian Communal Constituency at that election, but subsequently lost it in the House of Representatives in the election of 2001. He returned to Parliament in 2003, however, when he was appointed to the Senate by the Kadavu Provincial Council to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Ratu Sela Nanovo. His appointment came about at a time when the members of the Kadavu Provincial Council were desperate for a way to salvage their province's financially troubled shipping company, the Bulou ni Ceva. They approached Ah Koy, given his business background and as one of the key players who had arranged the purchase of the ship from the Peoples Republic of China. Allegations were made that he agreed to help on the condition that he be appointed as the province's nominee to the Senate, but in his maiden speech, he attacked the company concerned, saying that the people of Kadavu had fallen victim to a Chinese company with "a very unsavory reputation."