Abstract
Of the Commonwealth island nations of the Pacific five are monarchies with the Queen as Head of State: Cook Islands, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. In 1987 Fiji, previously a monarchy, became a republic and left the Commonwealth; under the interim constitutional arrangements its current President is the former Governor-General, Sir Penaia Ganilau. Vanuatu and Western Samoa also have separate Heads of State. This chapter is mainly concerned with these countries, although we shall make occasional reference to Kiribati and Nauru which opted to unite head of government and Head of State, within a system which otherwise has many ‘Westminster’ characteristics. This model was also adopted by the non-Commonwealth state of Marshall Islands (formerly part of the US Trust Territory of Micronesia). We have very little information about how these systems have operated in practice, but it is worth glancing occasionally at them, since they formally vest authority in the cabinet and not the Constitutional Head of State, and restrict the tetter’s power in ways characteristic of the Westminster system. By way of contrast, Belau and the Federated States of Micronesia, formerly part of Trust Territory have systems closer to the Washington model, with executive Presidents, and are therefore excluded from this study.
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Notes
See generally, Yash Ghai, ‘Systems of Government F’ and ‘Systems of Government II’ in Ghai, ed., Law Politics and Government in the Pacific Island States, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1988, pp. 54–105;
Yash Ghai and Jill Cottrell, Heads of State in the Pacific: A Constitutional and Legal Analysis, Institute of Pacific Studies, USP, Suva, 1990.
Yash Ghai, ‘Constitutional Making and Decolonisation’ in Ghai, ed., Law Politics and Government in the Pacific Island States, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1988, pp. 1–53.
Papua New Guinea, Final Report of the Constitutional Planning Committee, Port Moresby, 1974, Chap. 7/1–2.
Yash Ghai, ‘The Making of the Independence Constitution’, in Peter Larmour, ed., Solomon Islands Politics, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1983, pp. 9–52.
J.W. Davidson, Samoa mo Samoa, Melbourne 1967.
D.J. Murray, ‘Constitution Making in Tuvalu and Kiribati’, in P. Sachs, ed., Pacific Constitutions, Law Department, R.S.S.S., Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.
J.W. Davidson, Samoa mo Samoa, Melbourne, 1967. p. 398.
Para. 54, see Don Paterson, Introduction to Constitutional and Legal Systems Coursebook Vol 2: Units 6–10, (revised), Extension Services, USP, Suva, 1984, p. 328.
This account is based largely on ‘News from Vanuatu’ No. 17–19, produced by the British Friends of Vanuata and based on newspaper reports; see also Ralph R. Premdas and Jeffrey S. Steeves, ‘Political and Constitutional Crisis in Vanuatu’, The Round Table, No. 313, January, 1990, pp. 43–64.
Ahmed Ali, 1980, Plantation to Politics: Studies on Fijian Indians, Chap. VII, ‘The Fijian General Election of March-April 1977 and the Role of the Indian Community’, Suva; D.J. Murray, ‘The Governor-General in Fiji’s Constitutional Crisis’, Politics, Vol XIII, 1978, p. 230.
Robert Norton, ‘The Mediation of Ethnic Conflict: Comparative Implications of the Fiji case’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 19, 1981, p. 309.
David J. Murray, ‘The Governor-General’s Part in a Constitutional Crisis: Fiji 1977’, in D.A. Low, ed., Constitutional Heads and Political Crises: Commonwealth Episodes 1945–85, London, 1988.
Opposite views of his intentions are expressed in Brij V. Lal, Power and Prejudice: The Making of the Fiji Crisis, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, 1988
and Deryck Scarr, Fiji: The Politics of Illusion, The Military Coups in Fiji, Kensington, NSW, 1988.
Government of Fiji, Constitutional Review Committee, Report, Parliamentary Paper No 21 of 1987.
Papual New Guinea, General Constitution Commission, First Report, Port Moresby, 1983.
Papua New Guinea, General Constitution Commission, Final Report, Port Moresby, 1983.
Solomon Islands, Constitutional Review Committee Report, Honiara, 1987, and Ghai, above footnote 46.
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© 1991 David Butler and D. A. Low
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Ghai, Y., Cottrell, J. (1991). South-West Pacific. In: Butler, D., Low, D.A. (eds) Sovereigns and Surrogates. Cambridge Commonwealth Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11565-5_9
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