Do we like Sitiveni Rabuka?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Real reconciliation and climate work sits against two coups, a court loss he is fighting and a gift allegation he has declined to answer.
Rabuka was born in 1948 in Cakaudrove and became a career soldier, training in New Zealand, India and Australia. He served with the UN force in Lebanon in 1980-81, played prop for Fiji's rugby team and competed at the 1974 Commonwealth Games. By 1987 he was a lieutenant colonel, which is where the trouble starts.
In May 1987 he led the coup that overthrew the newly elected Bavadra government, then staged a second in September and declared Fiji a republic. Years later he said he was “coerced” by the defeated Alliance party into the first one. He still came back as prime minister in 1992, and lost to Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first Indo-Fijian PM, in 1999.
His court record is a run of acquittals. A High Court judge acquitted him of two charges of inciting the 2000 mutiny, and the Court of Appeal rejected the state's challenge in 2007. In 2018 a magistrate acquitted him on a charge of failing to declare his assets, finding the prosecution had not proven the offence.
Then comes the long confession. Before Fiji's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in late 2025 he said “I opened the door” to the 1987 events, and called the demographic fears behind them “an explanation, not justification”. Not everyone is buying it: Chaudhry says he “tried to make himself a victim of those coups”, and wants a compensation scheme for Indo-Fijians.
On the harm test, we found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, no anti-vax or conspiracy slide and no culture-war grift. In 2022 he wouldn't give a yes or no on same-sex marriage, pointing to the Marriage Act and floating a conscience vote. We found nothing newer from him on it. On climate he is loud: in October he told Pacific leaders to close the gap between pledges and action, saying “We can be bold, because science is on our side.”
The recent stoush is about FICAC, Fiji's anti-corruption body. In February a High Court judge found the dismissal of its commissioner, Barbara Malimali, was unlawful. Rabuka appealed and said he was considering resigning if he lost. In August the same judge quashed an inquiry report into her removal and found the President and Rabuka failed to give the applicants natural justice. Asked about it, he replied “Have they won the case?”