Fiji politics corrupt, say most citizens

Transparency International Fiji

Ninety percent of Fiji citizens believe that political parties are corrupt according to research conducted by Transparency International Fiji (TI Fiji). The research, conducted last August, reflects the views of 1,024 people aged 18 and over.

Politicians came out of the survey very badly with 47 percent of all the interviewees believing that politics is largely affected by corruption and another 25 percent believing that politics is moderately corrupt.

Interviewees viewed the business community as only slightly better, with 40 percent believing business to be largely corrupt and 25 percent viewing business to be moderately corrupt. The pre coup opinions also showed that 54 percent of those interviewed believed that governments were either ineffective in the fight against corruption or actively encouraged corruption.

TI Fiji’s research will be used to contribute to the Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer, published by the TI Secretariat in Berlin. This reflects people’s opinions about corruption in their country, not actual corruption.

While the TI Fiji research found Parliament and politicians to be viewed as very corrupt, religious and non governmental organisations were considered to be the least corrupt, although no sector was considered to be free of corruption.

Many of the views seemed to reflect the experiences of others because few people said that they had paid bribes themselves although corruption takes many forms other than bribery.

The legal system also came out of the survey relatively well with 81 percent of interviewees feeling that bribes did not need to be paid to get a fair judgement from a court although one in five respondents believed the justice system to be slow and complicated.

The survey was conducted for TI Fiji by Tebbut Research. Respondents were from Suva, Nausori, Lami, Nadi, Lautoka and Ba. The survey sample was managed to ensure that it reflected Fiji’s population by gender, age, race and location.

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For any press enquiries please contact

Hari Pal Singh, TI Fiji Chairman
T: 670 3140 or 990 7870