The Constitution of Fiji was restored by a High Court decision on 15 November 2000, following the failure of the political upheaval in which the government had been deposed and the constitution suspended in May that year. On 1 March 2001, the Appeal Court upheld the decision. An election to restore democracy was held in September 2001. In what was one of Fiji's most bitterly fought elections ever, the newly formed Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua of the interim Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase narrowly defeated the Fiji Labour Party of deposed former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.

The FLP had been hurt by leadership bickering in the wake of the coup, and the subsequent defection of a number of its high-profile members from the ethnic Fijian community, including Tupeni Baba, the former Deputy Prime Minister. The mutual refusal of the FLP and the National Federation Party, the only other political party with significant Indo-Fijian support, to reach a preference-swapping deal had also worked against both parties. (In Fiji's system of transferable voting, any two or more candidates in a particular constituency can have their votes combined, unless the electors specify a different option by ranking the candidates numerically in order of their preference).

Approval ratings edit

Communal constituency results edit

Fijian constituencies edit

Indo-Fijian constituencies edit

General constituencies edit

Rotuman constituency edit

Seats changing hands edit

This does not include seats that changed candidates but not parties, defections or seats held by members not seeking re-election.

Controversy continued after the 2001 election, with Prime Minister Qarase finding reasons, which many considered to be pretexts, for not implementing the power-sharing provisions of the Constitution, which required that every political party with more than 8 seats in the House of Representatives must be proportionally represented in the Cabinet. On 18 July 2003, the Supreme Court of Fiji ruled that Qarase's exclusion of the Labour Party from the Cabinet was unconstitutional, and demanded that the situation be rectified. Appeals, counter-appeals, and negotiations delayed the implementation of the order. In June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Labour Party was entitled to 14 out of 30 Cabinet posts. Qarase has said that he would abide by the ruling, but his refusal to include Chaudhry in the Cabinet lineup continued to stall negotiations, until the FLP announced in November that it was no longer interested in participating in the Qarase-led government.