New Cabinet Excludes Party of Ethnic Indians

Fiji’s newly elected prime minister unveiled his Cabinet, which excludes the rival Labor Party but brings in supporters of the leader of a coup that toppled the government last year.

Laisenia Qarase, an indigenous Fijian, named 18 members to his new Cabinet, which will have 20 posts. He included supporters of George Speight, who led a nationalist coup in May 2000 and ran for a seat in Parliament from his jail cell.

None of the new ministers were from the ethnic Indian-dominated Fiji Labor Party. The decision underlined the deep rift that divides Fiji’s two main ethnic groups.