Transcript
The NFP is stressing its multi-racial make-up these days and the mix of Indian and indigenous dance moves and music at its convention pressed home the message.
It also likes to underline its status as Fiji's oldest party, founded by farmers' leader and Indo-Fijian politician A.D. Patel in 1968.
The former Labour politician Krishna Datt says he's now supporting the NFP because of its vision to bring back real grassroots democracy to Fiji.
I stand here having survived four coups in this country and yet each time have made all the efforts to bring back democracy. Now I know the rhetoric is being used by all the other sides but the reality, the practice of democracy, is lacking and I see that this party holds that vision."
Twenty-one-year-old Apenisa Vatuniveivuke is a law and politics university student and one of the party's provisional candidates for this year's election.
The election date is still to be announced but Mr Vatuniveivuke says the NFP is ready to face a well-resourced and well-armed opponent in the ruling Fiji First Party.
He says what's needed in Fiji is a shift in political thinking and a focus on the things that matter like security at home and confidence in the health system.
"The choice that we will have to make in the coming election is not a choice between parties or personalities. It is a choice of either freedom or slavery, either hope or fear, either unity or disillusion, either a new beginning or continuance of an old and worn-out system that has brought us nothing but animosity."
The party's president Pio Tikoduadua says the NFP will rescue Fiji from a two-man government, referring to the prime minister Frank Bainimarama and the Attorney General and Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
The former top aide to Mr Bainimarama left the government last year and defected to the opposition.
"I left them and a $200,000 salary after only nine months in office because I thought that was the resumption of parliamentary democracy, the two men would practice genuine democracy by partnership and the rule of international interest. But the two men heightened their resolve to suppress all. My way or the highway."
Mr Tikoduadua says the party plans to raise pensions and double the minimum wage to five Fiji dollars an hour.
The party's leader Biman Prasad says the party has never been stronger and it doesn't care about what he calls FijiFirst's desperate attacks on it.
Professor Prasad says the NFP will cut all ministers salaries and allowances by 25 percent and spending on what he called propaganda.
"We will encourage criticism in government. If our government does something badly, we want to hear we have done badly , we want to know how we can do better, people should not be afraid of their government , the people own the government, our taxes pay for the government."
Among its policies the NFP plans to spend less on roads and $200 million a year on good housing, bring back local government elections and provide free tuition for all first year university students.
