When democracy was restored in 2001, Chaudhry fought a hotly contested election, but was defeated by Laisenia Qarase of the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua ( SDL ).

The SDL contested many of the mayoral and council positions throughout Fiji in the municipal elections scheduled for 22 October 2005.

In poor health following repeated operations on a brain tumor, she contested the elections held to restore democracy in September 2001, but all of her party's candidates were defeated as the ethnic Fijian community rallied around the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua ( SDL ) of Laisenia Qarase.

Hurt by intra-party fighting and the defection of key figures including Tupeni Baba, however, the party won the most votes ( 34. 8 %), but only 28 of the 71 seats in the House of Representatives ( Fiji ), four less than the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua ( SDL ) of Laisenia Qarase.

SDL National Director Jale Baba announced on 11 September 2005 that the party would contest all 71 parliamentary seats in the 2006 election.

In the election, held on 6 – 13 May, the SDL won 44 percent of the popular vote ( including 81 percent of the ethnic Fijian vote ), and 36 out of 71 seats.

The Prime Minister also had to deny allegations made under parliamentary privilege by Senators Ponipate Lesavua and Ratu Dr. Epeli Nailatikau, and by prominent Opposition parliamentarian Poseci Bune, that two companies, one allegedly owned by his son Laisenia Qarase, Jr. and the other by Jale Baba, the General Secretary of Qarase's SDL Party, had benefited from government contracts.

The SDL appointed former Fiji Development Bank Chairman Navitalai Naisoro to head a panel interviewing would-be parliamentary candidates for the SDL.

On 12 August 2005, Baba claimed that three members of the opposition Fiji Labour Party's parliamentary caucus had applied for endorsement as SDL candidates for the parliamentary election scheduled to be held in mid-2006.

Following the parliamentary election held on 6-13 May 2006, prime minister Qarase named a multi-party cabinet consisting of 24 ministers ( 11 SDL plus 3 SDL-affiliated senators, 9 FLP, and one independent ) and 12 ministers of State ( 11 SDL and one independent ).

The Fiji Times reported on 11 March 2006 that the ruling SDL had approached Baba with an invitation to contest the parliamentary election scheduled for 6 – 13 May under the SDL banner.

At the August conference, the party decided that a preference deal with the ruling SDL in the parliamentary election scheduled for 2006 would be conditional on the government withdrawing its Reconciliation and Unity Bill.

Prior to his appointment as Home Affairs Minister, he had served as Minister for Information, and before that as Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation, following his election to represent the Tailevu North Ovalau Open Constituency, as a candidate of the United Fiji Party ( SDL ), in the parliamentary election of 2001.

Seeking renomination from the SDL for the parliamentary election due on 6 – 13 May 2006, Vosanibola faced a challenge from Eminoni Ranacou, a former agriculture officer.

* Jale Baba presented the parliamentary submission of the ruling United Fiji Party ( SDL ), of which he is the Director, on 30 June.

Beddoes retained his constituency, with a slightly reduced majority, in the parliamentary election held on 6 – 13 May 2006, and was appointed Leader of the Opposition for the second time on 3 June His second appointment came after weeks of disputes with his erstwhile ally, Mahendra Chaudhry, who had insisted that the position should be his, despite the decision of the Labour Party to enter a grand coalition with the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua Party ( SDL ).

Coalition membership was later reduced to three parties ; the CAMV decided to disband to join the SDL on 17 February 2006, and the PNP withdrew its membership on 7 March, following its decision to merge with the Party of National Unity ( PANU ) and oppose the coalition in the upcoming parliamentary election.

She had first won the seat for the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua Party ( SDL ) in the parliamentary election of September 2001.

The decision of the SDL Party to renominate Caucau for the parliamentary election, which was duly held on 6-13 May 2006, was sharply criticized by Ratu George Cakobau, scion of Tailevu's most senior chiefly family and son of former Governor-General Ratu Sir George Cakobau.

Baba said that byelections showed that Indo-Fijian support for the SDL had increased since 2001, when it hardly registered, and that the party was confident of winning most of the seats in 2006.

From 1994 to 1997, the SDL was a member of a coalition called " Common Choice " ( Spoločná voľba ) that gained 10. 18 % ( 18 seats ) in the Slovak parliament.

The FLP ended up with 12 seats and the United Fiji Party ( SDL ) 4.

When the results were tallied, the SDL had won 36 seats and its coalition partners none.

Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase of the SDL has admitted that his party won a number of seats on NFP " preferences ," as transferred votes are known.

The result was a landslide win for the SDL, which took 12 of the 20 seats, a gain of 5.

The coalition of then-Lord Mayor Chandu Umaria remained intact, however, with Umaria's Ratepayers Alliance ( dominated by the National Federation Party ) winning 8 seats and its ally, the SDL ( the ruling party at the national level ), 7.

The result of the poll was a landslide win for the SDL, which took 12 of the 20 seats.

This election proved to be no exception, with over 80 percent of the popular vote and all 23 seats reserved for indigenous Fijians going to the SDL, and a similar percentage and all 19 seats reserved for Indo-Fijians going to the FLP.

Both parties have expressed optimism about their gambits, with Prime Minister Qarase saying on Radio Sargam ( affiliated to Fiji Village ) on 5 October that the SDL expected to win an absolute majority in the 71-member House of Representatives, and regarded as many as 50 seats as a real possibility.

He was subsequently confirmed in office when he led his newly formed Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua ( SDL ) to victory in the election held to restore democracy in 2001.

In the last election in 2001, a similar deal, which allowed votes cast for low-polling NFP candidates to be transferred to the SDL, was crucial to the SDL victory under Fiji's transferable voting system.

He was appointed Minister for Multi-Ethnic Affairs in the interim Cabinet that was formed in the wake of the Fiji coup of 2000, and retained his seat as a candidate of the newly formed United Fiji Party ( SDL ) in the election held to restore democracy in September 2001.

In 2001 the Party of the Democratic Left ( SDL ) more and more turned away from the Dzurinda-government-the then finance minister Brigita Schmögnerová and other popular politicians from the social-liberal wing of the SDL ( like Peter Weiss and Milan Ftáčnik ) the SDL to found a " modern, anti-nationalist and anti-populist " party.

He also represents the South West Urban Fijian Communal constituencies in the House of Representatives, to which he was elected as a candidate of the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua ( SDL ) in 2001.

The VLV disintegrated in the political realignment that followed the coup, but Kaitani joined the newly formed United Fiji Party ( SDL ), and retained his seat in the election of 2001 as an SDL candidate.

Conversely, many Indo-Fijian supporters of the National Federation Party ( NFP ) in the 2001 poll may not have been aware that votes for NFP candidates, all of whom lost, were to be transferred to the indigenous-dominated United Fiji Party ( SDL ).

The SDL, which presently has only one Indo-Fijian in its Parliamentary caucus and attracted less than one percent of the Indo-Fijian vote in 2001, has announced that it will contest all 19 communal constituencies reserved for Indo-Fijians, with General Secretary Jale Baba saying that the party is " confident " of winning most of them.

In many towns, the SDL was aligned with the National Federation Party ( NFP ), but in Suva, the two parties feuded over what the NFP claimed was a breach of a memorandum of understanding between the two parties after the last municipal elections, held in 2002.

Citing confidentiality rules, Baba refused to name them, but said they were all Indo-Fijians, bringing to 48 the number of ethnic Indians who would stand in the primary elections to choose SDL candidates in the third week of February.

Municipal elections in October 2003, for which the party formed an electoral coalition with Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua ( SDL ), gave the party control of six municipalities, either in its own right or together with the SDL.

In another development, however, it was announced on 16 February 2006 that the party would be deregistering, in order to merge with the United Fiji Party ( SDL ) ahead of the elections.

Disagreements over the 2002 memorandum of understanding between the SDL and the NFP thwarted attempts to forge an electoral coalition between them for the 2005 municipal elections.