ABSTRACT
The making of a democratic constitution in a country emerging from an illegitimate regime requires close attention to foreign models, often illuminated by foreign experts. Fiji, having experienced a military coup in 1987 against a government apparently dominated by Indians, promulgated a new constitution in 1990. The courses traversed in Fiji and Indonesia have much in common. In both cases, dubious legitimacy led to great openness to constitutional innovation that would otherwise have been dismissed out of hand. By parliamentary negotiation and then as a byproduct of the 2000 coup, the foreign-inspired interventions of the Constitution Review Commission were domesticated with a vengeance. As soon as conflict set in between the president and parliament, direct election of the president was also off the agenda, and Indonesians settled into a thoroughly idiosyncratic system, neither parliamentary nor presidential but combining some of the worst features of both.
