The Grand Coalition for Fiji, formerly known as the Grand Coalition Initiative Group, was a coalition of five predominantly indigenous Fijianpolitical parties in Fiji, forged for the purpose of contesting the general election scheduled for 2006 under a single umbrella and forming a coalition government subsequently. Efforts to unite the ethnic Fijian parties were in part a response to their electoral defeat in 1999, when they had been split, enabling the Indian-backed FLP to win a landslide victory.[1] Nevertheless, Tomasi Vakatora, the chairman of the Grand Coalition, publicly stated in February 2006 that it was open to sharing preferences with the predominantly Indian parties.[2] By the time of the election, however, the coalition was virtually defunct.