James Ah Koy

Sir James Michael Ah Koy, KBE (born in Lautoka, 30 November 1936) is a Fijian businessman, politician, and diplomat of Chinese and Fijian descent. He is Executive Chairman of Kelton Investments, the IT service provider Datec Group Ltd., Honorary Consul of the Republic of Georgia to Fiji and a board director of forty-six companies. He served as a Cabinet Minister in the 1990s, and was a Senator from 2001 to 2006. He is Fiji's past ambassador to China. He served until mid-2010, when he was replaced by Esala Teleni.

Ah Koy's first foray into politics was in 1966, when he stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate. In the early 1980s, he became manager of a family investment company owned by the then-Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, and was subsequently selected by Mara's political party, the Alliance Party, as a candidate for one of eight seats then reserved for General Electors in the House of Representatives in the parliamentary election of 1982. In 1991–1993, he led a legal challenge to the law requiring all multiracial people to register on the General Electors' roll, which at the time enrolled all Fijian citizens who are neither indigenous nor of Indian or Rotuman ancestry. The court ruled that as he was registered in the Native Land Register (Vola ni Kawa Bula, or VKB, in Fijian), he was entitled to be registered as a Fijian. He subsequently succeeded getting the law amended to give multiracial people the option of registering on either the General Electors' roll or on an ethnic role (Fijian, Indo-Fijian, or Rotuman) on which any of their ancestors would have been entitled to enroll. This change was later written into the Constitution, and allowed Ah Koy to stand for election from an ethnic Fijian communal constituency. (All seats in the House of Representatives were communal prior to 1999, and 46 of the 71 seats are still communal, elected from closed ethnic roles of voters registered as Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Rotumans, or General Electors).

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