Praveen Bala
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Praveen Kumar Bala is the Mayor of the Fijian town of Ba, a position he has held since 1996. He was reelected unopposed by the Town Council on 28 October 2005, after leading his National Federation Party (NFP) to a landslide victory in the municipal elections held on 22 October, taking 14 of the 15 seats.
Bala attributed his victory to his party's policies and personnel. The NFP was, he claimed, the only political party promoting multiracialism and harmony, as evidenced by its multiracial slate of candidates. He accused the Fiji Labour Party of playing "gutter-level politics" in its unsuccessful campaign to oust him.
Bala was also an unsuccessful NFP candidate for the House of Representatives in the 2001 election. He polled 28 percent of the vote in the Ba East Indian Communal Constituency, a marginal improvement on Ram Lajendra's showing in the previous election of 1999. He made another attempt in the 2006 election; his vote dropped marginally, but by considerably less than that of most other NFP candidates in what was a bad year for the party.
On 7 December 2005, the NFP named Bala to a 3-member "Negotiating Committee," charged with negotiating electoral pacts with other political parties for the parliamentary election due in 2006.
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