Three days after the election he gave a speech at a public meeting threatening bloodshed and demanding that the constitution be changed so that all Cabinet Ministers were ethnic Fijians.
[5] He was subsequently charged with unlawful assembly and inciting racial antagonism under Fiji's colonial-era Public Order Ordinance,[5] convicted, and jailed for six months.
[8] Butadroka later became one of the leaders of the Taukei Movement in 1987, whose agitation formed the backdrop to the 1987 Fijian coups d'état that deposed the elected government and severed Fiji's ties to the British Monarchy that year.
The election brought the Fiji Labour Party-led People's Coalition to power, with an Indo-Fijian Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry.
Butadroka became involved with a campaign to destabilize the Chaudhry government, and his party was implicated by Maciu Navakasuasua, who was convicted of coup-related offences, in the planning of the coup d'état which deposed it in May 2000.