Fijilive:
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http://archives.pireport.org/archive/2006/April/04-27-ft2.htm
PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT
Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i
Feature
Islands Business, April 27, 2006
FIJI'S FUTURE UNCERTAIN AS INDIANS CONTINUE EXODUS
By Michael Field
SUVA, Fiji (Islands Business Magazine, April 26) – Huddled together, looking cold with fear, a group of Fiji Indians stood on the empty street of Korovou one afternoon in 2000. Makeshift bags at their feet, they waited for a bus to take them to Suva, 50 kilometers south.
Armed with military weapons, rebels had seized Korovou in support of local boy George Speight who was holding hostage the government of Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry.
Days earlier in a Rewa River valley, where Indians had grown vegetables for nearly a century, 16-year-old Romika Nair, told of gangs looting, burning and assaulting Indians.
"The men came back at about nine, and they took all our things."
Shopkeeper Lagan Prasad said it used to be peaceful. "Before, we called this the paradise of Fiji, now this is the darkness of Fiji."
Five years on from the third coup to afflict Fiji since 1987 the real price is emerging. Over 100,000 Indians have left for New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States since 1987 – a stunning loss in a talent-short country of just 900,000. Even the talented indigenous people are leaving.
Brij Lal, a Labasa born Indian academic who co-wrote Fiji's latest constitution with Tomasi Vakatora and New Zealand's Sir Paul Reeves, and expert on the Indian Diaspora, was home recently.
"Every time I visit Suva, I find it becoming more a ‘Fijian' town," he told Islands Business. "Look at the people in the market place – more Fijians there. In the civil service, in government offices, everywhere...We are seeing a huge, historical transition taking place before our own eyes," said Lal.
A tragic story lies in the past, and Indians suffer still in the myth that they are somehow to blame for Fiji's chronic instability.
American author James A Mitchener – much loved for the syrupy book that led to the musical South Pacific – used fierce racism to describe Indo-Fijians as being like mynah birds – raucous, uncultured, uncouth and grubby.
Indo-Fijians are mostly descendants of indentured laborers brought in by the British to work on CSR Australia-owned sugar plantations. Between 1879 and 1916, around 60,000 girmitiyas [indentured Indian laborers] came. All first stayed on Nukulau Island – Speight's prison today – for quarantine purposes.
When the indentured labor system ended, a small but sizeable group of Punjab farmers and Gujerati merchants came, creating a caste-less patchwork of Tamils, Nepalese, North Indians, Sikhs and Bengalis—all speaking a kind of pidgin Hindi.
Like Pakeha New Zealanders, Fiji Indians suffer an identity issue. Professor Lal insists he's Indo-Fijian. "My grandfather's country is not mine", adding that for his children India is "essentially a strange place full of strange people."
In the 1966 census, Indians accounted for 51 percent of the population, Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics says. Indigenous Fijians were just 42 percent – the rest made up of Chinese, Europeans, Rotumans and other Pacific Islanders.
London colonial masters feared Indians would take over the country and in a long and complicated process – which continues today in the electoral system – measures were taken to ensure indigenous Fijians would never lose their land in the way the Maori had in New Zealand, and that their political supremacy would remain intact.
Following independence in 1970, and under Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara this happened. But in 1987 the Indo-Fijian dominated Fiji Labor Party won power under Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra. That prompted the military's number three, Sitiveni Rabuka, to stage two coups.
Promising a Taukei, or indigenous government, he instituted a racist constitution, producing the first wave of Indo Fijian emigration.
By 1999, even Rabuka had recognized the heavy cost and brought in a multi-racial constitution and a re-organized preferential voting system, albeit still on racial lines. That led to another Fiji Labor Party victory, this time with Chaudhry, although heading a cabinet dominated by indigenous Fijians.
A year later, came Speight's coup and then military commander Voreqe Bainimarama's martial law – a coup in everything but name. Indo-Fijians were revealed as nothing more than a stalking horse for indigenous tribal warfare.
Statistics New Zealand's figures neatly mirrored Fiji's politics. The 1986 census recorded 2,157 people of "Indian ethnicity who were born in Fiji." In 1991 – in the wake of Rabuka – this had leapt to 10,770 and in 1996 it was 12,720. In 2001, a year after the Speight coup, the number was 19,290. The 2001 census recorded 25,725 people in New Zealand who said that Fiji was their birthplace – up from 6671 in 1976.
The United States Embassy in Suva saw the impact dramatically in 2002, the last time the worldwide "Green Card" lottery was held manually – 220,000 people in Fiji entered.
An embassy official told Islands Business that under the computerized lottery, 800 Fiji families (they do not give out race) get green cards each year. A startling five Fiji families a day get residency visas normally.
In Fiji, no one knows for sure what is happening. Fiji last had a census 10 years ago and migration cards in recipient countries don't record race.
Fiji's statistics bureau estimates the population at December 2004 at 840,201, including 320,659 Indians, approximately 38 percent of the total population. In 2000, Indians were 41 percent of the population.
The radical change is shown in the way the bureau estimates how long it would take a population to double in size.
In 1986, it reckoned the indigenous population would double in 29 years and the Indians in 40 years. In 1996, the figure was 39 years for indigenous, and never for Indians – minus 241 years.
Human and development geographer Manoranjan Mohanty of the University of the South Pacific notes that since the Speight coup Fiji has lost over 3,800 professionals, technical and related workers.
"This represents over half of Fiji's stock of middle to high level workers. Teachers are the single most dominant professional group that Fiji has been losing."
The cost of Fiji's "human capital loss" is around F$45 million [US$25.8 million] a year.
One clue to what is happening came last month with the new electoral rolls. Of the 502,574 registered voters, just 35 percent are Indians.
It would rise to 40 percent were it not for the inexplicable fact that 26,000 fewer Indians are on the rolls this year than they were at the last election in 2001.
As Fiji TV News puts it: "Political pundits say this is a worrying trend which shows that the Indo-Fijian population is falling rapidly, and this will have a huge impact on Indian-dominated or controlled parties this year and in the future."
Its not gerrymandering, says Professor Lal. "A lot of Indo-Fijian people are apathetic and apprehensive about politics generally and about elections, in particular."
Indians feared a Fiji Labor Party-Chaudhry win and the prospect of more upheavals.
"That fear resides deep in their hearts. The recent threatened confrontation between the army and government does not augur well for them. Why bother with Fiji when you want to leave any anyway? When you are emotionally uprooted with children overseas? Better to keep a low profile, get things done, get by and hope that no one will bother you. Even if they are not in the direct line of fire, when Fijians confront Fijians, they know they will suffer collateral damage. Makes perfect sense to me," said Professor Lal.
Vice-president Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi says the "nightmarish experience" of the Girmitya instilled in the Indo-Fijian community discipline, frugality, industry and sacrifice.
He was saddened by the loss of Indians. "While it is always a matter of choice, and there is in all of us a sense of seeking greener pastures, this is our home, yours and mine together."
A paramount chief (of Speight's district), Madraiwiwi spoke of the "tragic legacy of misunderstanding that is our joint heritage." Neither group would make the compromise necessary for a more cohesive society – each fearing that to yield would end in apocalypse.
"Those who find the constant jockeying and endless bickering for advantage wearying, leave," he says.
Few reporters have ever seen reaction to a story like Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had one Sunday night in May 2000.
Nine days earlier Speight had seized the government of Chaudhry and was holding it hostage as Sayed-Khaiyum went to air with a live panel discussion on the coup.
The program finished at 7 p.m. and 45 minutes later Sayed-Khaiyum headed home. Within an hour, an angry Speight mob arrived at Fiji TV and smashed it up. Later that night, they murdered a policeman.
A big fish in a small pond, Sayed-Khaiyum and his family--including his first-born child who arrived five days after the coup--are now on the latest leg of the Indian Diaspora. He works for the television program Asia Downunder in Auckland.
Away from home he finds Indo-Fijians hankering for Fiji. "My theory is that with Indo Fijians, because they have never been made to feel like they belong in Fiji, they are always striving to feel like they belong. It is a strange thing."
Many of those who emigrated from Fiji would return, he believes, if conditions improved. But their children won't. The Indo-Fijian tribe was facing extinction. Very likely the case if enough Indo-Fijians don't stay back in Fiji. We will dwindle down to almost nothing."
Fiji Hindi was already disappearing.
"Although New Zealand has a very Pacific influence, there are certain things about people from Fiji that is very Pacific, and that is what differentiates us from mainland Indians. We are more relaxed, we are friendlier, our sense of humor is very Pacific."
He feared they were doomed to be perpetual people of the Diaspora. "It is heartbreaking, firstly, because people don't think we belong, and then we are forced to leave.
Most people who leave Fiji feel they have to leave because they feel they are being discriminated against. Yet they yearn to be back in that environment."
Like many, his family decided on New Zealand over Australia because its Indo-Fijian community was more contained than it was in the sprawl of Sydney and Brisbane. "It seems like a nice small place, a bigger version of Fiji may be, the personal friendly touch, a better place to bring up the kids."
Twenty-one-year old physiotherapist Renee Karan spent her first 10 years in Fiji. "My race is Indian but I'm a third generation Fijian," she says.
Indians from India don't necessarily see her as a "true" Indian and Fijians don't see her as Fijian. "But Fiji is a part of me and my family members were raised there, lived there, we earned and lived off the land and gave back to it. After three generations we consider ourselves part of the land.
"Fiji is happiness, my childhood, safety, simplicity, beauty, sunsets that painted the sky crimson red, feeling of belonging, looking at a Fijian and seeing myself in them."
Auckland businessman Rajendra Prasad, who left Fiji in the week following Sitiveni Rabuka's first coup, has devoted seven years to putting together "Tears in Paradise," a searing account of the girmit years.
A former town clerk of Ba, on the northern coast of Viti Levu, he says India has almost no significance for Indo-Fijians.
"In my conscience when the term ‘home' is used, what comes to mind is Fiji, not India."
But Indo-Fijians live with the painful dilemma.
"Our people have experienced through the coups and the policies of the government that we are not wanted."
Most who leave come to the "grim conclusion that Fiji will not be secure and stable for them in the future." They do well in New Zealand.
"At least, they don't have to live with the trauma of Fiji. Fiji is an illusion, a nightmare for most. But in their heart Fiji is still magnetic."
But, says Prasad, they feel nameless, landless and stateless. We have been lumped with India and when our children make applications for Pacific grants for education, they are disqualified. We don't seem to have an identity.
"We have a distinct culture which has been tampered and refined by exposure to Pacific cultures and also to the western culture. We are distinctly different to India's Indians."
As a man who enjoyed high-level contact with leaders of the indigenous community, he fears Fijians have not recognized the impact of the loss they will suffer with the departure of Indians.
"One of the advantages Fijians have had is that the Indo-Fijian community is not a violent community. In all the coups, they have never taken to violence and avoided them. Any other community would have turned to violence."
April 27, 2006
Islands Business: http://www.pacificislands.cc/pm82003/index.php
Copyright © 2006 Islands Business. All Rights Reserved
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2006/August/08-15-05.htm
PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT
Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i
QARASE LOATHE TO CHANGE FIJI'S ETHNIC VOTING
SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, Aug. 14) – Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase says he does not support calls for Fiji to move away from an electoral system based on race.
Fiji's system requires the two main races, "indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians," to vote only for their own kind at the polling station (Communal Seats).
In only 25 of the 71 seats in the Lower House of Representatives are voters allowed to choose anyone regardless of ethnicity.
Some political commentators are calling for more Open Seats in a bid to bring the two main races together.
An architect of Fiji's Constitution, academic Dr. Brij Lal, said both communal allocations for Fijians (23) and Indians (19) should be reduced progressively by five, for the 2011 General Election.
"Personally I am not in favor of more Open Seats because it does not address the purpose intended," said Qarase.
However, Qarase said that adopting a proportionate form of representation "might be the best thing for Fiji" at this point. "It might come in when reviewing the Constitution," he said. The issue requires lots of thinking. It is important."
Qarase said the current Multi-party Cabinet had provided a basis for what could well be proportionate representation in Parliament.
"When we have people well represented in Parliament it would also mean a multi-ethnic government," he said.
Qarase's 36-member Cabinet has all the major ethnicities represented.
August 15, 2006
Fijilive: http://www.fijilive.com
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http://archives.pireport.org/archive/2006/September/09-07-an.htm
PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT
Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i
The following is a talk given at Fiji Update & Pacific 2020 in Suva on August 29, 2006
Analysis
THE CALCULUS OF FIJI POLITICS IS CHANGING
By Dr. Jon Fraenkel
Fiji in 2006 defied expectations in some ways, but ran to form in others. Things that were not anticipated surprisingly occurred, and things that widely expected to fail suddenly, at least temporarily, succeeded. Some things were predictable.
The 2006 election turned out to be a collision of landslides; two parties demonstrated that they were the undisputed representatives of their respective communities and took nearly all the seats. That much had been suggested by a string of earlier by-election results, and the weakness of centrist parties even back at the 2001 polls.
Less easy to envisage for those who lived through the 1987 or 2000 coups, was that the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces] would so turn against the government it had originally put into office. The electoral impact of that was probably to sharpen the communal fears that so characterised the 2006 polls.
Surprising also was that, in the wake of the 2006 polls, an electoral system intended to facilitate the emergence of multiple political parties came now to be defended as generating a robust two party system. One wonders whether that will remain so as the next election approaches, or whether the major political parties will revert to the more usual style of communal politics – seeking to sustain a united ethnically-based party representing one's own ethnic group, while doing everything humanly possible to encourage the emergence of small splinter parties in the other ethnic group.
Unexpected, for many, was the formation of a multi-party cabinet. Most anticipated a repeat of the failures of power sharing after the 1999 and 2001 polls. Instead, the portfolios offered were substantial, and nine Labour members entered cabinet.
There was a subsequent reversal of previous roles; with Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase increasingly warming to the idea of a multi-ethnic government, and Labour Leader Mahendra Chaudhry, on last week's Have Your Say on Fiji TV, responding to accusations of having an overly confrontational approach by saying that this was an accusation levelled in the past at many other ‘Indian leaders'.
Oddly, the 2004 Supreme Court decision allowing independents and senators to enter cabinet outside the constrained party formulas of section 99 of the constitution – worked reasonably well in the aftermath of the 2006 polls, at least in giving some greater flexibility to the government formation process (even if this encouraged the emergence of a costly and oversized cabinet).
But the problems ahead will be severe, unless the Labour ministers are able to show substantial political gains to the Indian community, for example over land leasing legislation or by amendments to the amnesty provisions in the RTU Bill. Growing economic difficulties also limit scope for manoeuvre to deliver the kind of broad improvements in living standards that might consolidate Indian support over the longer-run behind the new top-level institutional arrangements.
Unexpected, for many, was that the dispute in the ranks of the Fiji Labour Party would so quickly flare out into the public gaze.
We were told that this was about disagreements over whether former MP Vijay Singh would get a Labour ticket on the Senate. More broadly, it was an inevitable consequence of the difficulties Labour faced in adjusting to the new multi-party cabinet arrangements.
Without the FLP leader entering cabinet, the relationship with the party's new ministers was always likely to be fraught with difficulties.
Power-sharing agreements are never simple; notorious failures occurred in Cyprus in the 1960s and Lebanon in the 1970s.
It is hard to imagine multi-party cabinet having worked well in South Africa if F.W. De Clerk had chosen to remain on the backbenches. Nor are Northern Ireland's new arrangements ever likely to work effectively if Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams were to decline a position at Stormont preferring instead to look after the best interests of Sinn Fein or the IRA.
In the longer-run, one of three options seem most likely; either Fiji's multi-party cabinet arrangement will fail, or the Labour leader will enter cabinet or there will eventually be a leadership change. In most other countries that have power-sharing arrangements, the leader of the minority party receives a deputy premiership (or presidency).
The calculus of Fiji politics is changing, but political visions have not yet altered sufficiently.
The changing proportion of the two ethnic groups has major repercussions in a country where race-based voting is strongly entrenched. And as more Fiji Indians than Fijians are emigrating, the arithmetic of demography is working relentlessly against the Fiji Labour Party. Might the ironic effect be to enhance inter-ethnic cooperation in government as the Fiji Indians, losing numbers all the time, recognize that power sharing offers the best chance of a place at the table?
More doubtful is whether communal solidarity can and will prevail, particularly amongst the Fijians, as the forces that bound both communities into a bipolar two party system dissipate. If it does not, the electoral mechanics and campaign strategies of future elections will be very different from 1999, 2001 and 2006.
That will complicate matters, and may - if one is hopeful - by that odd, long and painful route, make the victors in future elections those who are less steeped in the communal politics of the past.
September 7, 2006
Jon Fraenkel is a Senior Research Fellow at the Pacific Institute of Advanced Studies in Development & Governance at the University of the South Pacific.
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http://starbulletin.com/2006/11/01/news/story12.html
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, November 1, 2006
Pressure increases to oust Fijian military leader
Australian and American officials express concerns about a possible coup
By Pita Ligaiula
Associated Press
SUVA, Fiji » Fiji's military chief was under intense pressure to resign today, as the United States expressed concern about a possible coup in the Pacific island and Australia put warships on standby for evacuation of its nationals.
As tensions between the Fiji government and military heightened, the island's Cabinet met in emergency session after the government failed to force military commander Frank Bainimarama from his post yesterday.
Fiji has been rocked by three coups in the past 20 years and fears of a fourth putsch in this former British colony have simmered since the re-election of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase in May.
Police commissioner Andrew Hughes said today he had briefed Qarase and Home Affairs Minister Josefa Vosanibola on the nation's security situation ahead of the emergency Cabinet meeting today.
Hughes described the security situation in Fiji as calm.
Qarase met yesterday with President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to ask that Bainimarama, who is currently visiting Fijian peacekeeping troops in the Middle East, be sacked and replaced by a subordinate officer.
Senior military officers said Bainimarama's proposed replacement, Lt. Col. Meli Saubulinayau, had declined the offer, saying he did not have the support of the island nation's military forces, according to local media.
Bainimarama remains an unrelenting critic of a government he has labeled "racist" and "corrupt" and threatens to force from office -- threats that the United States, Australia and New Zealand regard as direct military interference in the democratic process.
Seen by some as caught up in the belief that he saved the nation when he ended the last coup in 2000, Bainimarama has built strong personal loyalty in the officer corps after he was nearly assassinated by renegade troops during a bloody mutiny within months of the coup that first elevated Qarase to power.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday Bainimarama should accept the decision of the Fiji government and step down when he returns from the Middle East.
"The strong advice we have is the commander must himself follow the Fiji constitution," she said.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he remained "deeply concerned" by the threat of a coup after a telephone conversation with Qarase late yesterday.
"We are worried about the possibility of a military coup," Howard told Adelaide radio 5AA.
"We will take all measures necessary if they're needed to look after our own people," he added.
Bainimarama said from the Middle East he would continue demanding that Qarase's government resign.
"I'll be back to see that Qarase and his cronies step down," he told the Fiji Sun newspaper in a report published today.
The commander said the armed forces were Fiji's only hope of stamping out corruption in the Pacific island nation.
Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said warships were on standby to evacuate 7,000 Australian nationals from Fiji in the event of a coup. He said Australia had no plans to send troops to Fiji if the government were attacked.
The United States threatened to suspend U.S. aid to Fiji if the military seizes power.
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10408799
New Zealand Herald, Thursday November 2, 2006
PM leading Fiji to bloodshed, says military chief Bainimarama [+audio, video]
By Ruth Berry and Agencies
Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's refusal to buckle to military demands is leading the country towards bloodshed, the country's military commander Frank Bainimarama says.
Mr Bainamarama said today he was prepared to continue talking to the government, but reiterated it needed to accede to his demands.
That included dumping contentious legislation that would give amnesty to some of those involved in the 2000 coup and key figures in the government stepping down.
"The last thing we want to do is have violence, the last thing we want to do is have bloodshed, but Qarase is pointing us in that direction," he said on Radio New Zealand.
"The fact that he does not want to accede to our request, the fact that he does not want to resign and his call for the meeting of the great council of chiefs means to the military that he has put us in a situation where there is going to be bloodshed and violence."
Wellington has plans to evacuate New Zealanders from Fiji if the stand-off erupts into hostilities.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the Government was "looking at having every contingency ready" for an evacuation if need be.
He would not go into details, but it is likely the armed forces have been put on stand-by. Chartered commercial planes might be used.
Between 3500 and 7000 New Zealanders are on holiday in Fiji at any given time.
Australian warships have been placed on stand-by in case its nationals have to be evacuated.
The Fiji military yesterday refused to accept the appointment of a new commander and also defied a police order and removed seven tonnes of ammunition sitting on a Suva wharf. Military heads refused to take Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes' calls, further heightening tensions.
There was speculation in Fiji yesterday that Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase might resign.
But late yesterday he declared "emphatically that there is absolutely no question of me resigning" and outlined a series of "inappropriate and illegitimate actions" taken by Commodore Bainimarama.
Mr Qarase is to ask the Great Council of Chiefs to convene a special meeting in the hope they could help resolve the conflict.
Mediate
The council, comprising the most senior chiefs in the country, has a constitutional role and appoints the President and has been called on to mediate in Fiji's past coups.
Commodore Bainimarama is in the Middle East, but is expected back on Sunday or early next week, a military spokesman said today.
Three weeks ago Commodore Bainimarama warned the Government would have to resign if it refused to dump controversial legislation opposed by the armed forces - including a bill which would offer an amnesty to former 2002 coup supporters.
Mr Qarase said he had exercised "great patience" in response to the commander's string of threats, which were under police investigation.
He was ready to engage in open dialogue with the commander "with a view to finding resolutions that serve the best interests of Fiji".
He stressed, however, that the Army was under the control of the Government and "the rule of law must prevail".
Mr Peters said the Government was "deeply concerned" about the developments and reiterated Prime Minister Helen Clark's call for Commodore Bainimarama to stand down.
Helen Clark said Fiji's Government was legitimately elected and appeared to have followed proper process in its bid to oust the outspoken military chief.
"The strong advice we have is the commander must himself follow the Fiji constitution," she said.
"One would have thought that if the President seeks to suspend him then those orders from a legitimate government should be followed."
Helen Clark spoke to Australian Prime Minister John Howard about the crisis on Tuesday night.
Mr Howard has refused to say whether military help had been sought by the Fijian Government, but Mr Peters said the Government here had received no such request.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday issued a renewed travel advisory for Fiji, but did not advise holidaymakers to abandon travel plans.
"Although the situation is currently calm, this could change with little warning."
New Zealanders planning to visit Fiji should monitor the media and the ministry's "safe travel" website for updates, it said.
Fiji police head Andrew Hughes said the military's decision to seize the seven tonnes of ammunition was "unprofessional" and under investigation as he had not issued the necessary licence.
"They've broken the law."
Military Land Force commander Colonel Pita Driti told Fijilive.com: "There will not be another coup. We will stick by our words."
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** The question is whether the offshore reefs (including fishing and mineral rights) of the Fiji islands should be owned by individual chiefs in the same way the chiefs own the land, or whether the reefs should be regarded as the property of the government on behalf of all the people. The qoliqoli bill in parliament would "right a historical wrong" by giving the reefs to the private ownership of the chiefs, who of course are all native Fijians; thereby depriving the non-native citizens of rights they now enjoy. People of Hawaii should take note of this issue, in contemplation of either Hawaiian independence or passage of the Akaka bill or OHA Plan B. The following article states the position of the native Fijian chiefs. **
http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2006/November/11-14-comm1.htm
PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT
Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i
Commentary
FIJI ‘QOLIQOLI BILL' WOULD RIGHT HISTORICAL WRONG
By Dr. Tupeni Baba
SUVA, Fiji (Fiji Times, Nov. 13) – The restoration of the qoliqoli [traditional fishing grounds] to indigenous owners represents the outcome of a long struggle by the indigenous Fijians led by their chiefs, especially those who were signatories of the Deed of Cession and their descendants, to ensure the return of their resources in land, forests, rivers and qoliqoli, in accordance with Fijian chiefly custom.
What stood in the way for the achievement of the goal of this struggle or quiet revolution were the settlers as represented by the planters, traders, industrialists and others whose understanding of the meaning of the annexation of Fiji was at odds with those of the chiefs and the Fijian people.
The idea of creating a competent body to allow aggrieved chiefs and their people to present their historical grievances for consideration is an important part of this process. Since the 1880s, Fijians have used the Native Lands Commission to deal with many issues specifically relating to land, so the process of dealing with competent bodies to discuss and settle issues and grievances has been part of their history and consciousness. It is not unrelated to their traditional way of dealing with Fijian disputes except that the partners to their historical grievances are often non-Fijians and usually, they are the settlers or people with settler mentality. This is why the Indigenous Claims Tribunal which will deal with all types of historical grievances relating to their resources is so central to the so called chiefly and indigenous Fijian struggle.
It is often difficult for non- Fijians to understand why the chiefs who were signatories to Cession decided to sign away or hand over unconditionally all their people's resources to Queen Victoria in return for being governed by her, her heirs and successors.
The chiefs had raised and sought clarifications on the implications of this move with and from Sir Hercules Robinson, before the act of Cession was finalised. One of them said: "We would like His Excellency to make clear to us what our position will be in the event of Cession taking place with regards to our fishing and forest rights. We are confident that His Excellency will give us the kindest consideration"
Soon after Cession in 1875 and again in 1879 and 1880 at the Council of Chiefs meeting in Waikava, Cakaudrove; on Bau, Tailevu and, Mualevu in Lau respectively, the chiefs actively sought the return of their resources especially their land and qoliqoli. The process with regards to the return of their land quickly got off the ground with the work of the Native Lands Commission headed by Wilkinson in the 1880s, and later by Maxwell in the early 1900.
With regards to their qoliqoli, the chiefs maintained that it was owned in a similar way as their land and should be treated similarly. At the end of the Council of Chiefs meeting at Mualevu in November 1880, the Roko Tui Lau, Ma'afu, as the host of the meeting said in concluding the meeting: "There is, however, one other matter which gives us concern, namely our reefs.All reefs have ownership from the past down to the present time; that is clear to us and it is a matter which has often given rise to quarrelling and disputes. We beg of your Majesty (the Governor Sir Arthur Gordon) that they may be registered with our lands or that some regulation be made that the rights of the owners may be fixed on a clear basis as with our lands."
The above concluding statement by Ma'afu at the Council of Chiefs meeting in Mualevu was part of a detailed Memorandum of Sir Arthur Gordon that he sent to the Colonial Secretary as background to his dispatch of November 15 which contained the Native Lands Ordinance xxi of 1880. He referred to this Ordinance in the dispatch as follows: "This is one of the most important ordinances which was been passed by the Legislature in Fiji. It is the result of five years of careful thought and inquiry."
So the qoliqoli issues were always treated in a similar way as native lands and the chiefs wanted it. As mentioned by the Roko Tui Lau, Ma'afu that some regulation be made that the rights of owners may be fixed on a clear basis as that of native lands.
The chiefs had a sympathetic Governor in Sir Arthur Gordon and he was able to move promptly on the return of Fijian land in spite of the strong pressures by the settlers and planters who were keen to purchase land in Fiji. Sir Arthur Gordon was the architect of the colonial land policy and accepted the Fijian notion of ownership that all lands, forests, foreshores and qoliqoli were owned irrespective of whether they were being occupied or not, at a particular time. The settlers on the other hand widely shared the opposite notion of terra nullius', that unoccupied land or empty spaces' were not owned and this has been questioned in the well known Mabo Case in Australia, not long ago.
The chiefs and Sir Arthur Gordon himself, had to struggle against the strong views of the settlers and this was more evident when Sir Arthur finished his term as Governor at the end of 1880. His dispatch, he wrote at Mualevu, was one of the last he wrote as Governor and as he wrote, his emotions came to the fore as he realised he had not completed the work on the return of qoliqoli in his six years as Governor. This was why he saw the need to include the closing statement of the Roko Tui Lau, Ma'afu, in his detailed Memorandum that followed his dispatch of November 15, 1880.
The result of the chiefs requests on the qoliqoli came in the following year, 1881, and was read to the Council of Chiefs meeting on April 14 in Nailaga Ba, by the new Governor, William Desvouex. He said to the chiefs at the Opening:
"I have to tell you with regard to your representation on the subject of the reefs, that the matter will be carefully investigated and that it is her Majesty's desire that neither you nor your people should be deprived of any rights in those reefs, which you have enjoyed under your own laws and customs; and I may tell you, on my own part, that measures will be taken for securing to each Mataqali the reefs, which properly belong to it, exactly in the same way as the rest of their land will be secured to them."
Many of the successive governors including William Desvouex, were unable to carry through successfully this task until well into Fiji's independence as the settlers and planters increased their pressures to open up more land for alienation and commercial use. Even one governor, Governor Im Thurn in the early 1900, supported the settlers and planters case openly.
In 1907 he sent a petition from the Planters Association signed by six prominent planters to the Colonial Secretary seeking the opening up of unoccupied land for their commercial development. He stated that the planters' case was a reasonable one and the tone of his comments showed he shared their views somewhat.
The case was discussed in the British Parliament and Sir Arthur Gordon at that time, as Lord Stanmore was greatly disturbed by the move. His work he felt had not been carried out in accordance with the express wish of the Queen Victoria. As he stood up in the House of Lords and spoke he said he was on that occasion, speaking as Turaga i Taukei' (land owning chief) in view of the two islands in Fiji the Fijian chiefs had given him, through a Crown Grant in appreciation of his services to the Fijian people.
"On two separate occasions her late Majesty did me the honour to convey to me her commands from her own lips that I was to tell the Fijian people that their lands were theirs and should never be taken from them," Stanmore said. "I told them on the authority of our Sovereign and I do trust the pledge then given, will be maintained."
The move by the planters and settlers were defeated and in the colony, Lord Stamore was criticised and publicly vilified in The Fiji Times (Fiji Times in November, 1908), which was controlled, by the settlers and planters in Fiji. This reflected the pressures that were exerted on future governors following Sir Arthur Gordon that it took more meetings of the great Council of Chiefs like the meeting in Bau in 1982, the insistence of the Alliance Government, the support of the SVT Government and now the SDL and the multi-party Government to bring this important issue to Parliament.
The emergence of the current Qoliqoli Bill is an outcome of a long struggle by the chiefs beginning with the signatories of the Deed of Cession to return to Fijian people what they owned according to their understanding of what they were expected as chiefs when they agreed to give Fiji unconditionally to Queen Victoria in 1874. It appears that the holders of opposing perspectives to the current debate have much to learn from our local history.
Dr Tupeni Baba is an academic and politician, who founded the New Labour Unity Party. He is also the co-author of "Speight of Violence." He is a senator in the Qarase Government.
Fiji Times Online: http://www.fijitimes.com.
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** Ken Conklin's note: Respected Fiji political commentator seems to say that since Asian Fijians have been leaving Fiji in large numbers in recent years, due to race-based political coups, therefore ethnic Fijians will soon outnumber Asian Fijians by 2-1. Therefore Fiji can move forward without any need for laws guaranteeing racial supremacy for natives (they'll reign supreme simply by being the overwhelming majority, having scared away the non-natives). Consider the implications for Hawaii!
http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2007/April/04-25-24.htm
PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT
Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i
COUPS, RACISM, TRADITION CHALLENGE FIJI FUTURE
SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, April 24) – One of the architects of Fiji's Constitution, Dr Brij Lal says the country faces three main challenges, as its leaders contemplate its future.
The three challenges facing Fiji is its coup culture, its politics of race, and the role and place of traditional institutions and practices in the modern political arena, he says.
Dr Lal said this as Fiji prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of its first coup on May 14. On this day in 1987, the little known Major General Sitiveni Rabuka staged the first of two military coups, "to reassert ethnic supremacy" following the 1987 elections which had brought an Indian dominated government to power. Some say it laid the foundation for more coups taking place, with the latest staged on December 5 last year.
"It would be a cliché to say that Fiji is at the cross-roads again, because it has been there before," said Dr Lal, a Professor in Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University.
But nonetheless, Fiji faces several acute, path-altering challenges as its leaders contemplate its future, he added.
Dr Lal says Fiji's first challenge is to deal with its coup culture.
"The 1987 and 2006 (coups) may have different causes and rationales and significantly different outcomes, but in the end they have one feature in common: the military overthrow of a legally elected government."
He believes that if an important test of a democracy is its ability to survive a change of government, then Fiji has failed the test.
"What will it take to break the cycle?" he asks.
Dr Lal says there are those who want the military disbanded. "But that is unrealistic in the present circumstances.
"Should ways be devised to incorporate the military in the overarching framework of democracy so that the military is privy to and participant in, and not simply a recipient of decisions at the national level," Dr Lal asks.
He feels it is important to inculcate into the populace fundamental respect for law and order.
"Violence as an instrument of public policy does not solve problems, it merely compounds them," he noted.
"As one New Zealand writer has said, ‘Violence always compromises or ruins the cause it means to serve: it produces as much wrong as it tries to remedy'."
Dr Lal says the second challenge for Fiji is to move away from its preoccupation with the politics of race.
"It is an obsession of the past that should not be allowed to hobble the present and the future."
He says the demographic transition of the last two decades has fundamentally altered Fiji's landscape.
"Within the next two decades, the indigenous community will be two thirds of the population of Fiji, putting paid to the fears of ‘Indian domination' that underpinned Fijian political discourse for much of the 20th Century."
Dr Lal says the Interim Administration's proposal to dismantle the race-based electoral system is to be applauded, "provided it is done with wide public consultation and support rather than through a decree."
In this regard, the recommendations of the Reeves Commission may be worth re-visiting, he added.
The third major challenge facing Fiji, according to Dr Lal, is the role and place of traditional institutions and practices in the modern political arena.
"It is, in the final analysis, a question for the indigenous community to ponder.
"The recent spectacle of the tussle between the Great Council of Chiefs and the Military must have been a source of much dismay and discomfort to indigenous Fijians, for they are not used to seeing such confrontation and war of words in the open."
He says two of the principal institutions of the indigenous community, the Methodist Church and the Great Council of Chiefs, have been sidelined and silenced, institutions to which ordinary Fijians looked for leadership.
"Much has been said about the future of the chiefly system, and there has been talk of a ‘chiefless' society in Fiji.
"The chiefly system itself is not at fault; errant behaviour of some of its members is," he noted.
"Is the GCC equipped to deal with issues of national importance when there is no ‘national input' into its decision making?" Dr Lal asks.
"The GCC appoints the President and the Vice President, but does it seek advice and counsel of others beyond the membership of this ethnically exclusive body?"
Fijilive Copyright © 2007 Fijilive. All Rights Reserved.
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http://www.fijitime s.com/story. aspx?id=71884
Fiji Times Online, Sunday, October 07, 2007
A sympathetic view of indigenous concerns
Ema Tagicakibau
The UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights (UNDIR) was finally adopted at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 13, 2007, following 22 years of intense debate and negotiation between member states and representatives of the world's 370 million indigenous peoples including the Pacific.
Ema Tagicakibau of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) shares both professional and personal views on the implications of the Declaration on indigenous peoples and in response to concerns raised that the Declaration should not be used to abuse the rights of others.1. Why is the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights important for PCRC?
PCRC was born out of indigenous resistance to certain arrogant colonial practices and violations inflicted upon Pacific peoples such as the French nuclear tests, the forced displacement and removal of natives from their ancestral lands to make way for US military bases, nuclear testing programs, extractive industries such as mining, large-scale plantations, development projects and urbanisation, with resulting environmental damages, destruction of their subsistence livelihoods and dislocation of the social cohesion of indigenous peoples.
Though not legally binding, the Declaration recognises that violations were inflicted on indigenous peoples as a group through colonialism and globalisation and that states have a moral responsibility for redress and protection of their rights to their cultures, environment and resources for their sustainable development. 2. What are some relevant provisions of the Declaration?
The right to self-determination, to freely determine their political status, remains a challenge for people of Kanaky, Tahiti Nui, Hawaii or West Papua to name a few, particularly as they are still under the control of those they share no traditional, cultural or linguistic links with.
Others include the protection of ethnic identity, historical sites and intellectual property rights (indigenous knowledge), recognition of the special needs of elders, women, youth, children and the disabled and the right of indigenous women and children to be free from violence.
More importantly is the need to obtain their free, prior and informed consent for any development plans or military activities on their lands, resources or territories, with just and fair compensation where need be.
In Fiji and the region a major source of conflict is the failure to respect the rights of resource owners to be fully consulted in development projects such as tourism or extractive industries like mining and logging that would affect their environments and subsistence livelihood. This is just a matter of courtesy and respect which is fundamental to human rights. 3. How does the Declaration affect the rights of non-indigenous peoples in Fiji ?
The Declaration does not take away or diminish the rights of others as guaranteed under the Constitution, so it should not be taken as a threat.
Having said this, I would like to respond to concerns raised elsewhere that the Declaration must not be used to abuse the rights of others. I think this is a very disrespectful call that insults the intelligence of indigenous peoples.
It seems that some human rights advocates are quite uncomfortable talking about "indigenous rights" and become defensive whenever it is mentioned by waving "universal" rights or avoiding it altogether. This is because they reduce indigenous rights only to "ethnicity" or along racial lines.
This discomfort is based on certain misplaced assumptions about indigenous people being already at a greater advantage compared to others due to the amount of land they hold, the special institutions directed towards their well being, being the majority population, affirmative action policies etc.
Such assumptions are dangerous because they overlook the fact that indigenous peoples as a group have been subjected to some of the most atrocious violations which the Declaration recognises and calls to redress.
Take for example, the reference to Fijians holding 83 per cent of land. Based on my experience growing up on Taveuni, most of the land held by our clan is really rugged and mountainous terrain and cliffs that are hard to access. The best arable and accessible lands near to the villages had been parceled out to settlers (estate owners), the big plantation companies such as BP, MH or Carpenters (1970s) so villagers had to travel further inland for subsistence farming or rely on the generosity of those with nearby lands.
Then you have those who have been dispossessed and forcibly resettled elsewhere after their ancestral lands were traded off under dubious deals or to make way for development projects, infrastructure and urbanisation. These clans have remained among the landless and most marginalised in Fiji . For them the Declaration is a tool for redress.
Recent calls to abolish communal seats from the voting system in order to get away from the current ethnicity-based system benefits non-indigenous peoples who have nothing to lose, but it touches at the very core of ethnic identity for a Fijian which violates the right to security, integrity as a distinct people and to be represented by their own people, according to the Declaration.
Ethnicity can and must not be avoided but it must be managed more effectively and not be manipulated to the demise of the indigenous peoples. The Kanaks had the same fear when the French government decided to have all citizens registered as French in a new Census in New Caledonia . Attempts to neutralise the identity of indigenous peoples must not be a violation of the Declaration.
There is an expectation by human rights advocates in Fiji that indigenous people must be the ones to compromise and accommodate all the time.
Fijians have been historically and socially conditioned through colonisation to have patience with respect to their rights, subordinating them to the rights of others.
This imposes a subjective role that leads them to believe that that they can not have rights until everyone else has theirs. They then become exploited, deprived or hoodwinked by people far advanced in worldly views.
Thus any attempt to protect their rights through affirmative action is viewed as racism, even though non-indigenous peoples, whose cultures have survived over thousands of years of ancient civilisations, are better adapted to globalisation than the Fijian who was only colonised and converted around a century ago.
Why is the National anthem sung only in English at the IRB World Cup when the team is all Fijian and the beauty of the Fijian words can invoke deep sentiments of loyalty, patriotism and the responsibility to one's nation?
Fijians have to accept that as a multi-racial country we have to be sensitive to the feelings of others. But why can't it be the other way around and we they can sing both versions (like South Africa ) and be proud of it because this is Fiji ? So when can we see gestures of respect, integration and reciprocity?
Racial integration cannot be a one-sided affair, forced across the table of brotherhood or sisterhood.
Human rights advocates must respect indigenous rights and not sacrifice them at the altar of universal human rights.
Otherwise they are guilty of inflicting the very violations against indigenous peoples that they try to protect at the universal level.
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/2248175/Fijis-Indian-population-collapsing
Stuff (newspaper, New Zealand), March 10, 2009
Fiji's Indian population collapsing
By MICHAEL FIELD
Fiji's ethnic Indian population is rapidly collapsing as people flee the coup plagued nation.
Data from last year's census, released today by Government Statistician Timoci Bainimarama - brother of Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama - shows Indians now make up only 37.5 percent of the 837,000 people.
In 1966 Indians made up 51 percent of the population.
Other bureau data reveals that last year over 5000 people emigrated from Fiji, over 80 percent of them Indian.
Commodore Bainimarama staged a military coup in 2006, overthrowing an indigenous dominated democratic government and was justified by the commodore on the grounds of ending race based politics in Fiji.
However his brother's data suggests that the Indians, who predominantly supported his coup, are still leaving.
The statistician said the "dramatic change of the ethnic composition of the population" started in the 1950s, gained momentum with Sitiveni Rabuka's 1987 coups and continued in the two further coups between 1996 and 2007.
Indigenous Fijians made up 56.8 percent of the population, 37.5 percent Indian and the remaining groups including Chinese made up 5.7 percent.
In the 11 years to 2007 the Indian population fell 25,020.
Mr Bainimarama said this was the result of a "continuing very high emigration rate for Indians.
"Since 1987, this is undoubtedly by far the most important factor."
Fertility among the remaining population was declining fast as well.
Some of the provincial data showed the drastic decline.
In the sugar growing Ba Province the Indian population was 94 percent larger than the indigenous population. By last year it was just 33 percent larger.
Earlier data shows that since Rabuka's 1987 coups over 100,000 Indians had left.
Indo-Fijians are mostly descendants of indentured labourers bought in by the British to work on CSR Australia owned sugar plantations.
Between 1879 and 1916 around 60,000 "girmitiyas", a corruption of a Hindi word for contract, came.
In the 1966 census Indians accounted for 51 percent of the population. Indigenous Fijians were just 42 percent - the rest made up of Chinese, Europeans, Rotumans and other Pacific Islanders.
Then under British rule, London colonial masters feared Indians would take over the country and in a long and complicated process measures were taken to ensure indigenous Fijians would never lose their land or political dominance.
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2009/August/08-18-14.htm
INDO-FIJIANS MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA
Latest wave to leave is blue collar
MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, August 16, 2009) - A leader of the Indo-Fijian community in the Australian city of Sydney says more and more blue collar workers are leaving Fiji in search of work in Australia and New Zealand.
For years, Fijian professionals like doctors, accountants, lawyers and managers have been leaving the country for jobs in Australia and New Zealand.
But Sanjay Ramesh, political editor of the Fiji Times, an Indo-Fijian community newspaper in Sydney, says now plumbers, construction workers and electricians are increasingly joining the migration trend.
"They are really concerned about the future," he said."They think that there is no resolution in sight in Fiji and that’s what’s driving them out of there. They think that Fiji is heading towards some sort of economic disaster."
Radio Australia: www.abc.net.au/ra
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2009/October/10-21-13.htm
BAINIMARAMA THANKS FIJI INDIANS AT FESTIVAL
‘You have made our nation culturally vibrant’
SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, October 17, 2009) – Fiji’s Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama has paid tribute to Fiji’s Indians, thanking them for their contribution to the nation.
In a message to mark the Hindu festival of lights - Diwali (or Deepawali, meaning row of lamps) - Bainimarama thanked "our Indo-Fijian brothers and sisters for the colour, excitement and joy that they have brought into our communities".
"You have made our nation culturally vibrant and rich in its diversity. And for that we shall be forever grateful".
Drawing parallels with the Diwali message of light overcoming darkness, Bainimarama reiterated his government would remain steadfast in its vision for the nation.
"The trials of darkness that the few in the local and international community seek to subject our nation to, will be challenged and overcome," he said, in apparent reference to efforts by overseas governments to pressure Fiji into early elections through sanctions.
At the same time, Bainimarama said the people of Fiji must accept and respect that there is a reason and purpose for their being together as "a people of one nation and with one destiny".
Since 1987, two Indian-led governments have been overthrown in military and civilian-led coups.
Bainimarama has promised to eliminate ethnic thinking from the national psyche by replacing race-based voting with a new electoral system before further elections are held from 2014, as a way of breaking Fiji’s "coup cycle"
Fijilive: http://www.fijilive.com
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2009/October/10-21-an.htm
Analysis
THE FIJI COUP AND THE POLITICS OF ETHNICITY
By Jon Fraenkel
Fiji’s December 2006 military coup and the abrogation of the country’s constitution in April 2009 have generated conflicting reactions. Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, the Commonwealth and the Pacific Islands Forum have condemned the actions of coup leader Frank Bainimarama, who currently serves as interim prime minister. They have sought to get Bainimarama to agree to fresh elections and restart the ‘President’s Forum’ dialogue with elected politicians, which he abandoned in April. But a significant minority of the civil society movement within Fiji has backed the post-coup government’s reformist agenda, even in some cases to the point of accepting that this must be enacted through authoritarian means.
Overseas, Bainimarama’s government also has outspoken sympathisers who tend to be still more enthusiastic about the regime’s objectives, and less critical of military repression, than the coup leader’s fellow travellers in Fiji. Within the country, those with opposing views have been silenced, particularly since the media clampdown of April 2009. As a result, Fiji’s government has been able to complain loudly, without provoking a storm of protest in the local press, that criticisms of its actions are based on ignorance of Fiji’s history and a lack of awareness of the unique difficulties that the country has faced since independence. That claim is deeply misleading.
Those who attempt to justify Fiji’s December 2006 coup argue that the military’s action was necessary to move the country’s political arena away from control by ethnically based politicians and parties. According to the Vanuatu-based Pacific Institute of Public Policy, for example, the coup provided a "circuit breaker" that may rid Fiji of corruption and racism, reform a "gerrymandered electoral system" and "embrace one-person one-vote." Even the abrogation of Fiji’s constitution in April has not stilled the sympathy of those who believe Bainimarama’s coup constitutes a "revolution for clean-up," as the Fiji Labour Party’s Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi called it in June 2007. (His leader Mahendra Chaudhry is now furiously backtracking on such claims, following his party’s departure from Bainimarama’s government.) The claim that the coup is "revolutionary" is, after all, the only plausible rejoinder to those who argue for the sanctity of the rule of law and the inviolability of democracy. Father Kevin Barr, one of several Catholic leftists who have taken up positions in the new order, argued back in December 2006 that Bainimarama’s coup should be seen in the context of those many cases in the history of nations in which "kings were deposed, wars were fought, governments were ousted or revolutions were begun in order to bring about a more just regime change."
In accordance with this type of insurrectionist interpretation, Bainimarama has cast himself in the role of a modern-day Robespierre seeking to transcend the parochial divisions of the ancien regime, or as a reborn Kamal Attaturk intent on building a modern secular order. It would be hard to deny that the early history of nationbuilding has often involved crushing communalist challenges to the emergence of the modern state, often as the domestic by-product of external wars. But international opinion has swung against suppressing communalist ideology as a route to robust state-formation – partly, perhaps, because the world wars of the mid-twentieth century have discredited nationalist ideology. No one seriously imagines that it might be possible to resolve the difficulties in Iraq or Afghanistan by concerted attacks on the Sunni Muslims in Iraq or the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. The recent crushing of Tamil separatists by Sri Lanka’s army may have been a resounding military victory, but it hardly constitutes a durable political settlement. It is inconceivable that an assault on the institutions of indigenous Fijian post-colonial rule might yield a viable future for that country.
Fiji’s military clampdown was not accompanied by mass killing, but would those who sympathise with Bainimarama’s suppression of ethno-nationalism have opposed this had it been? When Bainimarama (through spokesman Neumi Leweni) repudiated any negotiated settlement in the aftermath of the abrogation of the constitution, rejecting Commonwealth/UN efforts to assist in brokering a President’s Forum, he was effectively throwing down a gauntlet to opponents. When the soldiers and police convicted of the murders of three indigenous Fijians, Sakuisa Rabaka, Nimilote Verebasaga and Tevita Malasebe, were released from prison in April, the transparent objective was to send a message to the military rank-and-file that if they shed blood to protect the regime they would be protected from legal action. No violent reaction to Bainimarama’s regime has resulted as yet. The rather desperate hope of coup opponents for a Methodist-inspired uprising in August 2009 failed to materialise (and this was in itself indicative of a striking failure of the political opposition). But were it to do so, how far would the sympathisers of the suppression of ethno-nationalism be prepared to go? Does the coup-regime survive only because of the good graces of its opponents and the absence of the kinds of popular resistance seen recently in Thailand, Honduras, Iran or, a few years back, Pakistan?
Surveying the international experience of coups aimed at bridging ethnic divisions, it is striking how few cases give credence to that objective. West African military coups after independence were frequently depicted as efforts to counter tribalism or tackle civilian corruption, but almost invariably proved to be instruments for the triumph of militarised ethnocracy. Coups aimed at countering ethnic polarisation tend to morph quickly into vehicles for the ascendancy of one or the other group. Bainimarama’s coup started out amidst grandiose claims of multi-racialist objectives, but has tended to morph into a takeover that bears greater resemblance to previous ethno-nationalist seizures of power. Old hands from Rabuka’s post-1987 coup governments, like Foreign Minister (and veteran Taukei movement supporter) Inoke Kubuabola, Chinese ambassador Jim Ah Koy and Education Minister Filipe Bole, have been restored to important positions. Contrary to Bainimarama’s claims at the United Nations General Assembly meeting to be waging a battle of ‘new elites’ against ‘old elites’, aging figures in the Fijian establishment associated with Fiji’s first post-independence Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara – such as Ratu Epeli Nailatikau and Ratu Epeli Ganilau – now occupy pivotal positions in the new order. The early enthusiasm of some in the Fiji Indian political elite for Bainimarama’s coup has faded – with the departure of Mahendra Chaudhry’s Fiji Labour Party from government in August 2008. The multi-culturalist objectives of the coup are still loudly proclaimed at meetings of the UN or before gatherings of ethnic Fijian soldiers at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks, but these nowadays sit awkwardly alongside events at home. For example, the Christian "crusade" against crime recently launched amidst great fanfare by the Fiji Police Commissioner and serving naval officer, Esala Teleni, has provoked a predictable dismay from senior Hindu or Muslim police officers.
The exigencies faced by regimes created by coups, unable to rule by consensus, generally put paid to anti-corruption objectives even faster than the patronage networks cultivated by civilian regimes. Where military forces acquire some legitimacy in the nation-building process, or play some enduring role in guarding secular state traditions (as in Turkey or Indonesia), they generally earn this through prestige acquired during the struggle for independence or in conflicts with external adversaries. More usually, "coups to end all coups" that aim to transcend communal divisions have ended in forms of dictatorship. This was the case in Syria, for example, where after eighteen coup attempts the Ba’ath Party in the 1960s seized office pressing a pan-Arabist and socialist ideology, but by the 1970s, with Hafez al-Assad in control, the party moved to cement the position of an Alawi-dominated ruling elite against popular Sunni opposition.
Fiji’s experience of coups – none killed in 1987, sixteen in 2000 and four so far since 2006 – gives some encouragement to theories of Pacific exceptionalism and non-violence. But many of the early African, Thai and Latin American coups were much less violent than those that followed. With time, there is logic to repeated coups becoming ever more questions of life and death, with perpetrators becoming bound to "make-or-break" suppression of dissent. Bainimarama, if he fails, is unlikely to spend his future basking on a tropical island, as did his predecessor George Speight, leader of the 2000 coup.
In other words, the idea of an army that stands above the fray, insulated from ethnic politics, finds little historical support. And that’s especially the case when the military itself reflects communal divisions – as it does in Fiji, where the military remains 99 per cent indigenous and negligible effort has been made towards broadening its make-up. (The names of new recruits published in the local press attest to the ongoing ethnic imbalance.) Elsewhere, purportedly neutral armies have quickly come down on one or other side in protracted conflicts. In Northern Ireland, the largely Catholic and Republican civil rights movement was suppressed by the Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary in the 1960s. British troops arriving to keep the peace in 1969 were notoriously greeted with cups of tea provided by the beleaguered Catholic communities of Derry and West Belfast. Within days, Britain’s claim to be performing a peace-keeping role had been repudiated by Republicans. Bloody Sunday, internment without trial and the hunger strikes followed.
After two decades of civil strife, the eventually agreed peace process in Northern Ireland provides some inspiration for the parties to other seemingly intractable conflicts. The 1998 Good Friday agreement – despite considerable teething difficulties – brought Republican and Loyalist politicians together in a power-sharing arrangement. It was an outcome that accords with what the world now knows about how to handle politicised ethnicity: that the forcible suppression of broadly-backed communalist ideology, however distasteful that ideology may be, rarely works. Power-sharing – as experimented with for the first time since independence in Fiji during May–December 2006 – brings better results, even if lasting transformation of the political order requires a great deal of hard work and effective leadership.
Underpinning theories about the military transformation of Fiji politics there often lies a naive instrumentalist theory of politicised ethnicity. In its crudest version, the prevalence of communal voting in Fiji is blamed on the British legacy of racially based electorates, which survived in the 1970, 1990 and 1997 constitutions. But racially based voting, which is common to both the 57 per cent ethnic Fijian and 38 per cent Fiji Indian populations, does not occur simply in the communal constituencies, but also in the open contests in which all Fiji’s eligible citizens may participate. Societies like Guyana, Bosnia and Northern Ireland also exhibit strong communal voting patterns, but none of these has Fiji-style race-based electoral rolls. Some attribute this situation to the strength of primordial sentiments, as if cultural affinities are always impervious to political change. Constructivist theories, by contrast, reject both instrumentalist interpretations of ethnicity as some kind of "false consciousness" engineered by unscrupulous elites and the primordialist or culturalist theories of innate and inevitable difference. Ethnic identification is not the only possible type of political outlook in societies like Fiji’s, but it can – and in that context did – become a powerful and enduring source of political identification. For that reason, efforts simply to annihilate the political representatives of powerful social forces are unlikely to be successful, and are likely to generate worse problems than they are aimed at resolving. The better approach, as indicated by the Northern Ireland and South African settlements, is to try to accommodate distinct groups in a social compact, and to depoliticise ethnicity.
Perhaps all the lessons of history and global politics will leave exceptionalists and cultural relativists unconvinced. Perhaps Fiji will buck the global trend and, with time, communalist ideologies will fade and electoral loyalties change. Speaking on the SBS’s Dateline program in July, Bainimarama [1] acknowledged that his hostility to elections was driven by the fact that any poll would lead to the re-election of the very government he deposed. If, as this suggests, the regime lacks the ability to rule by consensus, then to survive it at least needs to consolidate a dependable command structure through the state bureaucracy. Yet since the social base of the regime remains weak, its systems of authority will inevitably remain fragile. The post-coup purges of those identified with the old order have now given way to further purges of those who staked their careers on the success of the new, with the core ruling circle growing ever narrower, ever more insular and thus more brittle. Perhaps the response of Samuel Finer, author of The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, to his own question is apposite: he asks why, given the strength of military forces around the world and the consequent vulnerability of civilian governments, there are not more military dictatorships internationally. His answer is twofold: "one weakness is the armed forces’ technical inability to administer any but the most primitive community. The second is their lack of legitimacy: that is to say, their lack of moral title to rule." In other words, soldiers tend not to be very good at politics.
Jon Fraenkel is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University. This article is based on a talk given at the Crawford Fiji Updates in Canberra and Brisbane in August.
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http://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2009/12/the-mammoth-task-of-ridding-fiji-of-coup-culture-–-rev-akuila-yabaki/
Pacific Scoop (New Zealand) December 17, 2009
The mammoth task of ridding Fiji of coup culture
by Rev. Akuila Yabaki
Thakur Ranjit Singh is a post graduate student in Communication Studies at AUT and a volunteer at the Pacific Media Centre. He reports on a paper presented by Fiji’s Reverend Akuila Yabaki
Introduction: Fiji’s Reverend Akuila Yabaki, who heads Fiji Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF) recently presented a paper to the Pacific Islands Political Studies Association (PIPSA) conference held at the University of Auckland. The paper was titled ”From paramountcy to equality: Constitutionalism, dialogue and ethno-political conflict in Fiji” and asserted how Fiji ought to rid itself of its coup-culture and institutionalise an egalitarian, non-race-based society.
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The 11th Pacific Islands Political Studies Association (PIPSA) held at University of Auckland earlier this month had Pacific well covered in its discussions. It covered Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, the French Pacific and Pasifika in New Zealand.
Fiji, with its chain of problems was well represented by distinguished presenters. Subhash Appanna from Auckland Institute of Studies presented “From democratic dictatorship to democracy in Fiji”
Susanna Trnka presented her well researched topic on the “Ethnographic analysis of ethnic identity, violence and the state in Fiji.” She is the author of “State of suffering: Political violence and community survival in Fiji.” This book, which is the result of her long research in Fiji has focussed on political violence and embodied practices of citizenship amongst Indo Fijians in Fiji.
The final presenter was none other than the charismatic Reverend Akuila Yabaki, who heads Fiji Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF). His topic was ”From paramountcy to equality: Constitutionalism, dialogue and ethno-political conflict in Fiji.” Rev Yabaki did not only deliver the paper at the PIPSA Conference but also held a special lecture organised by the University of Auckland and facilitated by the President of PIPSA President, well known Pacific Academic, Dr. Steven Ratuva. In addition to this the Reverend also went on air at the Hindi Radio Station, Radio Tarana to brief its listeners on the situation in Fiji.
He told his audience that the 1997 Fiji Constitution was still good despite its shortfalls. It was the Indo Fijian Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry’s leadership style that had created enemies and fuelled those harbouring ethno nationalism. These nationalist elements, supported by some politicians were responsible for the 1987 and 2000 coups. Effectively, the lack of compliance of the Constitution led to the coup. He further added that Fiji’s problems were deep rooted where the country inherited a divided people from the British Colonisers. The divide and rule principles have to be removed before the elections are held because the leaders capitalised on racial slogans to capture votes. The constitution should not be allowed to give legitimacy to a race-based politics and elections in this modern world.
The militarisation, the coup culture and the process of change
He said the rationale for militarisation at the positions of power was to increase efficiency by removing bureaucracy that had been stifling progress. He added that the coup culture in Fiji could only be discussed by discussing the military make up and involving them in the discussions. The National Charter for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF) was a good document with 11 pillars to carve a roadmap for Fiji that was supposed to have been done through a parliamentary process. However removing the race-based politics would endanger support for political parties; hence their narrow political vested interest was the cause of reluctance in supporting this process, especially the Methodist Church and Qarase’s SDL Party.
He said that Fiji have had four coups and therefore there was an urgent need to look at ways to rid Fiji of the coup culture. Bainimarama was correct on racial policies. The ethno nationalist who had supported Rabuka in 1987 and Speight in 2000 were now at the receiving end. The rhetoric of racism had dogged Fiji for long and the Charter was seen as an inclusive approach but the Methodist Church and the SDL, (which are politically aligned) failed to join the process of change.
The Reverend said the CCF went into this process of Charter with some conditions such as sticking to the 1997 Constitution, the process to be inclusive of all, military and police to ensure freedom of information and roadmap to election should have a fixed date. That was when the Charter commenced in 2008 but now the situation has changed with the abrogation of 1997 Constitution on 10 April, 2009. The process of involving the civil society had commenced and the citizen diplomacy had started, involving community and the civil society. However dialogue at the political level had not commenced as there was a need for a genuine desire to change and move the country forward.
Overseas reactions
Yabaki said while New Zealand and Australia had taken a hard line, relationship with USA, especially military cooperation was still on. EU had been a stronger draw card and they were looking at a more inclusive approach. As a result of hard-nosed policies of traditional friends, Fiji was embarking on a look-north policy with Air Pacific commencing direct flights to Hong Kong.
While the Melanesian Spearhead group has been supportive of Bainimarama’s path for change, the relationship with Samoa and Cook Islands was fractured.
Electoral reforms
Rev Yabaki said that at the Charter level, it was strongly felt that the electoral system was what needed to be changed. In this regards, there has to be a mega-leap or an evolution. He reiterated that exploitation of a race-based politics had been the cause of Fiji’s problems. A consultative agreement with political parties would be needed.
He reminded that the timeframe of election was September 2014, with a need for anti-racist legislation so that the institutionalised and legalised forms of racial voting needed to be removed while appealing to one race for fear of land-grab by the other would be outlawed.
Yabaki was very pleased with the developments where the political parties were shifting away from racial slogans.
Positive outlook
When questioned on anything positive coming out of Fiji, Yabaki said that school bus fares had been made free while the budget had been well-received by all sections of the community. Roads were being opened up, they were also kept in good order and the administration was now coming to the people and there appeared to be a change in the traditional bureaucratic civil service mentality.
Talking on Radio Tarana, Yabaki repeated that the divisive political culture that Fiji inherited from the Colonial British had to be removed and the answer to Fiji’s problems had to come from within (Fiji) rather than without. He was hopeful that given the goodwill, the National Charter Council would try its best to guide Fiji to parliamentary democracy.
On the New Zealand government stand on Fiji, Yabaki said that NZ had not succeeded as answers needed to come from Fiji, therefore more conciliatory policies would help inculcate and enhance democracy in Fiji.
The message coming out of his delivery was that the ethno-nationalist instability of 1987 was by the fear mongers and Rabuka had admitted his mistakes and apologised as well. However, some remnants of the 1987 era carried out their agenda with Speight in 2000.
His main message on Fiji was to do what was best for Fiji. He pleaded to all, especially to politicians and even foreign governments to appreciate and realise that they were dealing with the military and hence they needed to find a window of opportunity to make a difference for the better future for democracy in Fiji.
Reverend Yabaki’s parting message was that while the task in Fiji was difficult and mammoth, it nevertheless was not impossible. Hence the hope lives on.
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2011/September/09-26-03.htm
East-West Center, University of Hawaii, report for September 26, 2011
BAINIMARAMA PROMISES NEW CONSTITUTION BY 2013
Goal to create society free of discrimination
By Repeka Nasiko
SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, Sept. 26, 2011) – Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama has assured the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) that a new Fiji Constitution will be drafted between September next year and 2013.
Speaking at the 66th session of the UNGA, Commodore Bainimarama said the new constitution will be based on principles developed in the People’s Charter for Peace, Change and Progress.
"The road map clearly states that in the process the new Fijian constitution must do away with racial categorisation and discrimination, so that for the first time in Fiji’s history, Fijians will go to elections in 2014 on the basis of common and equal suffrage."
He said the roadmap will undo decades of undemocratic laws and policies inherited from our colonial past and entrenched in past constitutions, which have impeded our nation’s progress.
"This is a determined move to create a society based on substantive equality and justice, and respect for the dignity of all Fijians."
Commodore Bainimarama said electronic registration of voters for 2014 elections will begin in January next year.
Fijilive: http://www.fijilive.com
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2012/March/03-15-01.htm
DECREE ABOLISHES FIJI’S GREAT COUNCIL OF CHIEFS
Traditional body, product of ‘colonial past,’ called ‘irrelevant’
By Mereani Gonedua
SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, March 14, 2012) – Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) or Bose Levu Vakaturaga has been abolished, 136 years after it was set up.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said the institution had become irrelevant in an era that Fiji seeks common and equal citizenry.
A decree, the iTaukei Affairs Revocation Regulation, effecting the abolishment was signed by President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, and gazetted on Friday.
Bainimarama said the GCC was an institution created by the British during colonialism and has become politicized to the detriment of Fiji.
"The GCC is a product of our colonial past and Fiji must focus on the future in which all Fijian are represented on the same basis," Bainimarama said. "If all Fijians are to have their say during the consultation for Fiji’s new constitution, then we must ensure every voice is equally heard and equally represented."
He said GCC members and its secretariat have become highly politicized, with members having political affiliations and membership in political parties.
[PIR editor’s note: Labour Party leader and former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry criticized Bainimarama’s actions, saying the fate of the council should be decided by the indigenous people of Fiji, admitting that while the council had become increasingly political in nature, the military had also become a politically-influenced institution after the 1987 coup. Chaudhry added that the abolishment of the council was "surprising, to say the least" prior to the upcoming constitutional consultations.]
The GCC was behind the formation of the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei, a party led by 1987 coup leader Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka.
It was created in 1876 by the British, an elite body of iTaukei chiefs known as the Native Council, to help directly and indirectly implement its rule over Fiji.
Bainimarama suspended it in April 2007 after the December 2006 military takeover.
The last GCC chairman was the Tui Tavua, Ratu Ovini Bokini, while the Ratu Sakiusa Makutu of Nadroga was his deputy.
The GCC had comprised 55 members, including the Fiji President:, Vice-President and Prime Minister, 42 provincial councilors with 3 chosen by each of Fiji's 14 provinces, six members appointed by the President on the advice of the Minister for Fijian Affairs, three members of the Rotuma Council and life member Sitiveni Rabuka, the 1987 military coup leader.
All of Fiji’s constitutions gave the GCC a lot of power and influence over politics and government decisions, especially through the Senate.
Fiji's 1970 Independence Constitution allowed the GCC to appoint eight of the 22 members of the Senate.
The 1990 Constitution that came into place after Rabuka's 1987 military coup increased this such that the GCC appointed 24 of the new Senate's 34 members. The GCC would also appoint the President and Vice-President of the nation.
The 1997 Constitution reduced its powers, giving it 14 appointees out of 32 in the Senate.
[PIR editor’s note: Rabuka, who also lead Fiji as Prime Minister, said the Bainimarama government will have to justify its decision to do away with the GCC, warning that while current and future citizens of the country may not want the council, the decision to abolish it should be tested in parliamentary settings.]
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2012/March/03-15-17.htm
FORMER FIJI LEADER SAYS DEMOCRACY MAY NOT APPLY
‘People may want to reassess the value of democracy’: Rabuka
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Radio New Zealand International, March 14, 2012) – A former coup leader in Fiji says democracy as it is practiced in other parts of the world may not be applicable in Fiji.
Sitiveni Rabuka’s comment follows the interim prime minister’s announcement of the abolition of the Great Council of Chiefs.
The council was suspended following the 2006 military coup, and in 2008 new regulations governing it were introduced.
Mr. Rabuka, who led the 1987 coup, says when he handed power back to a civilian president he asked him to look at Fiji’s own brand of democracy.
"Which is traditionally socialist, bringing into play and into an active part of the ruling of the nation, the traditional customary rights and leadership. But now the mainstay of that system has now been totally cancelled by this announcement by Bainimarama."
Sitiveni Rabuka says with the economic collapse of democratic countries such as Greece people may want to reassess the value of democracy.
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2012/March/03-21-04.htm
FIJI ARMY SPOKESMAN: NEW CONSTITUTION WILL END COUPS
Ending race-based politics key to reduced conflict
MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, March 19, 2012) – A new Fiji constitution being drawn up over the next 12 months will mean no more military coups in Fiji, army spokesman Colonel Mosese Tikoitoga says.
Fiji's government, headed by 2006 coup leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama, plans to have a draft constitution ready by February next year.
Colonel Tikoitoga says it will end race-based politics, and subsequently the need for the military to become involved in politics.
"A more liberal policy means a more multi-cultural, multi-national policy that allows the integration of all the races and when that happens there is no reason why coups should happen, because you're not working only in relevance to any particular pressure group but you're actually working for the whole of Fiji," Colonel Tikoitoga told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program.
Colonel Tikoitoga has also defended the government's move to abolish the Great Council of Chiefs last week, saying the 137-year-old institution had become politicized.
"All the Fijian political parties had to do was entice the Great Council of Chiefs with their policies which were, again, racially-biased, and then dictate to them what the party wants and then these chiefs would go back to their villages and dictate to their villages, or to their subjects, what party they should vote [for]," he said.
[PIR editor’s note: Tikoitoga also added that the Methodist Church is, like the GCC, pursuing its own agenda. According to the colonel, "certain ministers" are still actively working for their own political benefit.]
Radio Australia: www.abc.net.au/ra
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http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2012/March/03-21-15.htm
FIJI PROVINCIAL CHIEF SUPPORTS ABOLISHING GREAT COUNCIL
Return village roles a ‘blessing’ to Fiji, says Ratu Katonivere
By Ropate Valemei
SUVA, Fiji (Fijilive, March 20, 2012) – Fiji's Macuata Province paramount chief Ratu Aisea Katonivere has become the first big chief to publicly approve the government's scrapping of the Great Council of Chiefs.
The former politician says chiefs will now be able to concentrate on their role and people instead of politics.
The GCC was formally abolished on March 9 when the iTaukei Affairs Revocation Regulation decree was signed by President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, and gazetted. The decision was announced by Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama on March 14.
Katonivere said he believes the Bainimarama government is doing the right thing.
"The returning of chiefs to their actual role in their villages will restore blessings in Fiji," he said.
"I also thank the government for the steps they have taken where it allows all Fijians to be treated equally by having their rights and freedom to speak their minds," he said.
Katonivere advised his province on the importance of communication and sharing of ideas.
"I had told my people to make use of their right by talking to their neighbors on what issues they need to raise to be part of the constitution," he said.
Katonivere said the initial role of a chief is to protect his people with honesty and integrity.
However, for the provincial issues, Katonivere said he has to have a meeting with the provincial members to straighten out issues that will be best for his people and also for the whole of Fiji.
Fijilive: http://www.fijilive.com
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http://archives.pireport.org/archive/2012/April/04-17-an.htm
Analysis
FIJI PARAMOUNT CHIEF DEALS THE ‘RACIAL SKELETONS’ CARD
By Graham Davis
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (Pacific Scoop, April 16, 2012) –A titanic struggle looms between the old and new orders in Fiji for the hearts and minds of the indigenous majority – the i-Taukei.
It’s a struggle that will determine the future for all Fiji citizens and on present indications, the portents don’t look good.
Because the old order – the i-Taukei chiefs – seem determined to make race the centerpiece of their campaign, to mine all the old prejudices that have retarded independent Fiji’s development right from the start.
The evidence for this is an astonishing letter to the self-proclaimed leader of the "New Order" – Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama – from one of the country’s paramount chiefs –Ro Teimumu Kepa – in which she raises the specter of "racial calamity" in Fiji.
The phrase has sent a chill through the ranks of non-indigenous Fijians, who comprise 40 percent of the population. Because however much Bainimarama assures them of a bright multiracial future, the old racial skeletons are being rattled at the apex of indigenous society.
Ro Teimumu heads one of the three indigenous confederacies – Burebasaqa – and carries the title Roko Tui Dreketi, which she inherited on the death of Ro Lady Lala Mara, the wife of the founder of modern Fiji and multiracial standard bearer, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara.
From her base in Rewa, outside Suva, Ro Teimumu appears to have embraced the mantle of warrior chieftain – the Boadicea of the South Seas – taking it upon herself to confront Bainimarama head on.
Warrior chieftain?
Her immediate casus belli is Bainimarama’s sudden and unilateral decision to disband Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), depriving it of its previous status in national life and abrogating its power to, among other things, appoint the country’s president.
Chiefs high and low are in revolt, not only over their loss of status and Bainimarama’s lese majeste but also a loss of income as the government bypasses them and channels funding direct to the grassroots.
It has damaged both their pride and their pockets. And many Fijians wonder whether Bainimarama – who has emerged as the ultimate exponent of the "crash through or crash" brand of reform – may have finally overplayed his hand. In any event, he has now been dealt an unwelcome racial card.
In her letter -in which she provocatively addresses the Prime Minister as "Voreqe," his indigenous Christian name – Ro Teimumu describes his decision to abolish the GCC as "a serious error of judgment."
"Despite the shallow criticisms against the role of traditional chiefs, they are the stabilizing factor for Fiji and they have helped to control the ethno-nationalism and facilitate conciliation in ethnic relations in Fiji," she states.
Ro Teimumu continues with a broad attack on a central pillar of Bainimarama’s rule – his multiracial agenda. This includes a level electoral playing field when promised elections are held and the use of the term Fijian to describe all citizens and not just the indigenous majority.
"The obsession to remove racial issues from the governance of this country is short-sighted and ill-conceived, for ethnicity is a fact of life," Ro Teimumu says.
"The revolutionary changes you are making cannot be made without the involvement of the GCC. Any calamity between the races or even between indigenous Fijians themselves can only be resolved with the involvement of the GCC," she declares.
In the Fiji context, such a statement from one of the three most senior chiefs in the country has very serious implications. Is Ro Teimumu signaling that without the formal involvement of the chiefs in national life, racial calamity is inevitable?
Many will note her choice of the word calamity. Racial stresses, even tensions, have long been a fact of life in Fiji.
But racial disaster involving great distress and great suffering – the accepted meaning of calamity? Nothing can be more designed to provoke unease and erode community confidence.
Incitement potential
The wider concern is whether this statement has the potential to incite racial hatred and trigger racial conflict in the vanua – especially those areas of indigenous life over which the chiefs still hold great sway, however much their power has been eroded.
In the immediate aftermath of previous coups, a wave of home invasions and bashings descended on Indo-Fijians living in certain parts of the country. Some of it was described as institutionalized violence, in which the authorities allegedly turned a blind eye to flagrant human rights abuses.
Bainimarama has promised the country this will never happen again. But can the racial minorities in Fiji ever take him at his word when a paramount chief invokes the specter of a "calamitous" reprise?
Ro Teimumu is a formidable opponent – resentful not just of Bainimarama’s truncation of chiefly privileges but from having been a minister in the pro-indigenous SDL government that he removed at gunpoint in 2006. Far from going quietly, she’s been a persistent critic of the regime ever since, forging close ties with the leaders of that other pillar of opposition to the Bainimarama regime – the Methodist Church.
In 2009, she was arrested for defying the military’s ban on the Methodist Church holding its annual conference. She offered to host it herself in Rewa village and was charged with inciting disobedience when she encouraged church members to attend.
Since then, relations between the GCC and the Church have become even closer. The Methodists have strongly criticized the abrogation of the GCC and both cast themselves as the sole remaining bulwarks against Bainimarama’s perceived threat to the indigenous way of life.
Ro Teimumu’s latest missive to the prime minister was the second within days and followed a letter of protest over what she termed the environmental threat posed by the proposed Namosi copper mine outside Suva. That can fairly be cast as the legitimate right of a traditional chief to safeguard the interests of her people.
But raising the prospect of racial conflict in an already volatile wider environment? Even on prominent anti-government blogs like Coup 4.5, Ro Teimumu’s comments have generated a wave of criticism.
One correspondent there termed it "the last gasp of the old order in Fiji" and said even talking about racial calamity made her "unfit to hold any responsible position in national life."
How the regime will respond is yet to be seen. But Ro Teimumu has emerged as arguably the most potent opposition leader in Fiji – the principal standard bearer for the chiefs, the Methodist Church and the many thousands of traditional indigenous Fijians they still claim to represent. The old Fiji versus the new.
Graham Davis is an independent Fiji-born Australian journalist. He publishes the blog Grubsheet.
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http://pidp.org/pireport/2013/April/04-18-01.htm
Fiji Regime Reportedly Undermining Constitutional Process
Minority Rights Group calls for laws to prohibit ethnic discrimination
MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, April 17, 2013) – An international human rights group has accused Fiji's interim government of undermining the constitutional process.
The Minority Rights Group International says there's widespread concern in Fiji that the interim government is unwilling to relinquish power.
The findings are in a report released jointly with Fiji's Citizens Constitutional Forum.
The report offers policy recommendations, based on evidence drawn from interviews across all of Fiji's ethnic groups.
It has called on the government to enact legislation to prohibit discrimination and exclusion based on ethnicity, and provide transparent, accessible and effective access to justice for all victims of discrimination.
"The government is trying to address ethnic divisions in Fijian politics," said Chris Chapman, MRG's Head of Conflict Prevention.
"This is laudable, but the message is being lost, as the general public simply focuses on the way the government has interrupted the constitutional process and stifled independent opinion.
"In fact, our research shows that the government could arrive at the same goal by opening up the debate and trusting the people to make their own choices."
In January the Fijian government scrapped the draft constitution drawn up by an independent commission led by Professor Yash Ghai.
The draft was based on around 7,000 submissions received from the public, and submitted to be re-written by the Attorney-General's office.
The rejection was followed by the scrapping of plans to establish a Constituent Assembly that would have deliberated on the new constitution.
Chris Chapman told Radio Australia Fijians were much happier with the previous constitution process carried out by Yash Ghai.
"They were extremely frustrated and they felt that the Yash Ghai constitution, which could have been a blueprint to deal with these difficult issues, was being thrown away," he said.
"It was a lost opportunity and a new constitution was being forced onto the country that didn't involve any proper consultation."
Fiji's Interim Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama says there has been an overwhelmingly positive response since he took control of the constitution process.
He says he has extended a public consultation period to the end of the month to give Fijians more time to comment.
Radio Australia: www.abc.net.au/ra
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http://pidp.org/pireport/2014/September/09-22-01.htm
Fiji Election Commission Releases Final Results
84% voter turnout with Bainimarama's FijiFirst winning big
By Shalveen Chand
SUVA, Fiji (Fiji Times, Sept. 22, 2014) – Fiji Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem has announced the official results just a while ago and handed it to the Fijian Electoral Commission to make the allocations.
Total votes cast in the general election were 496,364 from the 591,101 registered voters, registering an incredible 84 per cent voter turn-out.
Invalid votes accounted for 0.75 per cent of total votes at 3714.
The FijiFirst Party won the 2014 general election with 293,714 votes.
The Social Liberal and Democratic Party (SODELPA) had 139,857 votes, the National Federation Party (NFP) had 27,066 votes, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had 15,864, Fiji Labour Party (FLP) had 11,670 votes, One Fiji Party had 5839 votes, Fiji United and Freedom Party had 1072 votes, independent Roshika Deo had 1055 votes, while independent Umesh Chand had 227 votes.
The Electoral Commission will soon announce the allocation of seats, followed by the return of the writ to the President.
Fiji Times Online.
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http://pidp.org/pireport/2014/September/09-22-02.htm
Bainimarama To Be Sworn In As Fiji Prime Minister
FijiFirst party wins majority 32 seats, SODELPA 15, NFP 3
By Shalveen Chand
SUVA, Fiji (Fiji Times, Sept. 22, 2014) – The Fijian Electoral Commission announced the allocation of the 50 seats in parliament this morning.
FijiFirst who make up the government have 32 seats, SODELPA have 15 while the National Federation Party has three seats.
Commission chair Chen Bunn Young said in accordance to the Electoral Decree he was announcing the names of the candidates chosen to be part of the government.
Mr Young and the Commission along with the Supervisor of Elections Mohammed Saneem will now return the writ of election to the President.
FijiFirst leader Voreqe Bainimarama will be sworn in the afternoon as he prepares for a trip to New York.
Other members will be sworn-in later.
Fiji Times Online.
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http://pidp.org/pireport/2014/September/09-22-03.htm
Bainimarama Vows To 'Govern For All Fijians'
Election victor calls all everyone to contribute to improving Fiji
By Siteri Sauvakacolo
SUVA, Fiji (Fiji Times, Sept. 22, 2014) – FijiFirst leader Rear Admiral (Ret) Voreqe Bainimarama has called on every Fijian - no matter who they voted for in this election - to join him in the mission of making Fiji the way the world should be.
This was his assurance message to about 4000 party supporters who attended the FijiFirst inter-faith thanksgiving church service at the ANZ Stadium yesterday.
"While I'm sure supporters of other political parties are disappointed, I want to say to them that this is how parliamentary democracy works," Rear Admiral (Ret) Bainimarama said.
"I also want to say to them that I intend to govern for all Fijians.
"I will be your Prime Minister too because I passionately believe in one nation, one Fiji and that everyone has a place in it, whoever you are, wherever you come from and whoever you voted for."
He told party supporters that in this election, an overwhelming majority of Fijians had embraced the principle of unity that binds people together, adding that we are strong as a nation.
"An overwhelming majority of us have turned our backs on the politics of division and embraced a united future."
"We have chosen the path of fairness and justice. The path of equal opportunity.
"To the minority who are still caught in the past, I say to you, please come and let's all move forward together - we must have an inclusive Fiji in which no one is left behind.
"I am the Prime Minister of all Fijians, for all Fijians."
Rear Admiral (Ret) Bainimarama said the days of pandering to special interest groups, elites and certain areas of the country were over.
Now, the Kiuva, Tailevu native said the days of meeting the needs of ordinary people and their families would continue with renewed furore. The FijiFirst leader said they intended to ride the current wave of economic growth that was certain to increase.
"We will use this growth to meet the needs of all Fijians, to improve services, create more jobs in particular for our youth and continue with building more and better infrastructure.
"This is a victory for all Fijians. This is when history will record that as a nation, we embraced a new future.
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"I passionately believe that the future must be based on unity, equality, compassion and love. And I am deeply touched and grateful that so many of you have shared my vision and put your trust in me to take our beloved nation forward."
Fiji Times Online.
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