Politics
Fiji Worries About A Replay of May 2000
Fijian splits could boost Chaudhry
A year after a coup, could Fiji be heading for an election that could bring about a replay of May 19, 2000? That¹s when the country¹s first ethnic Indian prime minister and his government were taken hostage in parliament for 56 days by anti-Indian indigenous Fijian militants.
This is a question preying on the minds of many of the country¹s 830,000 citizens as more than a dozen Fijian political parties, some significant and others lightweight, vie for power.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
There is a faint chance that an election set for August 25-September 1, could possibly be postponed or derailed by High Court legal challenges with which some deposed cabinet ministers and the Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF) hope to remove what they say is the present "illegal" caretaker government.
They want President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to conform to a March 1 Court of Appeal order, which restored the constitution the army claimed it had been abrogated.
He ignored the court's order to recall the 1999-elected parliament for the formation of a constitutional replacement for a government of mostly unelected people he appointed immediately after the court ruling.
 |
|
|
The shredding of Fijian political unity since the coup, with 15 to 20 splinter parties formed or forming to fight the election, makes it possible that the Indian-dominated Fiji Labour Party led by deposed prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry, could regain control of the 71-seat House of Representatives.
But since a faction led by former co- deputy prime minister Dr Tupeni Baba has gone off to form a "New" Labour party, Chaudhry¹s far larger loyalists would need support of some Fijian parliamentary factions to secure a majority.
Now abandoned by several small Fijian coalition allies parties it had after the 1999 election, Labour could have problems securing such backing Labour co-founder Baba, a Fijian academic, quit the party in May after failing to oust Chaudhry from leadership.
Baba claims to have strong support for a "New Labour". He says trade unionist Chaudhry is incapable of dealing with the sensitivities of relations between the Fijians, who are 51% of Fiji's 830,000 population, and descendants of plantation workers and traders from India, who are about 43%.
Deep Fijian antagonism against Chaudhry¹s personality aroused after his election as prime minister in May 1999, and his policies for renewing Indian leases of Fijian tribal land are the main factors ascribed to his downfall.
The Fiji Labour party has officially stated it wants Chaudhry to head the next government.
However, Chaudhry, while campaigning on his strong Indian sugar canefarmer power base, is being ambiguous about whether he really wishes to risk returning as prime minister.
Another Indian election victory with Chaudhry restored as prime minister would revive the Fijian hostility that drove him from office a year ago, local political analysts agree.
Also in May, caretaker prime Laisenia Qarase, a Fijian bureaucrat and banker first appointed with the backing of Fijian chiefs and the army, announced a new party, the Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua (United Fiji Party).
Within a few weeks this had picked up some initial support from some Fijian provincial councils and some small Fijian parties.
Qarase said he had formed the party reluctantly, but the splintering of Fijians by deep provincial, regional, personal and political rivalries gave him little choice.
The new party would work to remove the gulf between Fijians and Indians and "replace animosity and fear with trust and cooperation", Qarase said. President Iloilo's official spokesperson, Jeremaia Waqanisau, a retired army colonel said on Iloilo's behalf that the great number of new political parties left Fijians dangerously split and unable to regain political supremacy lost to the Indian minority.
Waqanisau is regarded as the person through whom the 3500-man Fiji army, the real ultimate power, influences the 80-year-old president.
Only a united Fijian community could restore "confidence and hope for other communities," he said.
Ten days after the coup led by George Speight and a dozen gunmen including several men of the army¹s now disbanded Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) unit, the army abrogated the constitution, formed a brief military regime and then backed the appointment of Qarase's first interim government.
Last November half of the CRW's 70 members unsuccessfully mutinied at the Suva barracks, apparently planning to set up a government composed of known George Speight supporters.
Eight soldiers died in the mutiny, including five CRW men allegedly beaten to death by loyalist soldiers.
The army has not indicated what its attitude to a restored Labor government would be.
Military commander Frank Bainimarama has stated only that it will support President Iloilo and uphold democracy. On May 29, a magistrate began committal proceedings against Speight and 13 others on the capital charge of treason. The hearing quickly got bogged down with adjournments while Speight sought a replacement for a Fijian lawyer sacked by him.
Director of Public Prosecutions Josefa Naigulevu said the hearing could take at least three months. Local lawyers questioned the protracted style of hearing favoured by Chief Magistrate Salesi Temo in inquiring into 13 charges of treason against Speight and 13 accomplices. They said the inquiry could be adequately completed within a few days simply by focussing on several key witnesses, not all the 240 lined up by the prosecution.
Fiji's police force claims to be on the tracks of major politicians, businessmen and others said to be the real instigators of the coup. But there is widespread public scepticism about investigations by a force led by a former army officer, Isikia Savua, whose brother is one of the 13 men awaiting trial with Speight.
During the coup Savua was conspicuously in Speight's company at the time Speight tried to form a government.
Savua denies any part in the coup and was cleared of involvement by a secret inquiry, ordered by the President. It was conducted by Chief Justice Sir Timoci Tuivaga, whom the Fiji Law Society's council says should be sacked for collusion with the army in discarding the constitution.
Fiji¹s badly-hit tourism, sugar, fishing, forestry, garment making and gold mining economy has begun to make a slow recovery from the eight percent dive in GDP it was mauled by after the coup. But it is estimated by the Reserve Bank and businessmen to have lost as much as F$1 billion (US$440 million) in cancelled or stalled investments and hundreds of millions of dollars more in tourism and export earnings Another serious drain is accelerated migration by not only Indian but also Fijian professionals and skilled technicians and tradesmen that is adding to serious skill manpower shortages that developed after a 1987 coup.
Qarase predicts it will be 20 to 30 years before Fijians will readily accept non-Fijian leadership. That¹s a political position non-Fijian citizens must swallow, Qarase said.
