Cover Story
Fiji Faces Fresh Bout of Turbulence
With elections over, PM Qarase, Chaudhry battle over who should be in Cabinet.
Fifteen months after its third coup, Fiji completed a general election in September that United Nations and Commonwealth observers said was not perfect, but was democratic and fair. But a week after the election ended it was obvious that the country¹s festering political and racial troubles were entering a fresh bout of turbulence.
The election left one of the South Pacific¹s most populous countries (840,000) with the prospect of another confrontation between its 52 percent indigenous Fijian majority and economically dominant ethnic Indian 44 percent minority.
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After a year as a post-coup caretaker prime minister of questionable legality, Laisenia Qarase, an indigenous Fijian bureaucrat turned businessman, on September 10 was sworn in as an undisputedly legal pime minister.
Is his government, a cabinet of 20 ministers sworn in on September 12, legal?
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Mahendra Chaudhry, leader of the Fiji Labour Party and Qarase¹s definitely legal predecessor until he was driven out of office by a coup on May 19 last year, says that it is most definitely not.
In late September the Fiji Labour Party was preparing to ask for a court ruling that it should have up to eight places in the Cabinet.
Legal commentators and local newspapers are predicting that Chaudhry would "probably" win his case. Fiji¹s 1997 constitution, a very liberal replacement for one swept away by a 1987 coup, says that any party winning at least 10 percent of the 71 House of Representatives seats is entitled to a seat in cabinet. This means that the Fiji Labour Party is entitled to seven or eight seats in a 20-member cabinet.
In dispute are the conditions under which Labour would‹or would not‹join the Cabinet.
If Chaudhry wins and Qarase accepts the law Fiji will be landed with a government Qarase insists will be "unworkable." Subsequent repercussions of friction in the cabinet aroused inevitably by clashes of party policy would be bound to widen yet again the gulf of political, economic and cultural mistrust between the country¹s two dominant ethnic communities.
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The gulf appeared a couple of decades after Indians began settling in Fiji as plantation workers and traders in 1879. For a while, after independence from Britain in 1970, it seemed to be slowly closing as early governments endeavoured, although only with limited success, to forge multiracial rule. It widened in May 1987 when a short-lived Indian-dominated government for which Chaudhry was finance minister was removed at gunpoint by the indigenous Fijian-controlled army. A new constitution brought the trade unionist and Labour Party leader to power as prime minister in May 1999 as the country's first Indian prime minister.
But although the support of small indigenous Fijian parties added to the absolute majority the Fiji Labour Party won in parliament, Chaudhry in May last year went almost the same way, although far more violently, than Labour went in 1987.
The election of August 25-September 1, which but for international pressure Qarase would have delayed for at least another year, made the polarisation of indigenous Fijians and Indians ‹ with small part- European, European, Chinese and other islander groups caught in between ‹ never more obvious. Voters rejected a loose multiracial group of five "moderate" parties as they became called.
Not a single indigenous Fijian seat went to the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei, the party set up by indigenous Fijian chiefs after the 1987 coup to rule until its crushing defeat by the Fiji Labour Party in the election of May 1999. Nor did any go to the Fijian Association, which won 11 seats in 1999 and joined the Fiji Labour Party in a coalition.
Indigenous Fijian voters gave 30 communal and open seats to Qarase¹s Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua (Fijian United Party) and six seats to the Conservative Alliance/Matanitu Vanua, a new grouping centred on the northern islands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni. It was judged by commentators to be rather more extreme in advocating protection for total indigenous Fijian political supremacy than the Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua.
One of its campaigning demands was an immediate amnesty for George Speight, the former businessman who with 13 cohorts led the assault on Parliament last year to hold Chaudhry and most of his government hostage for 56 days. Awaiting trial for treason, Speight‹under his Fijian name Ilikini Naitini‹and two of his followers were able to stand for the elections. Speight won the Fijian communal seat for his home Tailevu North constituency, much to the disgust of those favouring a minimum of two decades in jail for him.
Indian support for the Labour Party gave it 27 seats.
One Indian seat went to the National Federation Party, once the main Indian party but totally eliminated from Parliament by the 1999 elections. Two seats went to the New Labour Unity Party, an anti-Chaudhry breakaway from the Fiji Labour Party, one to the United General Party (General voters are neither indigenous Fijians nor Indians), one to an indigenous Fijian independent and a seat reserved for the Polynesian island of Rotuma was retained by the incumbent.
Prior to the election there were predictions that the Fiji Labour Party, which won 37 of the 71 House of Representative seats in 1999, wouldn¹t do as well as before. But it would get a score in the high 20s that would put Chaudhry within reach of returning to the Prime Minister¹s office with the help of several small coalition allies. But while many liberally-inclined voters were prepared to concede the justice of that scenario they were also frankly scared of what the reaction to that event would be from indigenous Fijian extremists and the army.
Another coup not to distant down the line, possibly one more bloody than last year and bound to destroy the last vestiges of international respectability for the country and its attractions as ground for investment? There was speculation that the country¹s aging president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, whom some considered to be heavily influenced by the army and anti-Chaudhry elements in the indigenous Fijian bureaucracy, would be persuaded to make excuses for the appointment of an indigenous Fijian-led minority government.
The election campaign and the election itself went with surprising calm and order; with the police and army insisting that law and order would be properly maintained. But the end of five days of vote counting left the country heading into a state of suspense.
Labour and the Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua were neck-and-neck, 27 seats each. Then the Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua moved ahead to 30, with the prospect of later picking up another seat in a constituency where the election had been deferred because of the death of one of the candidates.
From the outset of the election, Qarase had rejected any possibility of allying with the Labour Party. Chaudhry was a man whose character and ideas were unacceptable to himself and Fijians, he said bluntly.
To attain the 36 seats he needed for forming government, Qarase had to turn for support to the so-called moderates or to the controversial Conservative Alliance/Macanitu Vanua. But the demand for an amnesty for Speight was a condition Qarase couldn¹t entertain if he was to win international acceptance for his government. He also wanted to keep a promise he made, that "justice would be done" after being conscripted in a caretaker prime minister's role two months after the May coup.
Quick support for Qarase came from the Rotuman and indigenous Fijian independent MPs. Four more supporters were needed. The two New Labour Unity MPs were willing and so, it appeared, were the lone National Federation Party and General MPs.
But then the Conservative Alliance had a change of heart. It dropped its demand for Speight's release.
"In fact that is what George wanted. He didn't want the amnesty issue to be part of the conditions for the party negotiating with the Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua," the Conservative Alliance parliamentary leader, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, told Pacific Magazine.
Why was that? "Well just off the cuff this is the time for us to unite as indigenous Fijians and stand together." Lalabalavu said with the Speight hurdle removed there wasn't much difference between Qarase¹s party and the Conservative Alliance. "That is one of the major issues that brought us together fairly quickly."
Lalabalavu says his party was far less extremist than its critics believe. Did it accept that Speight and his gang had to go to trial? "What we have accepted is that the course of law will take its own course and I will just leave it at that."
The surprise deal with the Conservative Alliance repelled the General and National Federation MPs. They couldn¹t work in a coalition containing elements that had contributed to the toppling of the Chaudhry government. More protests came from Chaudhry, and the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei leader Filipe Bole, a former foreign minister, who had not unexpectedly failed to win a difficult Suva area seat.
They and other defeated politicians claimed that vote-rigging in certain key constituencies had unjustly engineer several seats the Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua's way.
Chaudhry claimed the Labour Party had been so deprived of at least six seats and would go to court to contest the results. But the Commonwealth Observer Group declared: "We are strongly of the view that the conditions did exist for a free expression of will by the electors and that generally the result of the election reflected the wishes of people."
Qarase went through the formality of writing to Chaudhry to invite Labour to be part of the new government as required by the constitution. After being sworn in as prime minister for the third time in just over a year (he was sworn in as caretaker prime minister last after a court ruling that the interim regime was illegal) he told journalists: "I have made it no secret that I would be happy if he does not accept because it will be an unworkable government.
"You see, if we follow strictly the provision of the constitution, and supposing he accepts, it means that he will have to get about eight seats, I get 12 and I have an obligation to give some seats to the smaller parties. Say I give five, I end up with seven. So the numbers don¹t stack up. It will never work, and this is the point that has to be considered very seriously by political leaders. It will be a government that will not work or function properly.
"I hope he doesn't accept. If he is in the Opposition, I would be happy to work with him on very sensitive issues that he cares about. I am sure we can establish a good working relationship between government and the opposition".
Two days later Qarase named 18 Cabinet ministers, with a Attorney-General, who has to be a lawyer, to be drawn from an appointment to be made to the Senate.The cabinet contained no trace of Labour.
Two ministerial jobs went to the Conservative Alliance, the Labour portfolio to New Labour Unity¹s MP Kenneth Zinck and another portfolio to the independent indigenous Fijian MP, a former army officer sacked from a senior civil service job after being found guilty of conducting an affair with a female friend in a government vehicle during working hours.
Qarase published a letter sent on September 12 to Chaudhry in which he explained that Labour wasn¹t in the cabinet because it hadn't accepted an express condition; that government policies would be based "fundamentally" on Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua policies. These include doses of discrimination intended to improve the economic and social position of indigenous Fijians.
"Our combined numbers are sufficient to maintain a viable, stable and effective multi-party government" that, he claimed, complied with the Constitution.
"I can only assume that you are unwilling to make a commitment at the outset, which would best promote the objective of a stable and workable government, which, in turn, would best assure the effective promotion of national unity."
A few hours later came the denunciation from the Labour Party. With the relish of plunging a crippling spoke in Qarase¹s wheel plain on their faces, Labour¹s leaders at a press conference announced that they would ask the Fiji Court of Appeal, composed normally of three to five senior foreign judges, to declare the new government and everything done by it to be constitutionally "blatantly unlawful."
Chaudhry scathingly attacked the appointment of Cabinet without Labour as making Fiji "the little Indonesia of the Pacific where the country is run by corrupt politicians and businessmen backed by the military. Qarase¹s decision seems like for the time being we have been relegated to the opposition by this treachery."
The 1997 constitution was "very specific" with "no question" of Qarase having discretion about admitting the Fiji Labour Party to the cabinet, they said.
The Labour Party had unconditionally accepted Qarase¹s formal invitation. But Qarase had then claimed that great differences of policy between his party and Labour would make government unworkable. Chaudhry said he did not agree. "I think it is an excuse he used."
Chaudhry said he was disappointed with the president¹s decision to appoint Qarase prime minister. "He has compromised the dignity of that office and the trust that the people have in that office."
Labour said Fiji had been landed in "yet another constitutional crisis, only days after snap general elections called to return the country to constitutional rule, following the coup and political unrest of last year."
The Labour Party sent a delegation to foreign diplomatic missions in Suva to express concern about the Qarase government's appointment. Chaudhry said his party would lobby for support internationally, including the Commonwealth and United Nations.
He said: "What he (Qarase) has done effectively is making Fiji a laughing stock in the international community, the consequences of which will be very, very dire."
