Politics
More Coup Supporters to Face the Music
But could Qarase lose parliamentary majority?
As the wheels of justice in Fiji grind through the prosecution of some of the people behind the May 2000 coup, the grist could fire more serious political stability.
Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, whose parliamentary majority relies on pro-coup Fijian nationalists, risks losing it if people anxious to dodge prosecution insist on protection as a condition of future support for his coalition government.
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Fiji could then see the return as the country’s first Indian prime minister of Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry, the man deposed in 2000 by anti-Indian nationalists in collusion with corrupt businessmen.
On March 21, police arrested and charged deputy parliamentary speaker Ratu Rakuita Vakalalabure with two counts of swearing an illegal oath to commit a capital offence, a matter carrying a life jail sentence.
Vakalalabure, who was bailed and told to surrender his passport, leads a hardline Fijian nationalist party, the Conservative Alliance, which is the friend of jailed coup frontman, George Speight.
The party’s six MPs are the core of Qarase’s coalition support.
A few weeks earlier another Conservative Alliance supporter and an important paramount chief, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, now a Qarase cabinet minister, and a former assistant minister, Ratu Josefa Dimuri, were charged with unlawful assembly during a November 2000 army mutiny at Labasa in Vanua Levu, Fiji’s second biggest island.
Vakalalabure, a lawyer, already facing a Fiji Law Society decision on whether he should be disbarred for his role in the coup, was one of several Speight supporters who on the day of the coup was purportedly sworn in as a “cabinet minister” by retired schoolteacher, Ratu Jope Seniloli. Seniloli was later named by Speight as “president”.
Josefa Nata, a journalist, administered an oath to Seniloli. Seniloli then purported to swear in as prime minister (a role Speight assumed the next day) a telecom technician, Ratu Timoci Silatolu, who was an MP with a small party that was part of Chaudhry’s coalition government.
On March 21, after a trial lasting months, Judge Andrew Wilson, an Australian, said he entirely agreed with the finding given the previous day by five assessors who all found Nata and Silatolu guilty of treason.
Prosecution evidence included TV news video films showing Silatolu, Vakalalabure and others taking oaths of loyalty to the regime Speight attempted to create.
Other prosecution evidence showed that Speight, now serving a life sentence, was in constant mobile phone contact with his two accomplices through the night and morning preceding the coup, right up to the moments before it. On the eve of the coup, Speight also phoned Seniloli.
In March, acting police commissioner Moses Driver confirmed that investigations were continuing into the conduct during the coup of the former commissioner, Isikia Savua, an ex-army officer, and since February Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York.
Savua was cleared of alleged misconduct after a secret inquiry in 2002 by the then chief justice, whose role in supporting a subsequent brief post-coup military regime was condemned by the Fiji Law Society.
Local newspapers reported that Savua’s departure for New York had cleared obstacles to a more intensive investigation of alleged or suspected coup instigators.
Late in March, the office of the Fiji president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, issued a statement promising legal action against a newspaper, the Fiji Sun, and denouncing as “blatant lies” and “grossly offensive” a report alleging that army commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama had been instructed to ease up on coup and army mutiny investigations.
In a March 23 television programme, the military’s spokesman, Warrant Officer Neumi Leweni, said Bainimarama would soon issue a statement about the report.
According to Islands Business sources, Bainimarama has refused to leave the army and accept an ambassadorial appointment until mutiny and coup prosecutions are completed.
The army is also said to be angered by high level attempts to engineer a pardon for Speight.
Judge Wilson, who under the Fiji court system was not obliged to accept the assessors’ opinions, said there was overwhelming hard and circumstantial prosecution evidence with the “hallmark of a classic case of treason”. But he deferred sentence until clarification of what penalty could be imposed.
After Speight’s trial the government rushed through legislation to abolish hanging, the mandatory penalty for treason (Speight’s death sentence was immediately commuted by President Iloilo).
Legal authorities told Islands Business there was doubt about the validity of the legislation.
There was also doubt about whether a life sentence meant life, or life with the possibility of a parole, or whether judges had discretion to set any term of imprisonment they felt appropriate.
