Cover Report
Court To Decide On The Legality Of Qarase's Government
SPG organisers hope there won't be political unrest
For three days from June 18, Fiji's Supreme Court is due to hear evidence about whether or not the country's government is constitutionally legal.
Should the judges rule that it is illegal, Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, the victor in September 2001 of a perfectly proper general election, will be plunged into a dilemma.
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A country that has seethed since 1987 through the political and racial unrest of three coups could begin sliding towards the brink of another crisis.
If the judges pronounce their findings within a day or two of the hearing, the fuse to a potentially explosive dilemma will have been lit less than a week before the opening at Suva, attended by 5000 athletes and officials from 22 Pacific Islands countries, of the 12th South Pacific Games (SPG).
Having defied the risk of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), the South Pacific Games Committee can do nothing but pray that the two weeks of the games will be immune from interference by an outbreak of political unrest.
Fiji's stability is at risk because a long tussle for political power between indigenous Fijian nationalists and Indian politicians, the descendants of migrants from India, who were ejected from power as the government by the coups in 1987 and 2000.
Whatever happens after the court ruling, says the Fiji army commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, there won't be another coup by anyone because the army won't allow it, or any deviation from what lawfully is right and proper.
"There won't be another George Speight," he told Islands Business.
Speight, a businessman with a shady past and a convicted traitor, is locked up for years on Nukulau Island prison, within clear sight, half a dozen kilometres away, of the SPG stadium at Laucala Bay.
The court will deal with a claim by Mahendra Chaudhry, leader of the mainly Indian-supported Fiji Labour Party (FLP), and Prime Minister of the FLP-led coalition government removed by the coup of May 2000, to be part of the Qarase government.
He says FLP should have seven or eight seats in Qarase's 21-member cabinet of 19 Fijians, one part Fijian and one Indian.
The country's 1997 Constitution specifies that any party winning at least 10 percent of the seats in the 71-seat House of Representatives is entitled to cabinet representation in proportion to its parliamentary strength.
A new prime minister must invite qualified Opposition parties to join cabinet. The Opposition may decline and choose to remain in the Opposition, which the former ruling Fijian party, the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT), did when it was beaten by the FLP in a 1999 election.
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After the 2001 election, Chaudhry said his parliamentary numbers, now 29 seats, entitled the FLP to eight cabinet jobs and that he wanted them.
Qarase half-heartedly offered cabinet places but claimed that Chaudhry had effectively rejected the invitation by rejecting a condition that the FLP should accept the policies of Qarase's party, the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL-Fijian United Party).
A bitter verbal battle followed. Qarase formed the present government, a coalition of the SDL and the pro-Fijian supremacy, pro-Speight Conservative Alliance, and a few independent MPs.
There was no alternative, he asserted, since Chaudhry was an impossible troublemaker who would make an SDL/FLP coalition "unworkable".
So the seed was sown for the June 18-20 court hearing.
The government claims there is a strong case for the confirmation of its legality.
But in Fiji, the general belief is that Chaudhry will win his case. That view is held internationally. Some major aid donors such as the European Union and New Zealand, the Commonwealth, from which Fiji was suspended after the 2000 coup, but since granted a qualified readmission, say they can't fully resume normal relations with Fiji until the court decision is known and implemented.
After the 2000 coup, Qarase, a former bureaucrat, was dragged into politics from the quiet of a job as executive head of a finance company.
The Fiji Great Council of Chiefs, which became a de facto parliament after the coup, felt he was a "Mr Clean" suitable to head an interim government the army and the chiefs set up after the coup.
Qarase has declared several times that he will accept the court's decision, whatever it may be.
To defy the court ruling would drop Fiji back to being internationally a leper, hit devastatingly by the suspension of aid, trade deals, sports and other boycotts and the termination of most local and any chance of significant foreign investment.
Should he lose, Qarase will be presented with these choices:
- Invite the FLP to join the government hoping that Chaudhry, having won his constitutional battle, will decide pragmatically that it will be better to fend off the risk of another eruption of racial tension and be a statesman and become the official Opposition Leader, a role he has so far rejected.
- Invite the FLP to join the government minus Chaudhry, perhaps by offering cabinet jobs to FLP backbench MPs.
- Send the country back to the polls for another general election.
- Somehow reach a workable deal with Chaudhry.
Down at the South Pacific Games, the organising committee hopes that Qarase will play for time to allow the Games to be completed and guest athletes and officials sent on their way home before any possible political unrest.
The characteristically confrontational and pugnacious Chaudhry insists that as intended by the Constitution, which he helped frame, it is possible for a SDL/FLP coalition to be made to work as a government dedicated to the elimination of racial difficulties that have plagued Fiji since its independence from Britain in 1970.
Chaudhry hasn't really given a clue as to which path he'll go, other than to assert that the coalition rule forced by the constitution could work.
One body of opinion doesn't envisage that he'd take the tame course of taking the Opposition Leader's role, one exercised now by Mick Beddoes, one of three elected Generals (non Fijian, non Indian) who showed some statesmanship by not insisting on occupying what is conventionally the Opposition Leader's seat, first on the front bench, opposite the Prime Minister.
Chaudhry seized this, together with the Opposition Leader's office in Parliament. Nor is Chaudhry likely to accept personal exclusion from an SDL/FLP cabinet.
If Qarase takes the plunge and takes Chaudhry and his FLP diehards into cabinet then, as he contended at a meeting of villagers in March, "the court case between us and the Labour Party will not affect any of our current policies about indigenous Fijians as we still hold the majority in Parliament."
If Labour wins its case, "then there should not be any cause for concern (for Fijians) as we still hold two-thirds of the parliamentary seats."
But with or without Chaudhry, sharp divergences of opinion over such contentious matters as access to Fijian tribal land for Indian tenant farmers, salvage of the collapsing sugar industry, Qarase's "Blue Print" plan for shifting business and wealth from non Fijian citizens, who comprise about 48 percent of the 840,000 population, to Fijian ownership by "positive" discrimination, poverty and wages issues, overwhelming Fijian domination in the public service and army, not to mention voting rights, are factors that mitigate against a long life for such a cabinet.
Should Qarase dodge the court decision by taking the country back to the polls, neither he nor Chaudhry can be sure of the result.
A court ruling for Chaudhry would at least settle the cabinet structure issue.
But changed circumstances could yield a rather different result compared with the 2001 election.
In 2001, Chaudhry utterly routed Indian opponents, assisted in part by a sympathy vote derived from his ousting by the coup the year before. Some commentators now say that even in the sugar industry, where Indian cane growers are the core of his power, more Indians wonder whether a more conservative, concilliatory and accommodating style of leadership would bring to Fiji's Indians the security and confidence of place they lack now.
Chaudhry, his critics say, just can't resist needlessly rocking the boat.
Qarase may also be suffering from waning of support, according to Fijian commentators, who say that some of his cabinet ministers and backbench MPs feel excluded from government.
Qarase is said to rely too heavily on a small group of advisers including Qoriniasi Bale, a lawyer appointed from outside parliament to the post of Attorney General and Minister of Justice. This miffed some other SDL politicians, it's said.
Whether or not an election is imminent, there is unease about the fallout, possibly violent, from the prosecution of prominent Fijians accused of complicity in the May 2000 coup and in an ugly army mutiny, which left eight soldiers dead, that followed in November.
That would impact on the climate of the next election since two of those indicted are cabinet ministers from Qarase's coalition ally, the nationalist-inclined Conservative Alliance. One MP is another important Conservative Alliance figure, Ratu Rakuita Vakalalabure, while another person charged is Fiji's Vice President, Ratu Jope Seniloli.
Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, the minister for land, holds the title of Tui Cakau, the paramount chieftainship of northern Fiji. He is charged with a lesser chief, Ratu Josefa Dimuri, a former sports minister and journalist, with unlawful assembly at the army barracks at Labasa during a mutiny there.
Sports minister Isireli Leweniqila in May, with Seniloli and Vakalalabure, were released on $10,000 bail, minus their passports. They were charged with others with the Penal Code Offences of taking an illegal oath and engaging in a seditious enterprise. The penalty could be a stiff prison sentence.
Vakalalabure, a former army officer and lawyer, is deputy Parliamentary Speaker. He's a driving force in the Conservative Alliance. A few weeks before being charged, the Fiji Law Society found him guilty of unprofessional conduct arising from his role in the coup, when he was sworn in as Attorney-General for Speight's "government" by Seniloli. Vakalalabure was disbarred, a sentence he intends to appeal in the high court.
A retired schoolteacher, Seniloli was appointed "president" by Speight. In later weeks after the coup, he was appointed constitutionally by the Great Council of Chiefs as Vice President.
Seniloli is from Bau, near Suva, a traditional seat of Fijian political power as represented by the Cakobau family. The family claims to hold the paramount chieftaincy of all Fiji, a claim disputed by Fijians in some other areas. Some senior members of the family became implicated in the coup after Speight took the Chaudhry government hostage in Parliament.
After Speight's conviction for treason in February 2002, along with the conviction of a dozen others on lesser coup-related charges, apparent inertia was displayed by the government in pressing on with other prosecutions.
The prosecutions of other suspects fomented accusations from the Fiji Labour Party and some other political quarters and (civil) government organisations that there was a desire to appease Fijian nationalists, and preserve the Qarase government's parliamentary majority, by suppressing or soft-pedalling further prosecutions.
Qarase, from the outset of being appointed interim prime minister in the wake of the coup, insisted that "the law will take its course." But there's no doubt that the prosecution of some of the figures now awaiting trial could cause serious political difficulties for him.
With foreign aid donors pressing for deeper investigations, any hope of shelter for other perpetrators faded during the protracted trial this year of Josefa Nata, a journalist, and Ratu Timoci Silatolu, an MP and a Chaudhry government supporter until he temporarily became Speight's "prime minister".
Evidence during the trial featured television news film of Speight's planned regime being sworn in by Nata and Seniloli.
Nata and Silatolu were convicted of treason last March and in mid-June are due to be sentenced after a ruling on whether death by hanging or life imprisonment applies.
Nata and Silatolu are minor figures.
But the prosecution and possible conviction of some important figures in the Fijian traditional hierarchy is an opportunity for stoking up another dangerous bout of violent nationalism, and at the least unrest, in some areas of the Fijian community.
The army says it is ready to avert and suppress trouble. The chiefs, in their council, can exert a vital calming influence as they have usually done in the past.
The council's current chair, Ratu Epeli Ganilau, a former army commander and son of a nationally revered past president, the late Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, has emerged as a badly needed moderating influence. In recent speeches that advocated reconciliation between Fijians and Indians he's questioned some of Qarase's policies.
"There are no separate laws for chiefs or government ministers," he declared in one statement.
After months of acrimonious exchanges between Qarase and Chaudhry, a hopeful turn of events came on April 17 in a joint statement from both leaders after they met.
They had discussed the need for constitutional changes and for saving the sugar industry, the idea of a national government, and "the need to curtail racial remarks and promote racial harmony."
While there were "very different ideas" about a multi-party government, both sides would maintain flexibility for more talks.
After the June court decision, both sides would have a "main" session to discuss their differences.
"Further consultations on the multi-party cabinet case will take place after the Supreme Court decision in accordance with procedures laid down in the constitution."
