We Say 2

The two men are going back to court...If Mr Chaudhry triumphs in some way, then there is bound to be a resurgence of anti-Indian sentiments from Fijians...Mr Qarase wants to amend the constitution to eliminate the requirement to appoint Opposition MPs as cabinet ministers. He can't do so unless Labour MPs give him the numbers to constitutionally do so

What is Fiji's condition? On the surface, more than three years after the 2000 coup attempt, a country that promotes itself with justification as the region's crossroads and leader, claims to be back to normal.

Business and investments are undoubtedly picking up. Growth is running at five percent, although this might slacken slightly in the next couple of years.

Tourism figures are healthy, although the yield from the industry isn't yet back to what it was because visitors have had to be enticed back with cheap air travel and hotel packages.

There are firm plans, well, pretty firm, for foreign investment in new resort hotels at least four big properties on the way to becoming real, not just talk.

There are firm plans for investment in call centres that could each employ as many as 1000 or 2000 people.

Core industries like timber, garments, gold mining and a surprisingly wide range of quality manufacturing enterprises are all doing okay, or better than okay, although with some ups and downs. The government is pouring borrowed funds into road, water supply, sewage and other vital infrastructure projects.

It has many ambitious ideas for development and reforms, nearly all of them praiseworthy.

There was much bullish comment at a recent meeting of the Fiji-Australia Business Council; Fiji's back in business, it's growing, it's a place of opportunity to be in.

A police commissioner just imported from Australia is successfully restoring public confidence in the forces of law an order. There had been a distinct waning of that as newspapers daily reported stories of mounting high-level public service and other corruption, a spate of bank robberies and the violent invasion of homes by hooded hoodlums intent on stripping the occupants of anything faintly valuable. According to the new commissioner, Andrew Hughes, Fiji is in fact a rather safe relatively crime-free place.

This is all very positive. What are the negatives? Well, unless factional politics are put aside and plans that should have been implemented months ago implemented very quickly indeed, the 120-year old sugar industry, the core livelihood directly and indirectly of nearly one-third of the population, could within a few years die with dire economic, social and political consequences for the country. Education and medical services are decaying for money reasons mainly. Does the government have the will and ability to halt the rot, declining productivity and relentlessly rising cost of public service standards?

Poverty is worsening.

Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, a once reticent bureaucrat now growing in political stature and acumen, like the bullish business members of the Fiji-Australia Business Council, asserts that after the coup that removed the country's democratically-elected first Indian-led government, Fiji's political stability and respectability stands restored.

It is politic for Mr Qarase to assert that; it is what investors, financiers and most ordinary people on the streets want to believe. But actually, the boat must still rock through squalls, storms and perhaps hurricanes that lie ahead. It could be capsized again, although not, as some pessimists claim, this time beyond hope of being eventually righted.

Fiji's fundamental difficulty is the festering relationship between indigenous Fijians and the descendants of immigrants. This is now compounded by a constitution, adopted in 1998, that is intended to foster stable and amicable multiracial government by making Fijians and Indians sit in cabinet together.

They have done so before, but willingly. Mr Qarase says he can't work with Mahendra Chaudhry, the Labour Party leader, removed from the Prime Minister's office by the 2000 upset.

Mr Chaudhry thought he'd scored over Mr Qarase when in July the Supreme Court ruled that Labour's mainly Indian MPs had to be admitted to the Fijian nationalist cabinet in numbers proportionate to their parliamentary numbers.

But Mr Qarase turned the tables on him by offering Labour MPs cabinet jobs on terms intended cunningly to make Mr Chaudhry look silly if he accepted them and silly if he didn't.

Mr Chaudhry, a difficult personality, argues convincingly that Mr Qarase is offending the spirit of the constitution's intentions by using strategies to keep Labour out of the government. Mr Qarase correctly surmises that Labour's presence in his cabinet would burden him with intense irritation.

The two men are going back to court. There's unlikely to be a ruling before next February. If Mr Chaudhry triumphs in some way, then there is bound to be a resurgence of anti-Indian sentiments from Fijians. Both men are trapped by each other. Mr Qarase wants to amend the constitution to eliminate the requirement to appoint Opposition MPs as cabinet ministers. He can't do so unless Labour MPs give him the numbers to constitutionally do so.

All this leaves a bomb ticking under the country. It could be defused for good, but seemingly not just now, not while the two antagonists hold national sway. Other litter lies around for igniting. The country's vice president, two cabinet ministers and the parliamentary deputy speaker await trials on coup related charges. What will the reaction from their Fijian nationalists be, and can it be contained, if the accused are convicted and sent to join the coup's fall guy, George Speight, on his Nukulau Island prison? There are rumours that some of the coup's minor perpetrators, even Speight, are now inclined to spill the beans about who put them up to what they did. There is friction between Mr Qarase and the army commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who wants all coup conspirators to be convicted, sent to jail, and kept there with no question of an early release pressed for by some of Mr Qarase's supporters. As a scenario, none of all this is cause for absolute confidence about the next few years of Fiji's future.