Frankly, Who Really Runs Fiji?

Back in the days of June and July 2000, Frank Bainimarama, the naval commander of the 3400-man army of Fiji, temporarily became the country's military strongman.

To free the elected government, held hostage in parliament by crooked politicians, businessmen and swag of gullible followers, he scrapped the constitution, appointed himself head of a brief military government, and negotiated the release of the hostages.

Laisenia Qarase, a former bureaucrat, was pulled from relative obscurity by the army and Fijian chiefs to be an interim prime minister. In September 2001, Qarase was elected to lead a democratic government.

Qarase is trying hard to get the country back on track, although his chief political opponent, Mahendra Chaudhry, the former prime minister removed by the coup, doesn't agree that he is.

As the two publicly duel for public support and ultimate power, who is the real boss in Fiji? Is it Frank Bainimarama?

In January, that question became a touchy one fomented by mounting speculation about Bainimarama's future. The government appointed a committee chaired by Jeremaia Waqanisau, a retired army colonel and chief executive officer at the home affairs ministry, to select a successor for Bainimarama who, the government said, at the end of February would complete a contract.

But as he told Islands Business in an interview last year, Bainimarama denied he had a contract and reiterated that he wanted to stay on as army chief until unfinished business was finished; a defense review, the trials of soldiers involved in a November 2000 mutiny organised to kill him, and set up a Fijian nationalist regime, and the completion of the investigation and prosecution of the main backers of the coup.

Army spokesman Neumi Leweni began stressing Bainimarama's determination to stay on and spoke of ³tainted politicians²‹meaning those, including some of Qarase's coalition government supporters, supportive of the coup. The vibrations from Bainimarama's office made it plain that he believed the government, dependent on the support of some hardline anti-Indian Fijian MPs, wanted to go soft on further prosecutions to appease the nationalists by perhaps finding excuses for the early release of coup leader, George Speight, and lesser conspirators serving jail terms for treason on Nukulau island jail, near Suva.

Constitutionally, for no specific term, the army commander is appointed by the president on the advise of the home affairs minister.

Newspapers and people on the streets detected a heating of relations between the government and the army, with a confrontation looming. From the barracks, news seeped of Bainimarama's demands for loyalty from his 3400 troops. Nervousness intensified when it was heard that five senior officers had been sent on ³leave² by Bainimarama because they agreed to declare loyalty to the army but not to him personally.

Then came reports of a heated row, with Bainimarama storming into a meeting between Waqanisau and home affairs minister Joketani Cokanasiga. One version was that the army commander was accompanied by three or four other officers and that Waqanisau had invited Bainimarama to step outside for a fist fight. Qarase thought it necessary to make a television appearance to dismiss as rubbish a newspaper report about a ³security alert².

He also dismissed speculation about a confrontation. The fuss amounted to disagreement between bureaucrats and army men with differing views that they were wrongly making public statements, he asserted.

Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes, called apparently to intervene between Bainimarama and Waqanisau, told reporters that it was all just a storm in a teacup.

Maybe so, but that wasn't the impression a nervous public was getting. Waqanisau was reported to have preferred two other candidates to Bainimarama; there were even rumours that an Australian officer, like Hughes, appointed last July, had been suggested.

The temperature continued to climb, then fell when it was announced that Bainimarama had been reappointed by the president, on Cokanasiga's advise. It was stated later that he'd been given a five-year contract; plenty of time for completing unfinished business.

Bainimarama in return pledged ³personal as well as the RFMF's (army's) loyalty and support to the office of the president, as well as to the government².

The atmosphere cooled immediately. Out on the streets people wondered: Had there been a capitulation and, if so, by precisely whom? Bainimarama isn't having everything his way. He's angry about the government's wish to cut the F$60 million (US$36 million) army bill by sacking 400 soldiers.

In February, the vice-president, Ratu Jope Seniloli, two of Qarase's nationalist party cabinet ministers and their leader, who is the deputy parliamentary speaker, appeared in court to deny charges of having taking illegal oaths in support of Speight's attempt to form an illegal gun-toting regime. Their trial is set for June.

On February 18, three of Speight's gunmen were released from Nukulau after completing what some critics regarded as rather short three-year jail sentences. They were Speight's brother Jim, an Australian citizen; Josefa Savua, an army officer and brother of the former police commissioner, Isikia Savua, whose actions during the coup remain under investigation, and who is now Fiji's ambassador to the United Nations; and Ilisoni Ligairi, a former British Special Air Service trooper.

All said they hadn't regretted what was in fact their successful effort to replace an Indian-led government by a Fijian supremacist regime. Did that mean they would do it again?

At Nukulau, when he heard of Bainimarama's reappointment, George Speight would have understood that he'd be doing at least 12 years of his ³life² sentence.

The government suddenly decided that Waqanisau would make a fine ambassador to China. His move would improve relations with the army, a cabinet office spokesperson explained.