Fiji's Coup Crackdown

Fiji has plunged deeper into crisis as the military under Commodore Frank Bainimarama moves to assert its control and crack down on dissent in the wake of a court ruling that its seizure of power and ongoing rule are illegitimate.

The Bainimarama administration has governed Fiji since a December 2006 coup which ousted then-prime minister Laisenia Qarase's multi-party coalition.

"The Appeals Court ordered on 9 April that the president appoint an independent person to advise the dissolution of parliament and call for fresh elections," a Fijian media commentator told ISN Security Watch via e-mail Thursday, writing on condition of anonymity.

Initially, Bainimarama did step down as prime minister. However, on 10 April his appointee, President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, seized full executive control, decreeing that the national constitution was abolished and judiciary dissolved.

Bainimarama was reappointed as acting prime minister on 11 April and moved swiftly and incisively to secure military control of the country through a series of emergency regulations. On 17 April, he announced that his administration was no longer interim in nature, confirming an earlier statement by Iliolo that elections would not be held before 2014.

Racist coups

The roots of the current crisis run deep and stem from a fundamental destabilization of the governance structure first affected in 1987. Fiji was plunged into crisis that year when the third-ranking army commander, then-Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, led two ostensibly racially motivated military coups.

The first in May of that year saw the overthrow of the newly elected government of Labor leader Timoci Bavadra; the second, in September, the establishment of a republic based on indigenous control of the parliament and key political positions.

While the late Bavadra was himself ethnic Fijian, the Labor party was enjoying increasing support from the Indo-Fijian community, which made up a slight majority of the Pacific nation's population – a preponderance since reversed through mass emigration.

This was the first time that Indo-Fijians had played a leading role in national politics and it awoke the demons of indigenous ultra-nationalism.

"There was talk at that point that this [Labor election victory] was an insult to Fijians in their own country, that it looked like having implications of a non-Christian takeover. And then there were rumors that the Indians would try to get their hands on more Fijian land," Auckland University Pacific specialist Associate Professor Hugh Laracy told ISN Security Watch.

Rabuka claimed that the initial coup was designed to prevent racial discrimination against indigenous Fijians, though this argument appeared to founder on extant constitutional guarantees concerning the inviolability of native land title and other aboriginal prerogatives.

The first coup won considerable support from the country's most powerful traditional forum, the Great Council of Chiefs. The Council was suspended by Bainimarama in 2007 before he nominated himself council head in February 2008. The short-term future of the chiefly body remains very much unclear.

New dawn fades

Rabuka went on to serve as prime minister from 1992-1999, appearing to gradually mellow in his attitude toward Indo-Fijian political involvement.

Constitutional emendations in 1997 reversed some of the racial bias of the post-coup 1990 constitution and, with corruption and womanizing scandals, led directly to a crushing electoral defeat for Rabuka by the Labor-led three-party People's Coalition in 1999.

Efforts by the new premier, Labor leader Mahendra Chaudhry (the country's first Indo-Fijian head of government), to appease indigenous concerns through the appointment of a majority of ethnic Fijian ministers to his 18-member cabinet failed amid a revival of the indigenous ultranationalist Taukei movement.

A purportedly racially motivated coup d'etat led by Fijian businessman George Speight ensued in May-June 2000 in which Chaudry and other government members were held hostage for 56 days.

The military under Bainimarama succeeded in putting down the coup and two subsequent military putsch attempts that year. The commodore temporarily imposed martial law, briefly heading the government and suspending the constitution before handing control to Qarase.
 
Referring to both Rabuka and Speight, Laracy said: "They were tapping into a very strong ethno-nationalist strand […] When Fiji became independent there was one strand of thought that thought that what might happen is that the Indians might be expelled along the lines of what Idi Amin did in Uganda," he said.

Bainimarama's coup

The events of 2000 established the basis for the sudden political empowerment of Bainimarama and for his subsequent falling out with Qarase and his Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua party (SDL), which seemed intent on strengthening indigenous rights while in government from 2000-2006.

"It looked as though the Qarase government was going to go easy on [the imprisoned] Speight so this is what provoked the commodore," Laracy said, noting that the 2000 military mutineers had sought to kill Bainimarama.

With tensions between the military and government reaching unbearable levels over the fate of the coup plotters and legislative efforts to promote native title, Bainimarama overthrew the government in a bloodless coup in early December 2006. 

While sharply criticized by New Zealand and Australia, which imposed limited sanctions, Bainimarama's government appears to have been seen as something of a bulwark against an irredentist, racist retrogression by both Canberra and Wellington. This, insofar as it promised an eventual return to constitutional government through fresh elections.

There was an inkling that foreign business interests in the tourism sector were protected by the 2006 coup, which came amid efforts by the Qarase government to transfer proprietary rights over maritime resources from the state to ethnic Fijians. This portended a situation wherein hotel owners and tourism operators would have been forced to pay local indigenous communal landholders for the use of beaches, reefs and lagoons. Tourism and sugar are the two pillars of the fragile Fijian economy.

It remains unclear whether, as was likely in previous coups, the politics of ethnicity is being utilized as a prop and mask to draw support in what is really a contest for power and control of state resources.

The Fijian media commentator identified Qarase's SDL as a major center of resistance to the Bainimarama government alongside "other small political parties like the National Federation Party (predominantly Indo-Fijian. A number of regional non-governmental organizations and trade union movement bodies have [also] spoken out against the regime," the commentator  said.

Crackdown

The Bainimarama administration is moving quickly to quash domestic dissent and snuff out potential institutional challenges. Government censors were immediately inserted into all daily media organizations' newsrooms and media coverage of this month's constitutional abrogation and its aftermath has been virtually non-existent.

"The Public Emergency Regulations 2009, which came into force on 10 April orders media organizations not to print or broadcast anything that is deemed ‘inciteful’ or that ‘may give rise to disorder’ in the country," the media commentator wrote, adding that, in some instances, non-compliance was punishable by an up to FJD$1,000 fine or two years imprisonment.

According to the Fijian media commentator, some journalists have been detained and then released over alleged breaches and others "have received death threats against them and their families if they don’t comply."

The military regime denies charges it is destroying court documents related to the coup as it moves to replace sacked judges. Nine new magistrates were appointed on Monday.

Fijilive external pagereportscall_made that the Bainimarama government has also ruled that no legal challenges will be allowed of the decrees and decisions made by the interim government from December 2006 till the abrogation of the constitution this month.

Reaction

Recent events have met with consternation abroad with the UN, EU, Australia and NZ all calling for the reinstitution of democracy. Criticism has also come from some fellow Pacific states, with Western Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi dubbing Bainimarama an "evil puppeteer."

"While all the members of the Pacific Islands Forum have condemned the events of 10 April, some smaller island members are calling for the need to try and engage with Fiji, much to the dismay of Australia and New Zealand," the Fijian media commentator wrote.

While welcoming a UN call for a return to democratic processes, NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully responded that the UN was being hypocritical in maintaining Fijian military forces and police in its peacekeeping contingents.

Traditionally close ties between the NZ and Australian militaries and the Fijian armed forces have been sundered by Bainimarama's actions, with the Fijian leader seemingly seeking to build ties with China and India in a bid to offset this and potential economic losses.

Referring to Bainimarama, the media commentator said: "He seems to be getting his support from China and India - so he claims. He has publicly said that if our neighbors and major trading partners are working against Fiji, then the country doesn’t need them."

Since 2006, "he has made a number of visits to China and India. Upon his return, [these] countries have announced significant assistance to the country’s military and to the sugar industry," the commentator added.

Chaudhry has temporarily held the crucial portfolios of finance and sugar minister in the interim government, a fact that speaks to the somewhat schizophrenic response of Indo-Fijian political representatives and community leaders to the Bainimarama coup.

"My feeling is that what the Commodore has done is inherited a very complex and historically shaped predicament," Laracy said, holding that Bainimarama is looking, "to build a more inclusive Fijian political society in which race doesn't carry an electoral advantage, doesn't carry political weight."

The Fijian media commentator disagrees. Describing the dissolution of the constitution and judiciary as "uncalled for," the commentator said that Fiji faced an economic disaster: "The country is on the verge of bankruptcy. Overseas investors are reluctant to invest because of the country’s political climate."

"The cost of basic food items are sky rocketing and thousands of families cannot afford to put food on the table. Many people will lose their jobs because the private sector will not be able to generate new jobs – it’s a very, very bleak future."