Editorial: Fiji draws curtain on its troubles

The shutters went down in Fiji yesterday. The murder of a policeman, the ransacking of the local television station and the evacuation of reporters were signs that if a resolution was in store, it would not be a happy one. Whatever may happen next, the rebels would rather the world was not watching.

"Coup" no longer seems applicable to the crisis. A coup quickly imposes its unconstitutional authority on the instruments of power to maintain some sort of order. George Speight's rag-tag rebellion failed to do so. Having taken the elected Government hostage at Parliament, they created a vacuum in which supporters of the overthrow have been allowed to run riot.

Speight and his henchmen have defied a decision of the Great Council of Chiefs and faced down the forces of order. When their supporters came out of the Government compound at the weekend to challenge the Army cordon, the soldiers proved no more prepared to repel them than the police had been. Yesterday the Military Forces called all their reserves into camp while a delegation from the Great Council continued to talk to Speight on his terms. The defiance of law and traditional authority begins to resemble a revolution.

But to what end? Probably, if not purely, a racist one. The outlook for Indian Fijians grows more chilling by the day. Yesterday Speight claimed to have uncovered at Parliament plans of the Chaudhry Government for an "Indian colonisation of Fiji." He claimed to have rescued indigenous Fijians from "potential genocide." It is not indigenous Fijians who have fled from their homes in terror of marauding gangs at night during the past week. If the plight of the Indian population becomes much more desperate, other countries must come to their rescue.

If that means intervention in Fijian affairs, so be it. Kosovo and East Timor have established precedents for interference in national sovereignty where disorder descends to ethnic cleansing. Australia, New Zealand and other close neighbours of Fiji should already be meeting to ensure they can monitor events in Suva and keep the United Nations prepared for a call to sanction an intervention if necessary.

There are suggestions, though, that racial antagonism was not the primary motive of the rebels - that resentment of the social programmes of the Chaudhry Government and a clash of tradition and modernity within the indigenous community, play a part too. It is noticeable that this revolt, unlike Rabuka's comparatively orderly coups of 1987, pays much less deference to the Great Council of Chiefs and now seeks not only to dismiss President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara but to scrap the presidency along with the constitution.

Speight and his henchmen are shooting for practically absolute power. They are demanding the right to appoint a president by decree, following a decision of the Council of Chiefs. In other words, the council is invited to give them the president they want (guess who?). Not Rabuka. In Speight's view Rabuka let Fijians down after 1987. "He compromised the position of indigenous Fijians in the interests of foreign trade relations," Speight said yesterday.

Fiji can blame Rabuka's coup for its latest crisis. The 1987 overthrow of an elected Government was a more military and decisive affair but it created the precedent that has encouraged this mob. It will take Fiji a long time to restore a national respect for civil order and constitutional procedure, whatever the outcome of this chaos.


More Fiji coup coverage

Under seige: map of the Parliament complex