Change of heart death sentence for Fiji democracy

By WARREN GAMBLE

One of the architects of Fiji's multiracial constitution, Professor Brij Lal, bumped into the country's latest coup leader several years ago.

The Australian academic recalled his meeting with bald-headed George Speight at a Queensland University.

He knew him only slightly, but the younger man tapped him on the shoulder and commended him on the new framework for multi-ethnic politics.

"The only thing he was worried about," said Professor Lal yesterday, "was that we didn't recommend dual citizenship [for Australian and New Zealand-based Fijians]."

Yesterday, at the point of a gun, Speight and other armed Fijian nationalists declared that constitution dead.

Speight's change of heart has surprised Professor Lal, but he says general pointers for the latest coup have been more predictable.

Coup rumours have become an industry in Fiji since the country's first Fiji Indian Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, took office a year ago yesterday.

Professor Lal traced the origins of the coup to the introduction of the new constitution he and a panel led by former New Zealand Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves helped to design.

That was intended as a legislative seal to the healing process from Fiji's other coups in 1987 and the subsequent racist 1990 constitution imposed by coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka.

In one of the twists that characterise the volatile Fijian political landscape, Rabuka was the Prime Minister who pushed the new constitution through in 1997. It set up a 71-seat Parliament, made up of 46 communal seats voted for along ethnic lines and 25 open seats.

"Even then, there were a number of Fijians in Rabuka's party who endorsed the constitution unwillingly," Professor Lal said.

But the feel-good factor from the constitution panel's work, sweetened by international words of encouragement and a place back in the Commonwealth, helped to carry the day.

When Chaudhry's Labour Party won 38 of the 71 seats last May, feelings soured.

One of his opponents, Jai Ram Reddy, whose Indian-based party did not win a seat and who has since left politics to become Court of Appeal President, warned: "Fiji is not yet ready for an Indian Prime Minister."

Many shared his opinion. At Chaudhry's swearing-in on May 19 last year, a senior journalist exclaimed: "Fiji will never accept an Indian Prime Minister ... never, never, never."

Professor Lal said: "It was as if they [Fijian politicians] approved of the process, and the new system, provided they would win."

Of Fiji's 800,000 people, 51 per cent are ethnic Fijian and 43 per cent are ethnic Indians, descendants of labourers brought over in the late 19th century to work in sugar plantations.

Added to the finely balanced population mix and the emotional and complicated question of land ownership, the election of an ethnic Indian to the top job has reignited the smouldering nationalist torch.

But although there were spluttering protests, including some politically motivated arsons, the outward signs were mainly calm.

Six months after the election, a national poll even showed Chaudhry as Fiji's most popular leader with 62 per cent approval, surpassing even Rabuka, who left politics to head the Great Council of Chiefs.

On the economic front, Chaudhry's Government has reinstated public service jobs, cut value-added tax and reduced duties on staple food items including flour, rice and canned fish and imposed price control on other consumer items.

Despite claims of too much regulation, the economy generally has recovered from the post-1987 coup shocks, and growth this year is expected to be more than 4 per cent.

But land has continued to be the issue creating the greatest racial tension.

Fiji Indians' 30-year leases of land owned by indigenous Fijians began expiring in 1997, and the bulk of the leases are up for renewal this year and next year.

Fijian tribal leaders want an end to the Agricultural Landlord and Tenant Act, which provides the mechanism for lease renewals, and the land returned to them.

Chaudhry has honoured his pre-election promise to Indian farmers and retained the controversial act.

In January, Rabuka warned the Government that it would face the consequences of its actions if it continued to ignore the Council of Chiefs' call to scrap the legislation.

In April, a march organised by Rabuka's former SVT party brought thousands of demonstrators to Suva demanding Chaudhry's resignation, mainly over the land issue.

After another march this month, the Government banned rallies by its political opponents, a move condemned by Opposition leaders as "unconstitutional."

The land issue has also inflamed the Fijian nationalist Taukei movement, a protest group formed before the 1987 coup with the rallying cry, "Fiji for the Fijians."

Professor Lal said the new Taukei leader, Apisai Tora, was a "veteran party hopper who has belonged to virtually every political party in Fiji" and was part of the "spectacularly misnamed" Party of National Unity, which went into coalition with Chaudhry.

Chaudhry's confrontational style, from his time as a trade union leader, also did not help him, causing Fijians to suspect ulterior motives in policy announcements.

Rabuka was reported to have met Speight yesterday, but Professor Lal said he did not believe the former strongman was involved in the coup.

After being instrumental in pushing through the new constitution, Rabuka would be most unlikely to turn the clock all the way back to 1987.

"I think he is there trying to negotiate and calm things down."

In his biography, Rabuka of Fiji, published in March, the defeated Prime Minister said of the future: "The tone of the national conversation has become very racial.

"When the landowner who does not have enough land wants his land back, he is seen as being anti-Indian. He just wants his land back.

"The recent exemption on food items in the VAT is on foods that are eaten more by Indo-Fijians than Fijians. There is a lot of disenchantment among the grassroots Fijians; there is regret and there is also a 'wait and see' attitude.

"The Government should be aware of this wait-and-see approach on the part of the Fijians."

One of the 16,000 Fiji Indians in Auckland, lawyer Dr Arjit Singh, said he believed the land issue was a smokescreen for a simpler truth.

"Indians have not grabbed any land, they are asking for leases.

"I don't see that as sufficient to trigger a coup.

"The main thing is that fundamentalist Fijians are not happy that an Indian should be Prime Minister of Fiji."

In a Fiji Sunday Times story on April 30, Chaudhry also downplayed fears of an uprising, saying the Fijian community would not be fooled a second time by unruly elements out to topple the Government.

He said nationalist protest marchs were the work of disgruntled politicians who had lost at last year's elections.

"We have been through this in 1987 and look where the country went to after those events," he said.

"The ordinary people paid a heavy price for that and our economy was in tatters. It took a long time to rebuild and the economy is now poised to take off."

In another report, Chaudhry said he regarded the march planned for yesterday as being of nuisance value.

"We know who the players are behind the scenes. Many of them are the same faces we saw in 1987.

"It took 12 long years to put the country back on track, to get a new constitution that is internationally acclaimed."

Professor Lal said he believed yesterday's coup leaders probably had some help from former soldiers. But he felt the coup had been organised by a "group of hotheads" and could be shortlived.

What it would leave in its wake was the difficult question of whether the Fijian population would actively oppose an imposed regime or tacitly support it.