Chaudhry closer to Fiji victory

An armed Fijian rebel leads his pack in the 2000 uprising. Picture / Kenny Rodger

It was dubbed a Festival of Praise. The second Sunday after George Speight and his armed men kidnapped a government, Parliament's grounds were heaving.

Fanatical Christian preaching and grog-addled minds had combined to create an air of menace that would soon turn violent, and leave a policeman dead.

Speight had, that day, prayed inside the fortified Suva complex.

The late convert to indigenous rights was buoyed as a range of pastors praised his uprising, called for a Christian state and urged "girmits", indentured Indian labourers, to get out of Fiji.

Under the shade of trees, away from the hymn-singing women, lay scores of men doing what young, jobless, criminally-inclined men do in Fiji on Sundays.

They gathered round the yaqona bowl and drank kava, some until they could barely stand.

Locked in a building just metres away, hostages were suffering the tenth day of what would become 56 in captivity.

Armed elite soldiers, their features hidden by balaclavas, were guarding toppled Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, his son, the chiefly daughter of soon-to-be-deposed President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, and dozens of other MPs - Fijians, Indians and mixed race.

Chaudhry must have heard what was preached, and must have heard the gunshots as they began that evening.

Hours later policeman, husband and father Filipe Seavula was shot and killed, the first to die in three coups.

Fiji's television headquarters were ransacked, forcing a reporter and democracy campaigner Jone Dakuvula to flee because they criticised the coup on air.

Another Fijian reporter was beaten by Speight's men after securing the release of two New Zealand journalists from Parliament. Fiji was in chaos.

This week, almost five years after Speight's May 19, 2000 coup, four men were charged with Constable Seavula's murder.

And Chaudhry, perhaps the forgotten victim of the coup internationally, is again tipped to become Fiji's prime minister.

He seldom talks about what went on in the eight weeks he was held hostage. He has given police a full statement about who he saw in Parliament but he seldom reveals how it affected him emotionally. It is known he was beaten, and was at one stage dragged into the square where the coup plotters prayed, a machinegun held to his head. But he has said little about the emotions of those days, and the years in Opposition since.

HE declined to answer the Weekend Herald's personal questions, but was typically bullish about his chances of again become an ethnic Indian prime minister in Fiji. That prospect has some elements of Fiji society nervous about the reaction of ultra-nationalists, but with indigenous political parties already fracturing it is a strong possibility leading into next year's elections.

Chaudhry battles not only racism in his drive to lead Fiji, but considerable hostility directed at him.

He is said to be prickly, arrogant, difficult. His abrasive refusal to compromise, a trait perhaps carried over from his sugarcane union days, inevitably pits him against the less confrontational style of indigenous Fijian leaders and ethnic Indian businessmen.

It is even suggested that if he wins, some extreme fool may try to kill him. He has security, and admits that he is concerned for his family - although he almost half-jokes about it. "So long as you don't win, it's okay."

Chaudhry, 62, has heard all the name-calling before. It appears not to bother him. "That's because I stand up to them. I've done that always. Because you stand up for your rights, and you fight for your rights, you are not a moderate, you are a 'confrontationist'.

"But I have the right to stand up and say what I want to say. After all, we do not have the coups, we are not the subversive elements in society."

Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase is said to loathe Chaudhry. It is no coincidence that it is Qarase who is warning that a splintered indigenous Fijian vote next year, as happened in the 1999 elections, will hand Chaudhry and Labour the government.

"It will be a test of the evolution and maturity of the nation, if there is an Indo-Fijian prime minister," one commentator, who asked not to be named, said. Chaudhry has no sympathy for long-running suggestions that he should bow to threats of unrest and not be prime minister, stepping aside for his deputy, Poseci Bune, another former hostage.

"It is fairly basic that whoever leads a party which wins government becomes prime minister.

"Again, it's playing the race card. While it is hurting in some ways that we are not able to get over this race business, at the same time as far as I'm concerned there is no compromise on that issue.

"It is my constitutional right, but most of all it is the right of the Indian community which I would be surrendering were I to say, 'Yes, I can lead the party but I will not be prime minister'. It would be an admission of second class citizenship."

THAT will not stop the ultra-nationalists using fear to campaign against him, and the Conservative Alliance Matanitu Vanua (CAMV), the party of the jailed Speight - and coalition partner for Qarase's ruling Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) party - has significant support in remote rural areas.

Though there may be a realisation Speight's coup was more about securing political patronage and wealth - particularly from the lucrative mahogany forestry rights - for a privileged few, the allure of a Fijian paramountcy platform will remain a powerful tool in the provinces.

It is this desire to appease the nationalists, and hold his coalition together, which is suggested as the reason Qarase has now embraced a highly controversial CAMV proposal to set up a Reconciliation and Unity Commission, an idea he initially rejected. Its purported aim is to draw to a close the ongoing prosecutions for coup-related offences, to allow minor players to seek forgiveness on the grounds they were following traditional obligations.

Sceptics, and there are many, hint it has a more sinister intent and could create a belief that anyone involved in a future coup will be subject only to traditional concepts of forgiveness and not the law.

Meanwhile the country's economy remains vulnerable, with the booming tourism sector alone unable to stop the impact of sliding sugar and garment industry receipts, with the loss of preferential European Union sugar prices two years away.

The shift of thousands of mainly Indian sugarcane farmers off land, because their leases expired, and the lack of jobs in rural communities has pushed people into the urban centres, with an estimated 80,000 squatters - almost 10 per cent of Fiji's population - now living in Suva alone.

"The lot of the Fijian people has rapidly declined these last few years," Chaudhry says. "They were promised 'mana' in '87 and 2000 and it hasn't come their way.

"They are worse off than they were before. It will be one hell of a job for any government to get the country moving." 

*  Helen Tunnah covered the 2000 uprising.