KEY POINTS:
The state of sham in Fiji seems to know no bounds. A month after he overthrew the elected Government, Commodore Frank Bainimarama has installed himself as interim Prime Minister. Armed with the backing of restored President Ratu Josefa Iloilo, an elderly, readily manipulable figurehead, Fiji's military ruler has abandoned even the pretence of civilian participation. Now, the country will be moulded to his vision. And all, astoundingly, with the backing of Fiji's Human Rights Commission.
The watchdog has published a 32-page analysis of the coup in which it finds the military did not act unlawfully, and that New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark endangered the safety of Fiji's people by using undiplomatic language to describe what she thought of the commodore's mental health and to "wrongly accuse him of 'ripping up' the constitution". By any yardstick, it is an extraordinarily misdirected document.
New Zealand is not the only country to be harshly criticised. According to the commission, the international community and its representatives in Fiji were all guilty of simplistically endorsing the actions of the Government of deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase as "democracy at work".
It says the likes of the European Union and the United Nations relied too heavily on the advice of agenda-driven non-government organisations. Thus, they failed to appreciate the abuse of the parliamentary process implicit in proposed legislation such as the Reconciliation, Truth and Unity Bill, which would have provided amnesties for the perpetrators of the 2000 coup.
Commodore Bainimarama, says the commission, overthrew an illegally constituted, unconstitutional Government that was acting against the public interest in violation of security and safety protections in the Fijian constitution.
This contention has two main strands; both are badly flawed. The first questions whether the Qarase Government was legitimately elected last March. The commission cites constituency boundary issues, and problems with the likes of voter registration and scrutiny of rolls.
These claims may or may not have validity. More would soon have been revealed because the Fiji Labour Party had issued a legal challenge to the election results. This was before the courts when the coup occurred. If Commodore Bainimarama had the slightest interest in democratic process, he would surely have waited for the legal verdict before taking it upon himself to declare the Qarase Government unconstitutional.
The commission also says the military has the constitutional power to ensure security and protect the wellbeing of the Fijian people. If it keeps to this objective, it will not have acted unlawfully in overthrowing the "despotic" Qarase Government.
But the longest of bows must be drawn to suggest the security mandate gives any semblance of justification for a coup. In embracing the concept, the commission is ill-advised, albeit no more so than when, immediately after the coup, it warned Fijians to be careful about expressing their views.
In the odd space occupied by this watchdog, it seems better that people should hold their tongues than that it should berate Commodore Bainimarama for curbing freedoms of speech and assembly. And it seems a matter of bewilderment but no great consequence that the rest of the world does not see things its way.
On only one point is it cogent. The potentially racially divisive policies of the Qarase Government were a matter for concern, and there may have been shortcomings in last year's election.
Yet these issues could quite easily have been accommodated within the democratic process. No pseudo-legal posturing can justify the coup, or its shabby appointments.
