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SUVA - New elections will be held in politically unstable Fiji in 2010, the military commander who led the South Pacific nation's fourth coup in 20 years said today.
Commander Frank Bainimarama toppled elected Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase in a bloodless coup on Dec. 5, claiming Qarase's largely indigenous government was corrupt and too soft on those responsible for the previous coup in 2000.
Bainimarama said he had laid out a "road map" to democracy which included plans for a constitutional review, a census of Fiji's 900,000 people and an examination of electoral boundaries in the next two years.
"Under this roadmap, Fiji will be ready for a general election and a full restoration of parliamentary democracy in 2010," he said in a statement.
Bainimarama had previously said his takeover would not be permanent but it was the first time he had given a timetable for elections.
He said a mini-budget would be announced on March 2.
"The precarious state of the nation's finances will be improved," Bainimarama later told reporters in the capital, Suva.
"We will expand the economy in order to create more jobs for our people and provide them with better incomes and opportunities," he said.
Bainimarama took over executive authority from President Ratu Josefa Iloilo in the days after his coup, dissolving parliament, declaring a state of emergency and installing a military doctor with no political experience as caretaker prime minister.
The military strongman then reinstated the aging and ailing Iloilo as president and named himself interim prime minister.
Bainimarama's coup drew international condemnation, with Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States imposing economic, diplomatic and defence sanctions.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey repeated the US demand that democracy be restored immediately. "Not a year from now or two years from now or three years from now, but now," he told reporters.
A former British colony, Fiji had its Commonwealth membership suspended in protest at the coup, just as it did after two similar upheavals in 1987 and again in 2000.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer repeated his call for Bainimarama to step down.
"I think the idea of a military commander continuing to control the country is inappropriate," Downer said.
"I think to have a civilian prime minister and a roadmap back to democracy is the right approach for Fiji, but we'll just have to wait and see," he told reporters in Adelaide before Bainimarama's election announcement.
- REUTERS
