Editorial: Fiji - where bad can only get worse

Every time it seems Fiji cannot get any worse, it does. Last week its self-appointed government dismissed the country's Court of Appeal and abolished its constitution. This week, it arrested the Governor of its Reserve Bank. Not only the government but the judicial system, the currency and whole deteriorating economy are now under the direct control of Commodore Frank Bainimarama and his military band.

The dismissal of the court, sometimes staffed by retired New Zealand judges, followed its ruling on a case brought by the deposed Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, against the replacement of his Government in December 2006. A High Court panel which heard the case last year decided the coup was a legitimate use of reserve powers provided in the 1997 Constitution for Fiji's President to do whatever may be necessary in a crisis.

The Court of Appeal disagreed, ruling President Ratu Josefa Iloilo's decrees unconstitutional and his appointment of the interim government illegitimate. The court also offered a solution, urging the President to appoint a new interim government that should include neither Mr Qarase nor Commodore Bainimarama and any member of his regime.

The regime is powerful enough to have ignored this judgment and simply soldiered on. Instead, President Iloilo, obviously acting on the commodore's instructions, sacked the judges, abrogated the constitution, declared himself head of state and re-appointed Commodore Bainimarama interim prime minister.

Interim used to mean pending elections. But in the course of declaring this coup against the judiciary, Ratu Iloilo ruled out an election for at least five years. Now the Pacific Forum can cease pretending that its gentle pressure, let alone its May 1 deadline for progress in that direction, might bring about a return to democracy in the foreseeable future. And the Commonwealth can forget its September deadline. If the organisations do not move to expel Fiji this year they will shed further credibility.

Nothing foreign diplomacy can do, however, could be as effective as the regime's economic destruction. The arrest of Reserve Bank Governor Savenaca Narbue has been described as an "act of vandalism". It is certainly an act of idiocy. Nobody can have the slightest confidence in the currency or the resilience of the desperately declining economy if the soldiers have usurped the country's financial management.

In the absence of an explanation for his arrest it can only be assumed Governor Narbue was being ordered to take steps he knew to be economically disastrous. Commodore Bainimarama's monetary expertise is probably no better than his diplomatic sense, which we know to be inept.

Changes of government in Australia and New Zealand presented him with an opportunity to reconcile them to his coup. Sanctions applied by previous Governments had brought no sign of progress towards a restoration of democracy. The Key Government was plainly prepared to try a different approach. But it was barely in office before the commodore was threatening to expel New Zealand's ambassador over a refusal to renew a study visa for an official's son.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully's response was notably mild, but the threat was carried out. Even now, in his comments on the country's constitutional destruction, Mr McCully's remarks do not ring with the righteous indignation that used to be heard from Helen Clark and Phil Goff.

But the commodore seems tin-eared to the possibilities. Now that Fiji is more completely under his thumb, its condition can only get worse.