When violence threatens - Grubsheet under attack

Fiji Sun March 14 front page.

By Graham Davis

GRUBSHEET'S burgeoning number of opinion pieces on Fiji are largely designed to counter what we regard as the continuing failure of the mainstream regional media to come to grips with the reality of events there. They’re especially aimed at an Australian audience, to highlight what we regard as the folly of Canberra having turned its back on Fiji since Frank Bainimarama’s coup five years ago.

A lot of these pieces are picked up by the mainstream media – The Australian and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, for instance – or disseminated to a wider regional and global audience through the Pacific Scoop service of the Auckland University of Technology and Pacific Islands Report from the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Some are written as news stories but most are shamelessly opinionated, strong expressions of our own views based not only on on a life-long association with Fiji but having reported political events there for the mainstream media since before the first coup in 1987.

The problem arises when these articles are picked up and republished in Fiji, a country where the separation of news and opinion in the mainstream media doesn’t have a strong tradition. And so it was last week, when the Fiji Sun published a Grubsheet opinion posting on its front page that would have looked very much like news to local eyes. It provoked a wave of outrage, not least from the subject of that article – Laisenia Qarase, the man Frank Bainimarama deposed in his 2006 coup.

As readers can see for themselves in our own comments section, Qarase has gone on the attack against Grubsheet, accusing us of distortion, disregarding the facts and attempting to “crucify” him and his party – the SDL. He’s particularly aggrieved that we’ve accused him of pursuing racist policies in government. As readers can also note for themselves, we stand by that accusation.

But we can also sympathise with Qarase that an article on a humble Australian blog site can so dramatically become part of the domestic political debate in Fiji. If any proof were needed of the power of the internet to amplify the smallest voice, then this is it.

Qarase is not only entitled to defend himself but Grubsheet is delighted that he can now do so fully in the Fiji media for the first time in a long time. The Bainimarama government has lifted censorship and a full-blown debate has erupted about the impending discussions on a new constitution and the unilateral abolition of the Great Council of Chiefs. This is how it should be. It’s also Grubsheet’s view that if Laisenia Qarase intends to stand in the promised elections in 2014, his record in government is also a legitimate subject for debate.

Against all evidence to the contrary, he’s now running the line that the SDL has always been a "multiracial party", didn’t disadvantage other citizens in government and that he’s never believed in indigenous paramountcy. Every village pig in Fiji has suddenly sprouted wings and set off over a moonlit lagoon. But again, Qarase is entitled to put his case. And we’re entitled to put ours.

What is not acceptable are the threats to Grubsheet’s personal safety by Qarase’s supporters. These have come via the main anti-government blog site, Coup 4.5, which has been in our sights before for publishing blatantly racist content against the Indo-Fijian minority. These are “journalists” based abroad who not only routinely censor comments they don’t agree with but now facilitate threats of violence against people they don’t agree with. Here’s the first instance, when Coup 4.5 reported Laisenia Qarase’s first press release in response to the original Grubsheet article ...

Read the attacks and response on the Grubsheet blog.

For Laisenia Qarase, the real enemy isn’t Grubsheet. The real enemy is the cancer of intimidation and racism in his own ranks.

Human rights or corruption? Trotting out the real Fiji issues

ALL THE tired old clichés came out in droves in last week’s United Nations monologue on the Fiji regime’s tatty human rights record. Headlines fell over themselves echoing the same refrain:

Fiji human rights to undergo scrutiny
Fiji human rights to face UN scrutiny
Fiji Human rights defence challenged in Geneva … etc … etc …

Yet most of the litany of abuses rattled off by various governments and NGOs before the UN Human Rights Council periodic review were actually perpetrated in the months after Bainimarama’s original coup and yet they were often trotted out as if they were fresh. The breathless media blogs and journalists who continually recycle the same old sins rarely provide background or context – and even rarer is a mention of the systematic human rights and race-based violations by the ousted “democratic” regime of Laisenia Qarase.

Now, according to Fiji’s public broadcaster, the regime is wading through 116 recommendations to see how it can make things better. (Aligned against Australia, NZ, UK and the US - the Anglo-Saxon club - were countries such as China, Mexico, Philippines and Russia, which were prepared to give Fiji a fair go).

Following the saturation coverage of alleged Fiji human rights abuses in media in Downunder media, Café Pacific reckons journalists ought to see the film Balibo to get a sense of real human rights violations in this part of the world – in East Timor, where the Australian and New Zealand governments meekly brushed these Indonesian crimes on their doorstep under the carpet. Much easier to bully Fiji than Indonesia.

According to many seasoned local journalists, much of the Australian and NZ press simply fail to acknowledge the complexity of Fiji’s socio-political context. And nothing is said positively about the regime perhaps having actually achieved something in reducing race-based human rights violations. Says one former leading Fiji editor in an email to Café Pacific:

Fiji is not a homogeneous country. It is a unique country where we have two major races who each comprise about roughly half of the total population. The mix of cultures and religion is also unique.

The two major political parties are aligned along racial lines – that is their power base. They use the political arena to gain mileage and use the media to split the community.

We have seen plenty of the above.

When reporting about Fiji, the media needs a deeper understanding about racial issues in order to avoid being manipulated by politicians. So the media has to be careful how it goes about reporting race and politics.

People in Western countries view Fiji through Western eyes. But Fijian society and the situation here is very different.

Having said that, censorship is taken advantage of by the government when it allows nothing negative to be reported. This is not doing society any favour either.

It just shows what a powerful tool the media is, and how successive governments in Fiji have tried to bring it under their control.

His comments were borne out by Fiji's Ambassador to the European Union, Peceli Vocea, who blamed Fiji's ills on two decades of "mismanagement, corruption and nepotism" (ie. under "democratic" leadership).

Prominent Fiji issues blogger Croz Walsh, who unlike the tabloid “antis”, tries to bring some rigour to his website with research and analysis, deplored the gullible acceptance by news media of the spate of uncritical, onesided reports on human rights. He says:

Fiji really has been in the news for the last few days, and not one word in its favour. By now the world must think its human rights record is on a par with Burma. All other Fiji news, little that it ever was, has been pushed aside (except for ANU's Jon Fraenkel speaking to Radio NZ International on Voreqe Bainimarama's "resignation" and Fiji's Met Service work for the Cooks) by the avalanche of "human rights" news.

Apparently nothing positive is happening in Fiji, and there's never a word about the massive abuse of power -- and hence abuse of human rights -- by the deposed "democratically elected" government. I wonder how honest journalists can continue to talk of an independent media when their colleagues continue to report like this? Or how Fiji, even with the most worthy deeds and the most efficient PR, can have one hope in hell of countering what can only be called propaganda?

My paltry efforts in my blog to provide background, information, analysis and helpful comments is outnumbered many thousands to one, and the occasional radio interview seems like a sop to supposed balance.

The real Fiji issue here is not human rights (though some, affecting very few people, have been abused). The real issue is the abuse of "media rights" that have been allowed, if not encouraged, to so distort the situation in Fiji, past and present.

• Draft report of the UN human rights working group on Fiji

Tyrant or crusader against corrupt democracry?

AFTER THE bula welcome this week for "approved" journalists, Liz Jamieson of the London Times has filed a piece from Suva about "terror and threats" at the hands of a tyrant. This should give the sulu censors a choke or two around the yaqona bowl. She describes the recent molotov cocktail season.

“We are afraid for our lives,” one of the victims, who would not be named, told The Times. "My wife and I don’t sleep at night, we are always wondering when the next bomb will come or when they will come for us with their guns. I have been imprisoned and beaten all over my body and face; they told me that the next time they come for me my wife can pick up my body from the morgue.” This is not Zimbabwe or Burma. This is Fiji, the tourist jewel of the South Pacific and, until recently, the most sophisticated of the island nations in this region.

A world away from the Fiji described a couple of days earlier by the Fiji-born Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Graham Davis. Previously working with the Nine Network’s Sunday programme, Davis, 56, is now a principal of Grubstreet Media. His article, "Dealing with the dictator", in The Australian had far greater depth and insight. As you would expect with a journalist with much better grasp of the root causes of Fiji’s despair. Most journalists are reporting the crisis as if it is something that just brewed a couple of weeks ago, or at the most a couple of years or so ago – when Voreqe Bainimarama staged the first round of his coup and ousted the “democratic” prime minister Laisenia Qarase in December 2006. No sense of the history of the past two decades, or indeed the deep structural political problems and injustice bequeathed to Fiji by the British at independence in 1970. Davis challenged Australian (and other?) media to interrogate the “good guy, bad guy” narrative in a country that under Qarase turned two-fifths of its population into second class citizens.

The bad guys, of course, are held to be Bainimarama and his patron, Fiji's octogenarian President, Josefa Iloilo, who have defied the courts by ruling out any popular vote until they can change the electoral system. The good guys are those calling for an immediate election: a coalition of lawyers, human-rights activists and elements of the local media, plus the man Bainimarama deposed at gunpoint in 2006, former prime minister Laisenia Qarase. It's time to dispense with this simplistic premise because a compelling argument can be made that, in fact, the reverse is true; that Bainimarama and Iloilo, for all their flaws, are embarked on the more worthy crusade. Or certainly more worthy than they're being given credit for by their burgeoning number of foreign opponents. The Fiji saga, by its very nature, defies simplicity, yet stripped to its bare essentials presents the international community with a stark choice between upholding the principle of democracy now and sacrificing racial equality in the process. Wait five years - maybe less if some international agreement could be brokered - and we might get both.

His article won applause from Fiji’s chief information manipulator, Major Neumi Leweni, so it’s probably the kiss of death for Davis. In fact, he immediately copped abusive flak from some of the more rabid Fiji blogs. But it is refreshing to have this perspective from Davis, given that most media have not been giving the full story as partially aired on Media 7 and Shine TV this week. Croz Walsh's blog is still the most useful for a running analysis without all the vitriol.

One of the most bizarre events of this week of paranoia and the crushing of free speech was the spectre of the man who started Fiji's coup culture, Sitiveni Rabuka, calling for a free media. Rabuka - who staged both of the original coups in 1987 and then was elected prime minister twice – also called for the regime to relax its crackdown and open the door for foreign journalists. However, to his credit, after the rough times he dealt the press in the barracks' year zero, he mellowed and his charismatic style and openness was genuinely liked by most media people. A contrast to Bainimarama.

Ironically, his military boss (and chief) whom he ousted as a commoner (unthinkable then) in the double coup in May 1987, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, is now Vice-President of the Easter regime.

• Media 7 on Fiji censorship
• Shine TV on Fiji troubles
• Dealing with the dictator
• Terror and threats as Fiji suffers under the hands of a tyrant

What on earth did the Fiji Appeal Court expect?

Pictured, the Fiji Times in a happier mood on the day before the Appeal Court judgment ruling the regime illegal - and the subsequent clampdown on press freedom. Once again, the New Zealand media has failed to give a wide enough range of analysis and opinion on the complexities of the Fiji crisis. While this major upheaval (albeit predictable) is happening right on our doorstep with enormous consequences for the region, the country's largest daily newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, could only find room for two short single column stories tucked inside the print edition. Both had local angles only - the first on Saturday in the Weekend Herald summed up Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully's view (on page 4) while eight pages of foreign news carried not a word about Fiji. Today's coverage highlighted Australian PM Kevin Rudd's reaction on page 2 and six pages of foreign news were astonishing for the absence of Fiji. Café Pacific offers a commentary from longtime NZ academic in Fiji Croz Walsh whose blog provides many insights that no other local media provides.

Open letter by Crosbie Walsh

I WOULD have preferred a few days to reflect on Good Friday's developments but given that others are not disposed to do so, I add my thoughts for consideration.

Leave aside for the moment the rights and wrongs of events of Friday, 9 April 2009: the Appeal Court's decision that the President's appointment of the Interim Government in 2007 was unlawful; Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama's apparent acceptance of the decision; the President's abrogation of the Constitution, and the reappointment of the Interim Government, together with decrees dismissing the judiciary and limitations on media freedom. These are matters we can address later.

For the moment the most important questions seem to be:

First, what on earth did the court (and Laisenia Qarase who had challenged the earlier High Court's decision that the Interim Government was lawful) expect? That an adverse decision would see the President comply with the Appeal Court ruling -- which may yet be appealed? That Bainimarama, the military leaders and the Interim Government would abandon their 2006 takeover objectives and hand everything back to Qarase so that things would be just as they were before, bowing to the racial and religious extremism that had infiltrated the Qarase regime? Because that is exactly what a new election under the existing undemocratic and racially-skewed communal voting system would produce.

Abandon the work done on the People's Charter and the President's Political Dialogue Forum; a fairer electoral system; provision for tri-lingualism in schools and government offices, that could lead to a more tolerant and inclusive Fiji? Abandon work on the renewal of land leases, the sugar industry, rural infrastructure, the NLTB, fairer land rent returns to ordinary Fijians, a minimum wage, and the work on poverty reduction that could lead to a fairer, more equitable Fiji? Abandon work (that has proved exceedingly difficult due in part to the denied absence of overseas forensic accountant experts) to expose corruption and clientism at the highest levels, but which most surely benefits sections of the business and chiefly elite? Throw two and one-half years' work, opposed at every turn by Qarase and others who could have cooperated had they really believed in democracy, into the old Lami rubbish tip?

Secondly, how are the (new) Interim Government, their opposition, the media and "moderate" NGOs, going to handle this new situation? The answer to these questions, at the moment, seems to be: "very badly." Commodore, it is essential the emergency regulations are implemented with restraint and removed as soon as practicable. Akuila, I have respected you since the mid 1970s when you protested the expulsion of the Malekula squatters at Flagstaff. And Netani, who I have never met, you have blanked your Fiji Times pages in protest of censorship. I respect your courage and intent but surely neither of you, Akuila and Netani, support the return of a racist regime. That, ultimately, is the choice. Look at the bigger picture, beyond the clumsiness, provocations and abuses of power by the Interim regime. Continue your protest but with judgment. Keep the end in sight. Think. What, in this new situation, is best for Fiji? This is not a moment for prevarication. Now, you have to decide between the known racist and undemocratic stance of the Qarase regime, and the suspect but probable good intentions of Bainimarama. Negotiate and be patient for space to comment objectively. For freedom of the press. A hard stance now could see all doors closed, and your important contribution to Fiji's future denied. This may soothe your justifiable pride, but it will not help Fiji.

Thirdly, what is going to be the reaction of the "international community"? Well, here at least there are no surprises. They are handling the new situation as they did before, within the narrow blinkers of supposed "democracy" and "media freedom." They, who earlier rejected the findings of the Fiji High Court (because it did not support their position), now accept without question this decision of this first Court of Appeal, because it does (even though it yet may also be appealed).

From my New Zealand, Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, a total denial of realities. Honestly, Minister, what do you know about Fiji? Who, if anybody, are you listening to? In MFAT or in the NZAid you would see ended? To my friends, if I may call you that, Jim Tully on media and Rod Alley of the Beaglehole-Somerset-Alley conjoined clans, other than your illustrious ancestors' contributions to liberal causes, what is your special expertise on Fiji? And to my friend Toke Talagi, chairman of the Pacific Island Forum, why has Australia and New Zealand spoken with no reference to you? Do they chair the Forum? What also of other Forum members? Are their opinions of less importance than NZ and Australian commentators?

The role of the international community is important but not necessarily decisive. Fiji will resolve its own problems in its own way. But the community is in a position to help or hinder, to see whether or not ordinary Fiji citizens, in the key sugar and tourist industries, and their downstream cousins, will suffer unduly. Australia, New Zealand, the ECC and the Commonwealth can devastate the Fiji economy, but still see no "return to democracy." And their continuing inflexible opposition to Bainimarama will further buttress and encourage the Qarase opposition to do what we do not know --- and dare not imagine.

My Lords, Justices of Appeal, safely back in Sydney (whose judgment I will later address, because it seems, to this layman, to contain inconsistencies favouring Australian and Qarase positions), how now do you see what your detached, removed, judgment has achieved? Would you not agree that Fiji --ordinary, everyday Fiji, impoverished, bereft, isolated Fiji -- not you or Australia, face the consequencies of what you, in your lofty legal wisdom, judged to be not "chaotic"? And how does this situation, that you have helped create, differ from that the President sought to control early in 2007, using powers you claimed he did not have?

Professor Crosbie Walsh is a development geographer who was former director of the Institute of Development Studies at Massey University and then headed a similar programme at the University of the South Pacific for five years.

• Coup 4.5
  
• David Robie condemns media censorship

Bias over the Fiji charter legal rebuff

YET ANOTHER example of local Fiji media bias ushered in the weekend editions of the press, this time over the High Court ruling that all work must halt on the People's Charter for Change, Peace and Progress. The Daily Post, for example, editorialised in its front page splash story "Charter halted": "Fiji is finally moving forward."

Inexcusable for an intro on the court ruling purporting to be fact. Of course, the next sentence attributed the opinion to deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase (who incidentally became appointed caretaker prime minister after the George Speight coup in May 2000, thanks to the military). Now, the editorial handling of the story wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the media group is steered by Qarase's first cousin while the editor is his son-in-law.

Secondly, a ruling hours later by the Court of Appeal's Justice John Byrne actually imposing a stay on the judgment by Justice Filimoni Jitoko (until a substantive appeal hearing on Thursday, November 20) didn't get mentioned in the story. (However, it was flagged in a downpage strapline). The regime is seeking a judicial review on the ground that under the Proceedings Act the court cannot order an injunction against the state. Fijilive reported it this way as main news item: Charter work to continue, stay granted: "The interim government has successfully acquired a court injunction that will allow the National Council for Building a Better Fiji to resume work on the People’s Charter."

Other local coverage wasn't much better. Fiji free press at work? Some of the international media coverage was an improvement. Australian Associated Press reported: "Fiji's High Court has delivered a blow to the country's military-led government, ordering it to halt work on a document that would usher in constitutional changes." But even then, it didn't reveal all the fishhooks involved in the legal minefield.

Over at Avaiki Nius, Jason Brown has highlighted a persistent Pacific media problem - no-shows at donor expense. Another good read at the Pacific Media Centre is the latest fallout from the Niu FM saga earlier this year. But things are definitely on the mend. Pere Maitai is doing some great things in rebuilding the news service.

• Charter halted
• Charter work to continue
• Blow to people's charter
• Fiji's People's Charter

Bye bye Qarase - a bula morning in the Fiji High Court

A BOMB threat cleared the Fiji High Court today, but the end result was a damp squib for the coup critics' camp. Coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama won his ruling in court and it was bye bye Laisenia Qarase. The deposed prime minister's attempt to have the December 2006 coup declared in breach of the 1997 constitution failed. One of Café Pacific's e-scribes was on hand to record some wry impressions:

In offices they listened and watched as Fiji TV carried the court findings live and radio boomed out around the nation. On the streets they listened. On the island of Laisenia Qarase, people were glued to the live radio broadcast.
It was Judgment Day - and a big one too.
Qarase lost his case. The Fijian Constitution still stands and that’s that.
The President has direct powers to rule. He has used them and he has the right to use them until the next election is ready.
He was given a long lead time – at least no date was hinted at for the election. When the time is ready for the elections, it’s ready.
Bainimarama must be laughing all the way to his office today, dancing and firing guns in the air. The kava bowls will be filled over many times.
So goes the judgment. And there was not implied - but direct criticism - voiced against both Australia and New Zealand for their travel bans against the interim government.
As for the judge who read the judgment, it took him around two hours in all with a break for coffee and biscuits. And was it wordy? – Oh yes.
We had references to precedents in England, Scotland,
the Philippines, Colonial India and World Two in Burma.
I heard the name John Locke and 1688. I lost the plot now and again, and returned to it between my cups of coffee. But then the three judges needed breaks too.
At the end of the judgment, the judge apologised to the various legal counsel for small typographical errors, and said he was would send electronic correct copies to them during the afternoon.
He also gave a gentle barbed reply on trees, conservation and paper to a counsel who asked about getting a corrected printed copy of the judgment.

The Fiji interim regime wasted no time in calling for cooperation and support for its election plans and constitutional legal specialist Professor Bill Hodge, of Auckland University, says many governments previously opposed to the regime can now be expected to recognise the government as legitimate.

Meanwhile, University of the South Pacific political scientist Steve Ratuva has done a handy analysis on the real power plays at work in Fiji - something vastly better than has been seen from the local flacks for months.

• Multiple battle lines - who is winning?
• Fiji High Court upholds 2006 coup
• Fiji court legitimises 2006 military coup
• Fiji court backs legality of 2006 coup
• Fiji interim regime urges cooperation
• The full judgment

Treason? I've got a little list

More from one of Café Pacific's Laucala correspondents who keeps a reality check on Fiji with a touch of satire ...

Fiji is funny. The coup is now generating humour and the past politicians are becoming hilarious. Eighteen months after the coup of December 2006 Laisenia Qarase, the former Prime Minister was kicked out of government, his government house and his government car. He has now realised that something is wrong and become so incensed that he filed a treason complaint with the police on the grounds that the December 6 coup was illegal.

Treason. Doesn’t the word make you cringe, go pale with fear at being hanged, drawn and quartered or at least exiled for life to the island of St Helena where you will view the house where Napoleon Bonaparte contemplated his glorious past, France, freedom and failure?

Qarase lodged his treason claims against a formidable group of people that include the Interim Prime Minister who led the coup, the Chief of Police who was an army officer and part of the coup. Oh, yeah, did I forget to tell you it was the coupmaster who made him Chief of Police.

But there are civilians on the alleged traitors list too. It includes the aged and dignified Catholic Archbishop Petero Mataca and the 45 members of The National Council for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF). One name on the list is John Samy, the gentle spoken boss of the NCBBF Secretariat who has led the way writing the People’s Charter with its message of love thy neighbour.

Dear John also appeared on the front page of (The Fiji Sun, September 6) with his photograph and the headline "Coup was illegal: Samy". He denies saying that, but it brings a smile or scowl to the face, but which face or faces!

I’m not sure who all the 45 members of the NCBBF are but they include Mahendra Chaudhry, who must have got wind of the treason charge as he resigned from the council a few weeks ago and is now defending himself with a phalanx of political jargon. There are another 44 other people on that guilty council list. They include academics, traditional chiefs, business people, trade unionists, a woman from an NGO and a priest who has spent many years helping the poor.

Obviously this is a meddling priest. We all know that there only around half the nation live in poverty or damn near it. This priest says so little about the other half of the population. Now, there is prejudice for you, and as we learned from Qarase – treason!

Mick Beddoes, the former leader of the Opposition, is an interesting guy. Big in body, bold in voice and so convinced that he is right. He has now publicly supported the treasonous charge brought by Qarase and company against the army and those nasty NCBBF members.

But, wait, there is more. If you had watched the Fiji TV news on Monday, September 8, there was a news item saying that Mick, the man, has joined the NCBBF when it started. He attended the meeting, took the allocated allowances and then resigned. So Mick, the man must also want to be in court in the defendants’ box when the treason trial begins. Good man, that Mick is, he recognises the error of his ways, and is preparing to suffer the consequences. I don’t know if he is Catholic or Methodist or whatever, but on St Helena, I am sure the Archbishop will give Mick good Christian counselling.

This Mikado story took another turn today. A former Fiji police commissioner said in a serious voice, so we would not laugh, that it would be difficult for the present police commissioner to be impartial in his investigations of the Qarase accusations, when he is also mentioned in the complaint, as being implicated in the coup.

Let me end with Major Lewini, the government spokesperson who seems to be
always lost for words, but who can make up for it with scowls and a few mumbled key phrases. Today he inferred that Qarase and his team are having foul fun and no good would come out it. Other men make the humour, Lewini is the straight man. We do need a reality check in Fiji, or at least in Suva, where all this stage cavorting is going on.

Last Sunday on TV, the interviewer was conducting a serious discussion on proposed new rules for the next general election. He said to one of the participants who was talking about recreating part of the political past, that the boat has already left the wharf. A neat metaphor.

The way I see it, the boat left the wharf during December 2006 and it’s getting further away. It’s difficult to see when it’s going to return and when it does, will it hit the wharf with a great wallop and damage both the people and the goods on board?

Fiji: Love thy neighbour as a last resort

The “chilling” of a free press in Fiji means local journos are often reluctant to come out with their frank views so they turn to blogs like this as an outlet. I get frequent dispatches from a variety of local journos, and here is one about the "Fiji Magna Carta" Café Pacific would like to share:

The Fiji military had only a few warm days of love from the public after they had executed the fourth coup in December 2006. Many Fijians and Indo-Fijians welcomed the army intervention into their lives as they watched Prime Minister Qarase and his government leave their official homes and hand over their government issued four-wheel drives.

The army quickly accused Qarase of corruption. Chief Justice Fatiaki was also accused of corruption and suspended on full pay, but 18 months on little has happened to prove either man guilty or innocent. The courts seem clogged up or fogged up in their decision-making. They have still even answered the basic question - was the Constitution abrogated when Bainimarama and his gun-toting soldiers took over the nation? The government was kicked out with guns pointing at them, the President dismissed and then reinstated. Yet we have had a key organisation like the Fiji Human Rights Commission saying the Constitution might still be in place and we should await a decision from the courts. Really!

Even a number of judges are convinced the Fiji Constitution has gone the way of all flesh, and they are not waiting for the High Court to tell them otherwise. Justice Gerard Winter said the “risk to the maintenance of the rule of law was too great a price to pay” and Justice French questioned the ethics of taking up a job in Fiji with the comment that “it comes at too high a price”.

The military has been active during its reign. CEOs have lost their jobs overnight. Others have been appointed, then dismissed without warning and replaced. This has been the modus operandi in Fiji for the last 18 months. Two expatriate publishers working for the two main newspapers have been deported on the first plane out of the country without their families. The full reasons for deportation have never been given.

An army officer soldier is now the police chief. TV has an army officer watching them on a daily basis. Journalists get regularly taken to the army camp to be intimidated with soldiers strutting around, enduring long interrogations and spending time in a cell. The most recent case was a newspaper journalist who was several months pregnant.

Files are seized without warning from offices during sudden raids. Few files are returned and few charges have been laid. The feeling among thinking citizens is that the army is gradually tainting its reputation by acting as if it always has had the moral high ground. The most recent example was when the army commander, who is also the interim Prime Minister, collected just under $200,000 for his untaken leave. In any other organisation he would have been forced to take the leave or he would have lost it.

The army decided to make its own summer. It established a 45 person committee to prepare a People's Charter, a modern Fiji Magna Carta to help the poor and oppressed, make jobs and eliminate racism and corruption. The People’s Charter is to reform Fiji and lead it onward to a prosperous and harmonious future. That is the sales pitch. It proposes to help the poor and there are certainly enough of them. One third of the nation lives below the poverty line. Many of them struggle to make a livelihood in dirty inhumane conditions. Five years ago a survey identified 182 squatter settlements, today there are more than 200 with a population of around 100,000. According to Wadan Narsey, an economist and academic, the poor have been expanding at 1% a year since 1987. Mr Rabuka, are you listening?
When it was drafted it was to be presented to the people for their approval. Many good citizens agreed to help with its work – academics, lawyers, church officials, business people and some NGOs. The draft of the People's Charter devised by the National Council for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF) is now out and about and being distributed around the country. There are 200,000 copies printed in three
languages.

The draft charter has numerous recommendations for improving health, education and helping the poor, but there are only a few recommendations in it requiring legislative changes. One key proposal is for the electoral voting system to be reformed to a proportional representation system with each person having only one vote for one candidate in any general election. Racial elements in the voting system are to be dismembered.

All citizens will be called Fijians and all government records reflecting racism will be erased. And at this moment a huge campaign has begun by the NCBBF to spread the word around the country about the content and principles in the draft charter. The public are invited to read the charter and attend a series of public meetings. At the end of these meetings the public will be offered a form to sign saying that they approve or disapprove of the charter. On the surface this seems a harmless action, but both the Secretariat boss of the NCBBF and an academic of the University of the South Pacific have publicly said that if more than half the population think the Charter is a good idea, and they say so by ticking the approval part of their forms, this action could be seen as taking part in an unofficial referendum. If over half the nation says they approve of the charter ideas the military will love them and so will the NCBBF.

While the NCBBF seems to be full of good men and women who are doing their best to lead Fiji forward by “change, peace and progress”, it is apparent that the hard work of consultation and listening to the views of the nation means damn all to the military, who have already made their minds up that the charter will become the blueprint for developing Fiji.

Now events have moved towards a bitter winter of discontent. The military want the charter to be accepted. Other groups want it to fail. Former Prime Minister Qarase has denounced the charter and he has a big following with his political party. The Methodist Church with its dubious record of supporting previous coups, but not the present one, has become moralistic and pure and talks about democracy. This is the most important church in the country as far as the indigenous Fijians are concerned. Recently, NCBBF took around copies of the charter to the Methodist church office only to have them refused and returned.

Ironically, this event was caught on cameras and made the 6 pm news. The Methodist leaders rejected the Charter without even discussing it. Some traditional chiefs have also come out against the charter. Each day the newspapers have yet another article about the charter and numerous letters.

So where do we go from here? There are meetings planned by the NCBBF to take place in most of the towns and villages in Fiji. Here they will gather public opinion. Their hard work comes to a peak in October when the President will be presented with the draft of the People’s Charter and any amended recommendations. It will then be up to the ailing President and the army commander to say what the next moves will be. My guess is that the army will quickly want to get the electoral system changed to one with proportional representation. Only then can an election day can be scheduled and the military will be able to say with a straight face that they are planning to return the country to democratic rule. In the meantime they bluster, bully the media and blame Australia and New Zealand for not supporting a coup!

What will to be decided after October is crucial to Fiji’s future. Decisions made by the President, the army commander and his hidden supporters will clearly be undemocratic, but they should lead towards a sunny summer day of democracy in either 2009 or 2010.

Do the citizens of Fiji live in hope? All, I hope, live so.

• Communalism is to 'love thy neighbour'
• Fiji Nub News
  

Fiji Times 'voice of the people'

One of my Fiji journo colleagues has brought to Cafe Pacific's attention a few interesting letters on the Fiji Times Online website. An extract from one, headed Media bias, contrasted the lack of zeal in the investigative stakes when Qarase was in power compared with the Chaudhry expose:
"Yet here we have our deposed Prime Minister (Laisenia Qarase) charged with crimes during his tenure with FHL.
Why does the media not investigate Mr Qarase's case further?
It's been discussed in all sectors in the House of Representatives since early 1990s yet the media has done little to report this to the public.
I challenge the media to show what investigative reporting they have done so far with Mr Qarase's case or other cases such as Fiji Water."

Signed by Robert Rounds, of Lautoka.

An editorial response from the FT: "Mr Qarase's case is before the courts and we cannot report on it at this stage. We welcome information from the public which will help us with our investigations."

A bit more investigative probing at the time would have been helpful!

Another reader took a blast at ther local reporting and wondered why the coverage of the commission against corruption wasn't getting a better run.

Responsible media

"I NOTE the call for more responsibility in the media.
On a visit to Fiji, I must say I was shocked to see the newspapers taking an obvious bias against the interim Government.
Of course this administration has made mistakes (what government hasn't?) but it faces a constant chipping away by the press in particular
Surely the good things to come out of the interim Government such as the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) are worthy enough to note.
Responsibility in the media must include the exercise of discretion when to print and when not to print a story.
Just one week's reading of this long-time journal's output provides irrefutable evidence that your editorial board has never read the book on discretion."
Paul K. Madigan
Hong Kong

National crisis
"YOUR FrontPage headline (FT 12/2) alleges that the National Council for Building a Better Fiji is in a crisis.
We have many crisis in Fiji serious crime, poverty where more than one third of the population are struggling to survive below the poverty line, in schools with 10 per cent of our children not attending classes, lack of confidence in an economy on the decline and many others on the same scale of seriousness.
A difference of views between two national council members, even if expressed very robustly, will not register on the same scale. This is by comparison, a crisis in a tea cup.
The national council, from the outset when it first met on January 16, encourages robust debate.
Its members will not be frightened by a bit of honest emotion over a matter that may, in the end, be easily resolved by a quiet conversation and constructive dialogue.
They keep a sense of proportion in their discussions about what is really important and what is not.
The national council, at the least, deserves a sense of proportion and fair reporting from journalists and the mainstream media.
In the report, the headline and contents of your first paragraph [don't] show any relationship to the rest of the news.
The story was about a certain business deal and had nothing to do with the national council."
John Samy

Head of TASS

• Media bias
• Responsible media
• National crisis