Coups, globalisation and tough questions for Fiji's future

The General's Goose - three decades of Fiji "coup culture". And what now with the second
post-coup election due this year?

REVIEW: By David Robie of Café Pacific

Historian Dr Robbie Robertson ... challenges "misconceptions"
about the Bainimarama government and previous coups, and asks
fundamental questions about Fiji's future.

When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.

A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.

Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.

Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.

Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia” (p. 314). But that wasn’t all.

Rabuka's post-coup Fiji 'forgiveness', corporate civil-military consultation proposal

The logo for the Macmillan Brown Centre
for Pacific Studies-organised conference.

MILITARISM has always been part of Fijian society and the country needs to find a “corporate” bridge between its civil and military based sectors, believes the man who sparked off the modern day coup culture more than 25 years ago.

Sitiveni Rabuka, then a lieutenant-colonel and third-ranked military commander in the Republic of Fiji military Force (RFMF), led the first two of four coups in 1987. The other coups followed in 2000 and 2006.

Former Fiji coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka speaks
at the Democracy in the Pacific conference
at the University of Canterbury on Friday.
Photo: David Robie/PMC

Rabuka, later an elected prime minister, was giving his views on “democracy” as keynote speaker on Friday in a Pacific-wide conference hosted by Canterbury University’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies.

“Militarism has always been a part of Fiji culture,” he said. “Militarism has always been a way of thinking.”

The military traditionally believed that they were the final guarantors of the security of the Fijian people.

“Unfortunately, I broke the democracy way and I stand accused,” Rabuka said, adding that he hoped for better relations with the military in future.

‘Corporate’ committee
He said what was needed was a “corporate” style special committee consulting between the military and the civilian government after the hoped for return to democracy in 2014.

“This would keep tabs on civil-military relations to prevent them breaking down again.”

But he said he believed that the return to democracy in Fiji rested on a fragile election plan that may not eventuate.

If elections did not go ahead, regime Prime Minister and 2006 coup leader Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama would remain in power.

So far, Bainimarama had made no move to establish a new political party, join an existing party or distance himself from the military.

Talking about traditional tribal rivalries and earlier military traditions leading to United Nations peacekeeping duties and politicisation of the army, Rabuka several times cited the famous Battle of Marathon in 490BC when a smaller Athenian army defeated the Persian invading force.

A runner sped to Athens to break the news, declaring: “We have won!”

‘Forgiveness’ process
He said a truth and conciliation “forgiveness” process involving chiefly protocols of “vakaturaga” of the iTaukei culture would contribute to a lasting resolution of Fiji’s problems.

During a plenary session later in the day, Rabuka admitted that he had initially thought the invitation for him to speak at the democracy conference was "a joke”.

“Fiji has had an army destroyer of democracy and a navy destroyer of democracy [Bainimarama] and now I thought they wanted to hear an army destroyer of democracy.”

In a reply to a question about the state of the press in Fiji, Rabuka replied there was a "selective" freeing up of news media debate: "My submission to the Constitution Commission hasn't been reported, for example."

The two-day conference included keynote addresses from current NZ Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, former Labour Minister of Foreign Affairs Phil Goff and wide-ranging papers from Pacific politicians (including a former Pacific Islands Forum chairman), foreign diplomats, academics, researchers, civil society advocates and doctoral students.

Conflict resolution
"Topics included alternative governance for conflict resolution in the Solomon Islands; conflicting “democracies” in customary and parliamentary governance in Samoa; Tongan constitutional reform; grassroots or top down approaches in overseas territories development aid?; the role of the military in post-colonial Fiji; and peace journalism in the South Pacific: a media and democracy frame in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

Macmillan Brown Centre acting director Dr Malakai Koloamatangi  praised the "successful" outcomes of the conference, vowing to plan towards a comparable future event and to establish an "Institute for Pacific Research and Governance".

• Pacific Scoop report on the conference
• Christchurch Press report
• Radio NZ International on Rabuka
• Democracy in the Pacific conference details
• Democracy critical to Pacific region, but poverty needs addressing
• Full Rabuka 'democracy' speech
  

Unmasking the Fiji blogger facade

CROSBIE WALSH has speculated on his upfront Fiji blog this week about the identity of an unnamed CoupFourPointFive spokesperson in an interview with Bruce Hill of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Hill also spoke to Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum on the topic of New Zealand media reports last November suggesting that PM Voreqe Bainimarama had "died". Of course, Bainimarama had the last laugh. The latest issue was about a planned complaint to the NZ Press Council about the false reports – a worrying trend considering that this could be the fourth time in two years that Pacific governments are exploiting the New Zealand media standards bodies to “chill” current affairs reporting. Also, the "action" item has been apparently ignored by NZ media. But Walsh also raised an ethical issue over why shield the identity of a blogsite commentator, a journalist who is clearly not at risk?

Walsh’s blog drew an interesting response from the “The ABC of getting it wrong” on the dubious granting of anonymity in these circumstances. The correspondent wrote:

Conventional practice in news and current affairs has it that interviewees should only have their identities concealed when there is a clear threat to their positions and the information being imparted is of such importance that there is a clear public interest in granting them anonymity.

The ABC would undoubtedly argue that one of the principals of Coup 4.5 deserves the cloak of anonymity because of the possibility of government retribution. But that's where any justification ends and even this depends on whether the person being interviewed was actually in Fiji and within striking distance of the alleged bully boys of the military.

Is he in danger on the streets of Auckland or Sydney? Not on the evidence thus far. Not only do regime critics thrive there but there's no indication whatsoever that Frank Bainimarama is a Saddam Hussein who orders death squads to pursue his opponents abroad. So how hazardous is this individual's position beyond being unmasked as a regime critic? Would he be captured, tortured and forced to reveal the secrets of 4.5? Maybe in Fiji in more fevered minds but nowhere else.

Where the ABC is really vulnerable to criticism and complaint is that this person's contribution to the debate was so pedestrian. Merely parroting the usual anti-regime line meant that nothing of what he said met the public interest test. There was no new information of such pressing urgency that the public benefited from hearing from the man with the mask.

Now, one might argue that I am anonymous in these columns. But this is comment, not news, an important distinction. And in any event, the whole world accepts that an entirely different set of conventions applies to the Bloggersphere. When it comes to news and information programs on a mainstream public broadcaster like the ABC, the audience clearly deserves better.

Yes, there are times when whistle-blowers deserve anonymity in the public interest, as well as their own, but this wasn't one of them. The whistle wasn't being blown on anything. Bruce Hill and his editors allowed a run-of-the-mill regime critic to sprout run-of-the-mill anti-regime criticism and in doing so, debased not just an importance convention but the credibility of the ABC.

Although Walsh - a retired professor who founded the development studies programme at both Massey University and the University of the South Pacific - does not have a media background himself, he manages to pose some searching questions about the contemporary nature of news and current affairs reporting in the Pacific region. And Café Pacific believes these questions are ignored at our peril. A day after the “masked interview” comment, another correspondent raised the issue of youth and absence of social-political memory and context among many journalists reporting today:

A recent editorial by Fred Wesley in The Fiji Times reminded me of how little collective memory is brought to bear on current events. In a piece on someone who'd managed to reach the ripe old age on 101, Wesley wrote in apparent awe that there were still people in Fiji who could remember the assassination of John F, Kennedy, the British colonial era and Fiji's independence. I've yet to reach three score years and can remember all three! You go back a lot longer and have accumulated much more knowledge. As the old saying goes, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

But in the case of Fiji, it's the appalling general ignorance of the past that produces the same mistakes again and again. You've now got to be 23 years old to have even been born at the time of Rabuka's 1987 coup. And you've got to be 40 to have been born at Independence. Is it any wonder that these events are now regarded as ancient history and irrelevant to peoples' lives?

Touché.

• Media reports of Bainimarama's death sparks complaint - ABC's Pacific Beat
• I'm still alive, says Fiji PM - Fiji Broadcasting Corporation

Audio flashback to Rabuka's first Fiji coup

AN EXCERPT from a documentary about the original Fiji coup led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka on 14 May 1987. It was made by University of the South Pacific journalism students a decade later. In 1997, Patrick Craddock, a former Radio New Zealand producer, was
working at USP in Suva with François Turmel, a former
BBC journalist who established the the Fiji-based regional journalism training programme with French support. As part of an exercise in documentary making, the students collected audio interviews with people who had
experienced the 1987 coup in Suva.

Interviewees included Sam Thompson, news editor of FM96 radio who broke the story about the coup; a radio journalist at Radio Fiji; Dr Tupeni Baba, a politician in the Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government of Dr Timoci Bavadra; the police chief appointed by Rabuka, students, staff of USP and people attending an NGO workshop.

At the time, none of the participants wanted to be identified by name with this documentary and no names were included in the production details. The documentary was seen as an exercise for USP journalism students and was never broadcast. Most audio interviews were done on location. The programme is now a small part of the history of the period.

Producer: Patrick Craddock, USP Media Centre.

Picture: Sitiveni Rabuka on 14 May 1987. Photo: Fiji Times

• Brij Lal on the road from 1987
• Coup anniversary and forgiveness - Subhash Appana
  
• Link here to the USP mp3 audio on Pacific Media Watch

Fiji coups: 'Out of the barrel of a gun'

Flashback to the original Sitiveni Rabuka coup – 14 May 1987:

“OUR chiefs,” said Taniela Veitata, now an Opposition MP, “are really the guardians of the peace in Fiji.” A day after he and his Taukei colleagues had been plotting the next stage in the plan to depose Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, Veitata was laying down the law in Parliament about racism.

“Peace is quite distinct, Mr Speaker, from the political philosophy of Mao Zedong where he said that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. In Fiji, there is no gun. But our chiefs are there; we respect them …”

Seven minutes later, at the stroke of ten o’clock, ten soldiers wearing gasmasks burst into the chamber.

“Sit down everybody, sit down,” barked the squad leader, a captain disguised by a balaclava and brandishing a 9mm pistol. “This is a takeover. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a military takeover. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. You are requested to stay cool, stay down and listen to what we are going to tell you.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Ligamamada Rabuka, dressed in a suit and a sulu stood up in the public gallery. He strode towards the Speaker – his uncle, Militoni Leweniqila.

“Please stay calm, ladies and gentlemen,” Rabuka said. “Mr Prime Minister, please lead your team down the right,” the colonel said. “Policemen, keep the passage clear. Stay down, remain calm. Mr Prime Minister, sir, will you lead your team now.”

Outside in the corridor, Ratu Finau Mara, son of the former Prime Minister [Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara], stood making sure the passage was clear. A back-up team of about 12 soldiers in full combat gear and armed with M16 assault rifles waited there. Moments earlier, Finau Mara had been making room in the passage for the soldiers to enter Parliament.

Shocked, Bavadra, his cabinet ministers and MPs were led outside at gunpoint to two waiting military trucks and ordered to get in.

Education Minister Dr Tupeni Baba, noticing uncertainty on the face of a soldier near him, made a gesture of resistance. “We’re not going on the trucks,” he said.

“Dou raici koyo, sa lako yani oqori,” snapped the captain. “Watch out for that one heading your way.”

Rabuka grabbed a loaded M16 from a nearby soldier and cocked it at Baba’s head. Baba, the most outspoken of any of the indigenous Fijian ministers, moved but still protested defiantly.

[Excerpt from David Robie’s Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific (Zed Books, London, 1989), pp. 218-219.]

Flashback to the George Speight attempted coup – 19 May 2000

At precisely 10.50am, [Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tupeni Baba] was stopped in mid-sentence as three men, two holding guns and one walking calmly towards the Speaker's chair, entered among screams.

That is when our complaints about being stuck in Parliament just about stopped - guns? We looked at each other, realised our good fortune and started counting the gunmen.

[Speaker Dr Apenisa] Kurisaqila was demanding to know: "What is this? What is this?'

In a more composed manner with his books in hand, Dr Kurisaqila said: "This is an illegal takeover!'

Within seconds all seven doors were shut by gunmen and [a group of Fiji Institute of Technology students in the public gallery] were told to leave.

In the press gallery, we were told to stop recording things, stop writing and just remain seated; the door to our room was locked from outside.

In the meantime, George Speight was telling Dr Kurisaqila to sit down. He turned to Opposition members and told them to leave the chambers. All left except Opposition Leader Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, Sam Speight (George's father), Jim Ah Koy and Ofa Duncan.

Speight's repeated request for the lot to leave was backed with a gunshot at this point; Dr Kurisaqila and these Opposition members refused to budge…

[Excerpt from Matelita Ragogo's article "The day of the parliamentary gunmen". She was one of three journalists reporting in the parliamentary press gallery on the morning when Speight’s gunmen walked in. From the University of the South Pacific journalism students’ coup archive.]

And Fiji, 14 May 2010… what of the so-called "coup culture" set in motion by Rabuka? The man who led the country's first two coups last month publicly apologised for his actions and has been on a personal journey of seeking forgiveness from its victims. He told the Fiji Sun:

“On this personal journey I am trying to go to all the victims of 1987 to apologise for what I did,” he said. He began in 1997 with Queen Elizabeth II when he was then Prime Minister. After carrying out the coup, Rabuka severed
ties with the British monarchy and declared Fiji a Republic.

“I also tried to return my OBE (Order of the British Empire) medal but Queen Elizabeth told me to keep it because I earned it before I carried out my 1987 actions,” he said.

Rabuka has also apologised to the family of Dr Bavadra; Defence Minister Ratu Epeli Ganilau, son of the former Governor-General and the Fiji's first President Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau; and to former junior officers.

But in the end, too little too late. Rabuka unleashed a damaging culture that has devastated Fiji for more than two decades, crippling the economy and political and social institutions. A legacy of ruin.

Pictures: Top: A Rabuka coup soldier in 1987. Photo: Matthew McKee (from Robie's Blood on their Banner). Above: A Speight gunman in 2000. Photo: Joe Yaya/USP coup archive).

• University of the South Pacific student journalists' 2000 coup archive - ACIJ website
• Rabuka says 'we can all live in harmony' - Fiji Village
• 23 years on since Fiji's first coup - Fiji Broadcasting Corporation

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