Table of Contents
If civilization is to survive, one is driven to radical views. I do not mean driven to violence. Violence always compromises or ruins the cause it means to serve: it produces as much wrong as it tries to remedy. The State, for example, is always with us. Overthrow it and it will come back in another form, quite possibly worse. It’s a necessary evil—a monster that continually has to be tamed, so that it serves us rather than devours us. We can’t do without it, neither can we ever trust it.[2]
Fiji experienced the whole gamut of emotions over the course of a fateful 2006. The year ended on an unsettled note, as it had begun. Fiji was yet again caught in a political quagmire of its own making, hobbled by manufactured tensions, refusing to heed the lessons of its recent tumultuous past, and reeling from the effects of the coup. Ironies abound. A Fijian army confronted a Fijian government, fuelling the indigenous community’s worst fears about a Fijian army spilling Fijian blood on Fijian soil. The military overthrow took place 19 years to the day after frustrated coup-maker of 1987 Sitiveni Rabuka had handed power back to Fiji’s civilian leaders, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau and Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, paving the way for the eventual return to parliamentary democracy.
The 2006 coup, like the previous ones, deposed a democratically elected government. Perhaps more importantly, it peremptorily sidelined the once powerful cultural and social institutions of the indigenous community, notably the Methodist Church and the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC)[3] – severing with a startling abruptness the overarching influence they had exercised in national life. Politicians who had supported past military coups in Fiji transformed themselves overnight into fearless defenders of democracy, because this time they found themselves on the other side of the barrel of a gun.
On the other hand, some victims of previous coups, such as Fiji Labour Party (FLP) leader Mahendra Chaudhry, accepted ministerial portfolios in a military-appointed interim administration on the grounds of serving the national interest: Victim of coup one day, beneficiary the next. To complete the saga, coup-leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama, initially disavowing a political role, accepted appointment as interim prime minister while remaining military commander, with the full support of a visibly ailing and curiously ineffectual president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo.
[1] The citation is from Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase’s ‘Address to the Nation/Comments at Press Conference’, 1 November 2006. A copy of the speech is available on numerous websites, such as <http://www.fijilive.com>. This paper was previously published in The Round Table, 96, 2007, pp.135–53, and the editors of that journal are thanked for agreeing to its re-publication. I am very grateful to Doug Munro, Hank Nelson, Vicki Luker, Stewart Firth and Ashwin Raj for their stringent and astute comments on a draft of this paper. But they are not responsible for its contents; I am.
[2] Milner, I. 1971. ‘A conversation with Charles Brash’, Landfall: A New Zealand Quarterly, 100:349.
[3] The Great Council of Chiefs is an entirely indigenous Fijian body, traditionally of hereditary chiefs, the role of which has been to advise governments on matters pertaining to Fijians. It appoints the President and Vice-President, as well as 14 of the 32 members of the Senate.