Table of Contents
Fifteen months after the coup, Fiji is drifting inexorably towards the abyss. As every day goes by, new examples of the capricious and unprincipled assertion of power without authority emerge. The new status quo is the product of an equilibrium of fear – on the one hand, the people fear the instruments of power and being pressed into silence and, on the other hand, those who wield power in Fiji fear the light of any objective scrutiny and debate. As a result, the authorities have become habituated to the use of coercion and intimidation to control the free circulation of ideas and beliefs. Intimidation, coercion and oppression have become the working tools by which an unholy alliance of opportunists and miscreants is being maintained in power. The national conversation about the most important issue of the century has been silenced. The people fear the government and the government fears its own people. What has happened to Fiji, romanticized in happier times by its people as ‘The way the world should be’?
Over the past year or so, we have been given countless lectures on the need for good governance, accountability and transparency. The US State Department Country Report on Fiji for 2007 concluded ‘much government decision making was not transparent’. Fiji’s citizens have been denied the government they elected and must live in fear of that which has displaced it. They have been repeatedly told that ‘the Constitution is still intact’ and that is has not been abrogated. And yet the constitutional framework of government has been swept away and replaced by what amounts to a far from benign dictatorship. We have been reassured that the interim regime supports not just the rule of law, but the spirit behind it. And yet, our Court of Appeal judges have resigned en masse, our Chief Justice is summarily turned out of his office, and all the voices of protest and outrage within the country are silenced by the threat that they will be prosecuted as being racially intolerant or a danger to national security. It is appropriate to ask what has been the administration’s record, judged by its own standards? Do its actions match its rhetoric? Does it practice what it preaches? Or is this a case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’?
A few brief and far from definitive examples illustrate the point:
Civilians who have questioned the regime have been variously described as liars, corrupt, opportunistic, power-hungry troublemakers bent on inciting disaffection. Some have been arrested, assaulted, detained, humiliated and/or threatened by military personnel. Some have died.
The right to dissent and freedom of expression is circumscribed.
Most dissenters have been denigrated and harangued, often in expensive advertisements paid from the public purse. Others have been harassed and slapped with travel bans.
The media has practiced self-censorship and been regularly criticized.
In contrast, collaborators and sympathizers have been rewarded with appointments to seats on various government companies and boards.
The fiction that all that is being done is within the constitution is central to the moral claims of the interim government. It permits those responsible to cloak themselves in virtue. It is by this fiction that many have fallen into the conversationally convenient, but legally wrong, habit of referring to those responsible as a 'government'.
What we are effectively seeing is a re-writing of history. The ‘victors’ are sanitizing the record.
The architects of the ‘People’s Charter’ call for a system of governance that is characterized by ‘transparency and accountability’. Yet, on 17 September 2004, Fiji’s highest appellate court, the Supreme Court, comprising the suspended Chief Justice, Justices Robert French and David Malcolm, confirmed a decision of the Court of Appeal that the Auditor General was legally required to audit the regimental funds.[1] For his part, the commander – and now interim prime minister – Commodore Bainimarama was legally required to allow the Auditor General access for audit purposes to the records and accounts of the regimental funds. There has been no credible evidence that, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, the regimental funds have been opened for scrutiny by the Auditor General.
The deaths in military custody of Nimilote Verebasaga and Sakiusa Rabaka are now before the courts, but only after the civil authorities were prevailed upon to act. There was only grudging and reluctant cooperation from the military itself. Is this just a continuation of past practice? The brutal killing of Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit (CRWU) soldiers in military custody in late 2000 remains uninvestigated and the perpetrators have not been prosecuted. Is this the measure of reassurance ordinary citizens can expect from an institution that has made much of its security role? It cannot prescribe accountability and openness for others and not expect to have that standard applied to itself. This is not about pointing fingers or casting blame on anyone. It is about taking responsibility for the alleged wrongdoing of its members, as a result of which families have experienced trauma and tragedy.
Even governments are accountable under the law. It has been several centuries since the prosecution and subsequent conviction and execution of King Charles I in 1649 for treason established the principle that even an absolute monarch must bend to parliament and the law. But in 2008, in Fiji, it seems that those who are driving the country have little or no regard for the law and none at all for parliament. It may be argued that the ousted government was little better. Perhaps that is true. But it does not excuse.
[1] Commander, Republic of Fiji Military Forces v Auditor General, Supreme Court of Fiji, 17 September 2004