Chapter 30: One hand clapping: Reflections on the first anniversary of Fiji’s 2006 coup

An important part of the interim administration’s plans for Fiji’s future was preparing the so-called People’s Charter. The charter’s goal is to ‘rebuild Fiji into a non-racial, culturally-vibrant and united, well-governed truly democratic nation that seeks progress and prosperity through merit-based equality of opportunity and peace’.^[3] Formulated by a 43-member National Council for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF), various committees look at issues of good governance; economic growth; social and cultural identity and nation-building; the role of Fiji’s security forces in national development; enhancing livelihood; citizenship; and leadership and institutional reform. President Josefa Iloilo launched the charter project in October 2007, and appointed members of the NCBBF in January. Catholic Archbishop Petero Mataca and interim prime minister Commodore Bainimarama agreed to co-chair the NCBBF. Predictably, their appointment provoked controversy.

While Bainimarama’s selection was politically necessary – his support was crucial for the project’s success – it also politicized the process and impaired its neutrality in the public mind. It effectively ensured that his political opponents, to whom Bainimarama has shown little empathy, would boycott both the charter and the NCBBF. Curiously, Bainimarama expressed puzzlement at public scepticism towards his participation, little realizing that he himself was the principal cause of it. John Samy, head of the NCBBF’s Technical and Support Secretariat, claimed that the charter initiative was independent of the interim administration, but with Bainimarama as co-chair and several government ministers heading various of its committees, this was unconvincing. As Daryl Tarte, chair of the Fiji Media Council, said in his letter resigning his membership of the NCBBF, the process was clearly driven by the interim government, it was not autonomous and had been compromised.

Archbishop Mataca’s inclusion dismayed many Catholics opposed to the military coup and the interim regime, and others who decried the Catholic Church’s ‘silent understanding’ of the reasons behind the coup and the tacit moral support of its leaders.^[4] Mataca is widely regarded as a man of complete integrity and unimpeachable character, and he promised not to be anybody’s rubber stamp. But doubts remained. ‘By accepting the position [of co-chair]’, a Fiji Times editorial said, ‘the Archbishop has unwittingly given his approval to the coup, the usurpers and the interim government. Regardless of how noble his motives may have been in accepting the post, the public will always see him and the church in a different light now’.^[5]

The controversy continues to simmer, although the Catholic Church, or at least some of its leaders (Fr Kevin Barr, for example), has from the outset taken ‘the ends justify the means’, social justice over legal justice line, placing faith in the possibility of a positive, genuine, nation-building outcome from the military takeover. ‘The legal/illegal paradigm being pursued in Fiji today seems to be getting us nowhere’, Barr has written. ‘It simple creates an endless cycle of negativity and stalemates.’ A democratic society ‘cannot be built solely on the rule of law. It demands that the law be balanced by principles of social justice, compassion and common sense. It may not always be helpful to fight for the rigid application of the law’.^[6]

The charter has received mixed response from the people. Two principal Hindu organizations, the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha and the Sanatan Dharam Pratinidhi Sabha, have supported it and agreed to participate in the deliberations of the NCBBF. However, with apparently little widespread consultation – if letters to the editors in the local press are anything to go by – there remains uncertainty about rank-and-file endorsement of the leadership’s decisions. Other Indo-Fijian religious and cultural organizations have refused to participate in the proceedings of the NCBBF. The Fiji Muslim League and Sangam (representing the South Indian community) are among them. The endorsement by Indo-Fijian cultural and social organizations, representing a large section of the community, sends yet another signal to those Fijians opposed to the coup that the Indo-Fijian community is silently (and sometimes not so silently) supporting the interim administration and benefiting from its policies. Yet, some of the most prominent critics of the coup (such as Shamima Ali, Imrana Jalal, Wadan Narsey and Richard Naidu) are also Indo-Fijians.

All the talk about the charter in Suva means little in the countryside where Indo-Fijians suffer from the effects of a seriously ailing sugar industry and the dislocation caused by the expiry of land leases. Making ends meet, both in urban and non-urban areas, is becoming harder by the day as prices of basic food items and fuel keep rising and employment opportunities diminish. But perceptions matter and acquire a reality of their own. When an interim minister, the FLP’s Lekh Ram Vayeshnoi, calls the coup a ‘Godsend,’ when academic Sukh Dev Shah describes it as ‘divine intervention,’ and as Indo-Fijian gloating becomes more audible on radio talk-back shows and in the letters to the papers, the indigenous Fijian perception becomes easier to understand – and harder to ignore.

Several Fijian provincial councils have also endorsed the charter, including Cakaudrove and Kadavu. But this endorsement is fraught and carries little weight. For instance, Cakaudrove’s endorsement of the charter has been challenged by Ratu Naiqama, the Tui Cakau, the paramount chief of the province and a former minister in the Qarase government. A spokesman for the chiefly Lalagavesi clan of Cakaudrove, Epeli Matata, said emphatically that Ratu Naiqama and the whole province of Cakaudrove ‘is not supporting, has never and will never support, the work involved in the People’s Charter’.^[7] Individuals from other provinces and regions have similarly offered strong contrary views – for example, Kadavu Provincial Council chairman Ratu Josetaki Nawaloawalo’s enthusiastic support for the military takeover and subsequent events has been publicly challenged by people from his own province.^[8]

Embroiling the provinces in the adoption (or rejection) of the charter is politically fraught, for no place is (and never has been) of one mind on any political issue. Provinces don’t vote; people do. The power of chiefs to decide the destinies of their people, to be their sole spokesman and intermediaries with the outside, has long gone as travel, technology, education, the effects of a competitive market economy and exposure to broader forces of change have altered the fabric of Fijian society. Over the last two decades or so, political fragmentation rather than political unity under chiefly leadership has been the order of the day in indigenous politics. In the absence of strong, overarching leadership and broader unifying vision, dissension among Fijians will only grow. Signs of this are everywhere. It would be wise for the provinces to adopt a more neutral stance, as facilitators of political discourse among their people rather than as its arbiters.

While some support the charter opportunistically – a government contract here, an appointment to a statutory board there, a rare opportunity to network, a brief moment in the public limelight – there are also some who genuinely believe in the Utopian future the charter promises for Fiji. A genuine sense of frustration with the manner in which parliamentary democracy has been manipulated by the ruthless politics of race, has led some academics and professionals, normally staunch supporters of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, to endorse the shock therapy of the military coup. They want the racial system of voting abolished and see the preparation of the charter as the perfect opportunity to break the confining shackles of the past. Some believe it is sometimes necessary to go outside the law to preserve its spirit.

There are others who have little regard for ‘people’s democracy’ and support the charter because, they say, people do not know what is in their own best interests, and that they are their own worst enemies and are invariably manipulated by self-seeking politicians. Hence, they argue, it is best to do their thinking for them, relieving them of the responsibility of making decisions for their future. The charter would put the nation’s affairs on autopilot, with the elected parliament, when it finally eventuates, making only minor adjustments to public policy. Politics of the usual raw and vital type will be removed from the process of governance. The fundamentals of good governance will be permanently entrenched in the public sphere, and politicians will become irrelevant. ‘Politics,’ for these people, is a ‘dirty’ word which creates more problems than it resolves. ‘Revenge of the nerds’ is how one colleague described this category of charter supporters, meaning well-heeled bureaucrats, academics, international civil servants and the like.

The charter has strong critics as well.^[9] The Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL), the Methodist Church and the Fijian Teachers Association, among many others, have opposed it and refused to participate in the deliberations of the NCBBF. Their reaction is unsurprising. They see the charter as an attempt by the military to emasculate the SDL party and exclude people like Laisenia Qarase from standing for office in the future. They see it as neither a part of the constitution nor an act of parliament. How then, could the document be used to deprive people of their basic constitutional right? Given Bainimarama’s uncompromising stance and vehemence, Qarase is right to be cautious, justifiably feeling that the military intends to use the charter as a blunt, coercive instrument to bludgeon him and his supporters into acquiescence – or, worse, political extinction.

Fijian nationalists oppose the charter because they see the document as diluting their privileged place in national life. They want a Fiji where Fijian aspirations and interests are respected and accorded primacy, not subordinated to the interests of others. For them, that is right and proper. This, after all, was what their leaders, from Ratu Lala Sukuna to Ratu Mara, told them – their vision endorsed by the departing colonial masters.^[10] The interim administration’s forceful rhetoric of non-racialism stirs their suspicion and stokes the embers of ethnic chauvinism, as does its efforts to reform Fijian institutions, such as the Native Land Trust Board and the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC), long cherished as the guardians of the Fijian interest. The fact that many Fijians see Mahendra Chaudhry as the ‘man running the government,’ calling ‘all the shots’, with Bainimarama being a mere figurehead, adds a particular dimension to the drama.^[11] One highly mobile and educated Fijian lady put the whole issue to me this way: ‘It is okay to criticise individual Fijian chiefs who are corrupt or morally bankrupt. I do it all the time myself. But when you attack Fijian institutions, then my heart begins to hurt. They are a part of our cultural identity. That is what makes us what we are.’ I suspect that her sentiments are widely shared by many other indigenous Fijians.

There are others whose opposition to the charter is ideological. For them the constitution is, and should always be, the supreme law of the land. They see the charter as a way for the military to supersede the constitution, rendering it a toothless tiger or, to change the metaphor, a hollow vessel to be filled with whatever ideology it wants. The affairs of the nation, they say, should be run by an elected parliament, the supreme repository of the people’s freely exercised choice, not by unelected people serving in an illegal regime. The real problem for Fiji, they argue, is not the absence of a charter defining the principles and purposes of governance: The Compact in the 1997 constitution already provides for these. The real problem is the lack of respect for the rule of law and the verdict of the ballot box, of which the military is the principal culprit.

A charter, however well-intentioned, will not eradicate the deepening coup culture in Fiji or eliminate the troubling disrespect for the rule of law. Today, it is a commodore’s charter; tomorrow it could be another colonel’s political agenda. Former land forces commander Colonel Meli Saubulinayau, who resigned from the military in 2007 after a botched effort to replace Bainimarama as head of the military force, has expressed a widely held view that Fiji does ‘not need another piece of paper as we already have one that talks about the law and what is legal. If you want to stop the coup culture, then you need people who have a spirit that wants to stay within the boundaries of the law’.^[12] Fiji’s coup culture could end only if the military, and especially its commander, decided to end it.

People are being asked to endorse a document which will profoundly affect their lives, but in whose formulation they have had a perfunctory say. The hand-picked drafters of the charter and the military have already made up their minds about what the charter’s content and parameters would be: Bainimarama’s railings against Qarase are proof enough of that. Normally in a democratic society, a document such as the charter would have been formulated after an extended period of consultation with the public, not before it. The interim administration has promised a national referendum on the charter. But this is easier said than done.

Referenda on controversial, divisive issues hardly ever succeed. A near-consensus would have to be reached among the major stakeholders if a referendum were to have any realistic prospect of success. With all the major players poles apart, it is almost certain that a referendum on the charter will fail if there is a meaningful threshold for its successful passage. What is not sufficiently appreciated in Fiji is that a failed referendum will be worse than no referendum at all, closing off doors to further conversation which might otherwise have remained open. Referenda are risky propositions even at the best of times. A Fiji Daily Post editorial summed up the charter conundrum well: