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Suva gets fizzy again
Although contests for power in post-colonial Fiji are nothing new, there?s a strange twist to the latest one. From all accounts, the rebellion has been brewing for some time.
It is almost as if Fijians look at their watches and shout: ‘It’s coup time!’ How else could this tiny South Pacific country lurch from one coup to another? If the Fijian military has really seized control of the government, it will be the fourth time this is happening in less than 20 years. Fijian troops rained on a Fijian police parade last Monday, grabbing weapons from the only armed police squad in the capital, Suva, and emptied the police academy’s armoury. Later, the commander of the armed forces, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, declared in a television interview that he was planning to appoint “an interim civilian administration and hold elections at a later date to restore democracy to the country”.
Although contests for power in post-colonial Fiji are nothing new, there’s a strange twist to the latest one. From all accounts, the rebellion has been brewing for some time over Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase’s refusal to withdraw two controversial legal bills. One seeks to pardon the conspirators behind an earlier coup in 2000. The second reason is even stranger. The army is fighting for the rights of Indo-Fijians this time round by insisting that the government quash land-rights bills that favour indigenous Fijians over the Indian minority.
It’s too soon to say if this really spells good news for Indo-Fijians who comprise a significant 43 per cent of the population. We will know only when events in Fiji play out in the days to come.
