olonlal Office Hesitancy And Fijian

Fiji Stumbling Along With Vital Problems

olonlal Office Hesitancy And Fijian Stubbornness Wrecking Burns Plan

By R. W. Robson

The decision of the Bank of Baroda—one of India’s five ding banks, with capital reserves of £2£ million and deposits about £6O million —to open a branch in Suva, with probable nches in Lautoka, Ba, and other centres, brings to sharp us the nature of the new economic problem in Fiji.

0 or what is going to control he future economic develop nent of the Colony? 1 it be Britain, whose Crown y it is? Or Australia which, yh the Colonial Sugar Co., ; Philp & Co., W. R. Carpenter , Morris Hedstrom Ltd., Em- Mines, Bank of NSW, ANZ Qantas and at least a dozen ;r corporations, owns the major )f the country’s commerce? Or east Asia, which is now mak a, bid, through Singapore’s ,y Hotels and India’s Baroda for a share of the Colony’s > se new Asian interests are ising the opportunities in Fiji, entering the Colony; while -Australian interests—q ui t e y to proceed vigorously with isk of developing Fiji—are re l and discouraged by the aning slowness of British ial Office methods. ’ar, this is not really disturb 3ut it could mean a strong challenge, if Fiji’s house is lickly put in order. on Pattern—With Difference old era in Fiji is passing y. The thrust comes from two ions. iji, hitherto a quiet corner of Colonial Office rule, is re ing rapidly to the general towards self-government, he Indians who, three or decades back, were an in cant community in a lazy ater, where Europeans reaped rofits from planting and trad iow represent more than half )pulation of about 400,000, and lemanding increased political ommercial power. 3 represents a pattern com mough in British tropical terri iplicating factors here are: he indigenous race—the well i Fijians—have fundamental rights under the 1874 Deed of n.

'he Fijians adhere rather irnly to their old-time system

of communal life, which is the negation of the private enterprise needed for the development of the country’s natural resources. • The Fijians—at the moment, anyway—are darkly suspicious of the activities and motives of the Indians. , • • , . . . TT principal industry (sugar production) is completely in the of a powerful corporation ship of its privileges with a large (Over)

measure of patriarchal benevolence —in other words, it wants to control its own empire (the sugar industry) without interference by bureaucratic government or Eng 1 i s h-hating Indians, or by the various moderate influences in between those extremes —it wants sincerely to do good for Fiji, as it has in the past, but in its own way.

Enter: The Burns Report

These trends were seen many years ago by wise Europeans in Fiji, who warned the Colonial Office of what could happen. But the Colonial Office ignored the warnings and left Fiji to develop “according to natural laws”—with the result that we now are faced with a sociological economic-political tangle that calls for sheer genius in the sorting-out.

Many times in history, our Colonial Office, reserved and aloof, saw its slogan of “leave matters alone to develop in their own way” justified and triumphant. But, in the case of Fiji, its policy of laissez faire has been defeated by Indian fecundity.

Being finally persuaded of danger, the Colonial Office, still leisurely and unhurried, two years ago appointed an expert Commission to

examine Fiji’s top problem—namely, how to feed a rapidly-growing population on resources which, while ample in themselves, were cribbed, cabin’d and confined by the 1874 land-ownership system, and by factors arising therefrom.

Effect of December Riots Before the Commission could re port, the Fijian situation blew its top in the riots of December 9 and 10, exactly a year ago.

The riots were mostly a mani festation of pure hooliganism, com plicated by some police blundering; but they did indicate the boiling up of dangerous forces created by over population and under-privilege, too long ignored.

The riots profoundly disturbed high officials at the Colonial Office: they never would have believed that such a horror was possible in “that quiet place”.

The Burns Commission experts, reporting immediately after the riots, said they were appalled by the conditions they found in Fiji—con ditions obviously created by the in ability of a long line of Colonial officials to see what was coming in Fiji, or to do anything more than efficiently carry out their office jobs, and get on to next “tour of duty”.

The Burns Commission minced no phrases. It set forth the Colony’s troubles, plain for all to see; out lined the obvious remedies; sub mitted a complete plan of reform; and warned that unless those remedies were promptly applied, as a whole, the position in Fiji in two or three years’ time would be grave.

Fiddling With Recommendations That was in March, 1960. Nine months have passed. Not one major step has been taken to apply the remedies urgently recommended by the Burns Commission.

The Commission submitted 126 re commendations. The Fiji Govern ment’s method of dealing with them has been little short of farcical.

About six or eight of the recom mendations were major—they dealt primarily with bringing unused land into use; establishment of new in dustries; streamlining the native Fijian administration so that it might become part of the general administration, and thus assist the Fijian villagers to transfer from the commuaal to the individualistic way of life.

Most of the other recommenda tions had significance only if the major plans were implemented. By themselves, they meant little, against the background of Fiji’s urgent needs.

The Commission obviously knew the ways of bureaucracy. At the end

they said the recommendati* could not be dealt with piecenK (See panel above for extract fr Commission’s report.) There can be no escape from meaning of those paragraphs. \ what has happened?

In an undated “statement of G( ernment policy”, issued apparen in October (Council Paper No. \ the Government swells out its ch( and announces that of the 126 : commendations, no less than have been accepted, 17 acced “subject to modification”, 11 hj been rejected and seven deferre Any outsider, looking in, woi suppose the Burns plan had b€ generally adopted.

The plain fact is that practica all the Commission’s major reco mendations are among either the rejected or the seven deferrj Without them, the Burns Co] mission plan, framed to take a of the future of Fiji, is emasculait and useless.

Too Much Compromise

We all know what the Govel ment has come up against—the ji transigence of the Fijian Council] Chiefs. We know the reasons i their non-co-operation.

The Fijian chiefs are (a) jealous guarding their privileges and (1 deeply suspicious of the press

(Continued on p. 144)

motives and probable future d mands of the Indian communi especially since a Gujerat secti showed their hands all too plait in the sugar-cane dispute.

This Fiji Government is a gover ment of compromise.

The Governor must have kno\ what he was faced with, from t moment he saw the Burns Repo Plain commonsense must have tc him —apart from the penultima paragraphs of the report, quoted < page 16 —that the report had to accepted as a whole; that privileg interests would resist the recoi mendations; and that, if they w€ to be put into operation, mu strength and a good deal of brutali must be exercised.

Obviously, there were only h ways in which the drastic Bur Report could be dealt with.

One was to force it upon t Colony through the authority of strong and ruthless Governor fundamentally, the Governor Fiji has the authority to do th The other—and probably the bett —way was to organise an all-F Convention, under the presidency] the Governor, to deal with the r port as a whole.

A combination of the two won have been ideal. There is no dou that a strong and purposeful Go ernor could have induced such Convention to accept the report and also to initiate Constitution reforms which, if not due now, ve soon will be.

As it is, we have had the strap spectacle of the Government des ing meticulously with the 126 r commendations piecemeal, workii from the bottom upwards.

The 126 appear to have been f into the machinery of the differs Departments: chewed on there by variety of officials; and then, star ing with the least important ai significant of them —which ther fore were the least difficult—thi have been accepted one by one uni the bureaucratic machine baulk( and stopped at the dozen or 1 which really represented the kern and backbone of the whole plan j reform.

In 50 years’ experience of repor ing the activities and decisioi of bureaucratic administrations,! have never seen a more procedure. And, in the case of Fi; a more disheartening one.