will “continue the fight”

Ousted Fijian Ministers will “continue the fight”

Canberra academics pro vided a substitute audi ence in early June for two ousted Fiji Ministers refused a hearing at the South Pacific Forum. Education Minis ter Dr Tupeni Baba and Foreign Minister Krishna Datt spoke at the Australian National Univer sity after a round of meetings with Australian parliamenta rians and the Fiji community to urge continued economic bans and a moratorium on aid.

International lobbying had started in New Zealand, and Baba left for Melbourne and then London to meet up with Coalition leader, Dr Timoci Bavadra, in an unsuccessful bid to meet the Queen.

In Canberra their message was that the coup regime had internal tensions, and that with internal and external economic boycotts and bans the new Fiji regime would soon be on its knees. Baba told his “fellow academic buccaneers” that Lt.

Col. Sitiveni Rabuka’s pretexts for the coup were groundless, and he and Datt gave their own analysis of the real reasons for the coup, and of their own support base.

Rabuka has spoken to the police and the army being likely to be used to suppress immi nent violence.

“In our view, the Taukei (Fijian landowners) Movement was largely orchestrated by supporters of the right wing of the Alliance Party . . . and had the consent of the former PM Ratu Sir Kamasese Mara . . .

One of the worries of the organisers was that we were managing to contain and con trol them through reasonable measures,” argued Baba.

A great deal of money to fund protests was being chan nelled to Apisai Tora, a Taukei leader, “through some Amer ican connection. ” Datt revealed that the Army had been put on the alert, “not to shoot people

but to assist the police in the maintenance of peace and order. ”

Baba rejected the colonel’s claim that Fijian interests were endangered by the Coalition government, because of the safeguards in sections 65 and 68 of the Constitution which require a three-quarters vote of both houses and of the 8 Council of Chiefs nominees in the Senate.

“There was no way our mul ti-racial government could change the provisions relating to Fijian land, Fijian customary rights, and Fijian traditions and customs without the support of the Fijians themselves.”

Rabuka’s objection that In dians dominated the Coalition was not true, said Baba, as there were seven Indian and six Fijian ministers, including the PM as Minister for Fijian Affairs.

When the Colonel sought to use the Great Council of Chiefs he had acted illegally: it only has advisory powers to the Minister, and Dr Bavadra had not called it together, nor nominated his choice of eight chiefs and seven commoner Fijians.

The Fijian Coalition MPs were under illegal detention, and hence unable to attend.

The meeting of the Council of Chiefs was “largely in favour of the people who supported the Rabuka and Ratu regime,” said Baba.

“There is absolutely no truth”, he argued, in Rabuka’s allegation that Coalition Minis ters had Russian and Libyan connections. Datt had once spent a “bleak day” in Moscow while in transit. Finance Minis ter Mahendra Chaundry had never visited Libya as alleged.

Baba was blunt; “Our view of the reasons for the coup is different. We feel that the main reason for the coup was basical ly the fear of Ratu Mara and his colleagues that we would ex

plore the corruptive practices of the Alliance Party and their business colleagues”.

He alleged that Ratu Mara had links to an Indian com pany, Motibhai, that five perso nal houses had been built on Lau island (Ratu Mara’s home area) using monies from the Hurricane Relief Fund which the former PM had chaired, that inflated rents were paid by the Education Department for Marela House which the Mara family owns, that there had been improper urban land and taxi licence allocations, and that huge Development Bank loans to political figures were unre paid. These had been cam paign issues.

The Coalition, on election, had prepared forms requiring MPs to make declarations of assets, and had ready an Anti- Corruption Bill under which the Ombudsman, following the Papua New Guinea model, could investigate obvious ano malies for corruption.

Datt said the files on these alleged corruption matters were on their desks on 14 May, and were no doubt shredded and burnt by now. Baba said that implementation of the Coalition “Open, clean and caring gov ernment” slogan was a threat, so “it was important for Ratu Mara to go back . . . Rabuka was only a front”.

He saw gaps opening up between Rabuka, who wanted a new constitution, and the former PM, who had endorsed the 1970 Constitution with the Great Council of Chiefs, and who felt it could work especially if some Indo-Fijians left because of the destabilisation.

Baba said the Governor- General, Ratu Sir Penaia Gani lau, was being used, and did not know where he stood, while Datt said Ganilau was following only the last advice he had received. “The judges are our

only hope at present” he said.

Datt joked about “participant observer” research on coups and said that he had noted that soldiers did not disturb the detained ministers while praying, thus showing the value of prayer.

But he spoke seriously of the support the Coalition in office had gained from measures cut ting hospital fees.

Baba said that young edu cated ethnic Fijians had sup ported the Coalition in the election, and Datt stressed the

backing being received since

from Fijians, especially those in the West. There, he said, the political system and culture is more Melanesian (in contrast to the Polynesian system of East ern Fiji), The West is Fiji’s “economic basis”, he said, and the area where Indians and Fijians in teract most. It produces most of the sugar, the gold, and is the tourist centre. Westerners had resented the heavy bias in government spending towards the East, especially the Lau Group of islands, and mostly had now swung behind the Coalition.

Datt pointed to fragilities in the Coup regime: only one third of the public service was working, schools were closed, police morale was damaged by the elevation of NCOs. But trade union leaders had gone into Parliament with the Labour Party Coalition, and Rabuka was replacing some of them with pliant individuals. Shops were closed most days, and very importantly Indians would not harvest the current sugar crop, which with the collapse of tourism would stop Fiji’s cash flow.

While non-violent resistance techniques were well-known in Fiji, Datt said people could only be pushed “so far”. He was concerned that untrained and

undisciplined people such as leading hands at the sugar factories had been uniformed and armed, and that under Public Emergency powers security forces had extreme powers to arrest on suspicion, and shoot, and with immunity.

“That will be the source of the confrontation about to take place”, which would not be an Indian-Fijian clash but rather would involve those in the West against the regime (including those who had supported the Alliance in the election).

The coup was against the working class and Indo-Fijians, he stated, and they would not “just sit back and see atrocities carried out under their noses. ”

An African student used his own experience in Ghana to argue that once the army scented power they would not give it up easily. Datt tended to agree, as far as regular soldiers go, but Baba said some of their guards in custody had wept because of their inner turmoil.

Their socialisation into demo cratic values was strong, Baba asserted, and many soldies were only part-time territorials.

There was division in the Military Force before the coup, and he claimed that one soldier had shot at Rabuka and is now dead (a story subsequently de nied by Ratu Ganilou). Baba argued that “Rabuka is riding a tiger, and once he gets off he will be eaten by the tiger”.

Datt said he had been really

shocked by the Melanesian re sponse to the coup, namely that this was a matter for Fijians to sort out themselves. While Vanuatu and the Solomon Is lands did not go so far, they ceded prominence on this issue to Papua New Guinea.

“I must confess I was rather embarrassed at their position, which seems to e an outright racist one . . . That is, we shouldn’t be involved and let the Indians be mowed down and that will complete the pic ture and make the Pacific a bit more serene”.

Asked if he saw American involvement in the coup, Datt said the simple answer was “No”, although there may cir cumstancial evidence. Two US operatives with previous coup experience elsewhere were in Fiji at the time of the coup. The US had delayed any con gratulatory message to the Coalition, and then only gave a lunch invitation to meet its Ambassador to the UN, Gen eral Vernon Walters.

“I did shake his hand. It didn’t look like one which had been soiled considerably by coups, but that goes for the American style”. Baba said that Dr Bavadra’s complaint to the US Embassy about the alleged Alliance MP funding of Apisai Tora’s Taukai activities had led to an immediate US decision to withdraw Tora’s US Embassy contact.

The Coalition had antici

pated the possibility of a coup, and had thought they “had taken care of the Governor- General” who is Commander- In-Chief”. But the Alliance seemed to be impatient, and carried out earlier contingency plans, namely Scenario 3 of the notorious 1982 Carol Report to the Alliance Party: “the Austra lian connection, if you will!”

Datt advocated economic pressure from outside to bring Rabuka to negotiation, but admitted a return to the pre vious situation would be diffi cult; “but if we have reasonable assurances that the votes won’t be counted in the barracks and if the solution was a fresh election, we would take them on and beat them hollow!”

Baba, too, was hopeful.

“This group will not last for more than 6 months. It’s crack ing up. The morale is getting very low. They are speaking with different tongues and sup porting different positions . . .

Your pressure and bans will assist us . . .

“We are going back home to continue the fight. We may be behind bars for a week or so, but I think we will be able to bring the regime to its knees within three months. The legal fight has already started. . . and I am sure we will win [in the Privy Council] .. . but whether or not we can implement that depends on the strategy back home. ”