Fijians abroad welcome change

but not itching to go back home

By Kalinga Seneviratne

Australia’s Fijian commu nity generally welcomed the constitutional changes back home, but are not itching to rush back home; Currently, there are 39,000 Fijians liv ing in Australia, a vast majority of them Indo-Fijians. Up to 1986 there were only about 15,000 Fijians here but the 1987 coups doubled the Fijian population in Australia by 1991.

Most of those PIM spoke to are happy to see their leaders finally agree on a new, non-discriminatory constitution, but are still uncertain how the two communities will be able to build bridges.

Karam Chand Ramrakha, a National Federation Party member of parliament from 1966 to 1982 and signatory to the 1970 constitution, said that at that time there was much goodwill among the com munities. "It's a good thing Fiji has now turned a full circle. Although the constitu tion retains the racial characteristics, hope fully it will bring the races together.

Communities will, of course, have to build bridges with each other.” Ramrakha, who now lives in Sydney, says it will be inter esting to see what happens in the open seats during the next elections.

"There's been a collective sigh of relief from all sides of the community,” said Sam Ramon, a founding member of the Australian-based Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in Fiji, a lobby group of Fijian expatriates and Australian sympathisers. "However, we are mindful of the fact that the acceptance of parlia ment is just one step,” he added, arguing that, to establish an equal honourable soci

ety, all forms of communalism need to be eliminated. Therefore, the future should be to move towards a voting system that does not appeal to communal voting, but to all sectors of the Fijian community.”

"I’m happy about what’s happened in Fiji now... It's a situation that had to be accepted whether we liked it or not,” said

Sydney’s Fijian community development

worker, Mere Siganisucu. An indigenous Fijian, she has some reservations on whether grassroots Fijians will be able to understand the changes and if the national ist Taukei movement will exploit it to cre ate divisions. Another indigenous Fijian, Api Rainima, who conducts a weekly com munity radio programme for the Fijian community in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfem, argues the new constitution will open the doors of parliament to grassroots Fijians.

"SVT hasn’t been really open to the ordinary Fijians, in the sense that most of the seats have been allocated to the chiefs,” he said, adding that Rabuka staged the coup in 1987 because Bavadra’s Fijian Labour Party was threatening to upset the status-quo.

Bob Singh, the divisional secretary of the National Union of Workers in Sydney, believes leaders of both communities have taken their gloves off and decided that they cannot fight anymore and negotiated a compromise. "Indians were very vocal about the effects of the coup on them.

Now, the Fijians have also realised that this coup hasn't done any good to anyone.”

Singh does not think Indians will easily forgive Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka for what he did in 1987. "The man will not apologise in parliament for what he did 10 years ago,” he notes.

This is a view shared by Govind Sami, the president of the Fiji Indian Social and Cultural Association of Australia. '‘We’re not still certain how genuine this fellow [Rabuka] is,” he said. “It seems economi cally they are facing a lot pf difficulties.

Probably because of that, he is giving some consideration to getting Indians back into government.”

When it comes to the question of going back home if racial harmony returns to the islands, most Fijians have reservations. In fact, a report on the Fijian community released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1995 showed that half of the Fijian migrants had already become Australian citizens. “Most of them have been here for 10 years now. The children have grown up here. They would find it difficult to go back and resettle,” says Sami. “In Fiji Fm told some Indian gradu ates are harvesting cane?”

Ramrakha agrees: "One of the advan tages of migrating here is the education of your children. I can’t see anybody with children going back.”

Sami points out that many of the well qualified Fijian Indian migrants have set tled down into secure employment and 80 per cent of the community have bought their own homes. Singh, however, says not all Indo-Fijians are happy with their pro fessional status in Australia. "Lot of our professional people's qualifications were not recognised here. So they are strug gling. Most of the type of jobs they were doing in Fiji, they couldn’t do here,” he says. "Because of that, people are working in blue-collar jobs to make a living.” Singh believes Fiji would be attractive for the

Indo-Fijian business people living here.

Ironically for the indigenous Fijians, the rising tide of racism in Australia is wor rying them. "With racism growing, many are not very happy and are thinking whether they should go back or not,” says Siganisucu. ■