‘The interim administration must now realise the implications of living in a deeply interconnected, highly globalised environment that the world of the 21st century has come to be. It is no longer possible to function in a vacuum, insulated from the rest


The international community has finally begun to engage with Fiji in right earnest. Last month, two of the world’s most powerful organisations got into the thick of the Fiji situation.

As one of Fiji’s largest donors, the European Union’s stand on the events in the country since December 5 last year has been watched with great interest around the world. Late last month it not only laid out firm conditions for the country’s return to democracy according to a timeframe but also managed to extract a commitment from the high level Fiji delegation that met with it to stick to the time frame.

The European Union is one of the wealthiest and most powerful bodies in the world. Yet, unlike many other lesser pressure groups and Fiji’s neighbouring developed countries, it has shown far more restraint, maturity and pragmatism in dealing with Fiji through its latest constitutional crisis.

It must be commended for taking into account the ground reality in Fiji in putting forth the conditions to a return to democratic rule and using its mighty economic power as a bargaining chip while yet cleverly avoiding any perception that it was presenting the country with a fait accompli.

It has achieved that by demanding a timeframe that is not too different from the one recommended by the Eminent Persons’ Group, which has by and large been accepted by the interim administration as falling within the parameters of its own roadmap.

In the European Union’s timeline, which calls for an election no later than March 2009, less than two years from now, the milestones are clearly marked and their achievement or otherwise is more easily assessable. 

With such a large quantum of aid at stake, the Fiji delegation had little choice other than to accept the conditions given the country’s deteriorating economic conditions over the last year, only exacerbated by the events of last December.

But even as the delegation was preparing to return, the interim administration expressed some reservations making the acceptance of the March 2009 election schedule subject to the findings of an independent review team comprising the Joint Working Group that was created as a result of the Pacific Islands Forum Foreign Ministers meeting in Vanuatu in March.

The review team is already looking at the 36-month timeframe proposed earlier by the interim administration. Its report is expected in June.

Other conditions imposed by the European Union are the removal of emergency provisions as early as this month, recognising the independence of the judiciary and upholding human rights. Ensuring civil liberties and media freedom flow naturally from these conditions.

But one condition the interim administration will undoubtedly find very uncomfortable to address is recognising the independence of the Great Council of Chiefs.

Just days before the European Union meeting, Interim Prime Minister Bainimarama suspended all meetings of the constitutional body and shut down its offices after it rejected the presidential nominee for the post of the vice-president.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon sent a fact-finding mission comprising officials of high rank to Fiji to engage with a range of stakeholders in a bid to assess the situation and reach a practical settlement that will lead to the early restoration of democracy. In past weeks, the Commonwealth too has displayed a deepening engagement with Fiji.

The interim administration must now realise the implications of living in a deeply interconnected, highly globalised environment that the world of the 21st century has come to be.

It is no longer possible to function in a vacuum, insulated from the rest of the world. In this climate of interconnectedness, the key words are conciliation and cooperation, not confrontation.

But pronouncements from some quarters of the interim administration last month belied such a realisation.

No matter what the provocation, the administration must show restraint in what it says publicly if it is to win the confidence of the international community as a leadership that it can deal with, with understanding and credibly.

Public statements that threatened to shut down foreign diplomatic missions and remove security barriers around one of them sounded ingenuous if not downright childish. And the lame backtracking on those threats went even further to show diplomatic naivete.

Just as the international community has shown great accommodation in understanding its problems and moved half way to meet it with credible, achievable and fair proposals for the restoration of democracy, Fiji’s interim administration must show the requisite maturity and sense of purpose to engage with it meaningfully.

It must underscore its commitment to bring back egalitarianism and the rule of law—the very tenets that it set out to restore in the first place.