Islands Business - We Say: LET FIJI HANDLE ITS OWN AFFAIRS

'They need to take note that Fiji has moved on since December 5, and appears to be making steps towards holding elections given the tremendous pressure both from the international community and aid agencies.'

A week after Fiji’s interim administration declared New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Fiji persona non grata and expelled him for his actions that it interpreted as being tantamount to interference in Fiji’s internal affairs, Prime Minister Helen Clark announced that New Zealand will not retaliate to Fiji’s action.

New Zealand and Australia need to take note of the changing ground reality in Fiji. Pic of downtown Suva by Dev Nadkarni

She said her government would wait and watch the Fijian administration’s progress towards holding elections in 2008-09. What is surprising is that her government so far has failed to acknowledge the developments in Fiji on this front so far in terms of changing its rigid, one point isolationist policy that it has single mindedly pursued since the events of December 5.

In the past two months, the Fiji interim administration has assured the European Union that it will hold elections no later than March 2009. Some of its senior members have even indicated an earlier date.

It has been working with a Pacific Islands Forum coordinated Joint Working Group that is tasked with examining ways and means to bring back a democratic government in Fiji as early as possible.

Early last month it even briefed the working group on the progress of the independent technical assessment of an election timetable for Fiji. The team is to assess and advice a practicable timeframe for the next election. Incidentally, a New Zealander, Paul Harris, who is former chief executive of New Zealand’s Electoral Commission, leads the team.

During his trip to India, interim finance minister Mahendra Chadhry announced that India had offered to supply electronic voting machines –devices that are not only simple to use and accurate but also appreciably cut down the post polling process and have proved very successful in Indian elections.

India’s long experience in managing the complex logistics of elections in the vast subcontinent would prove invaluable to Fiji –and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured all help at the behest of Fiji’s interim administration.

None of these developments made New Zealand stop to think and reassess their rigid stance on Fiji. Unfortunately, it took an expulsion –the first of its kind in history—to make it sit up and take notice.

Australia and New Zealand’s travel basn have hurt the interim administration’s functioning the most. While there may be some justification for the bans on members of the interim government who have voluntarily taken up ministerial posts, it is quite unfair to extend such a ban on career bureaucrats who have taken up executive positions in the government purely as a matter of following government orders.

It must be noted here that because of the close relations between Australia, new Zealand and Fiji, over the years many of these bureaucrats have spent time working in Australia and New Zealand and have spouses and family living there as citizens. Many own properties and are legitimate taxpayers in those countries. The ban has effectively cut them off from their families.

Their threat to similarly ban any individual who associates with the interim administration has discouraged a number of able and knowledgeable Fiji citizens in applying for executive positions in the administration and government statutory bodies.

This has undoubtedly told upon the interim administration to get on with the tasks they have set themselves to do which are ultimately meant to lead to the return of democracy in the island nation –exactly as Australia and New Zealand have been asking for.

With their intransigent stand, Australia and New Zealand have in effect contributed to exacerbating the problem in Fiji. And if the New Zealand government thought frustrating the interim administration with travel bans was a strategy that was working, they should now know that it has come unstuck.

For it is hard not to see the expulsion as a reaction of an administration pushed to the very end of its tether though it has refrained from ascribing any reasons for its action citing the Geneva Convention.

A more sensitive and mature policy would have seen New Zealand take due notice of the changes happening in Fiji and take steps to work with the interim administration with some creativity and openness in the past few months. A more responsive attitude would have well helped prevent this extreme move.

Except for the announcement that New Zealand will not retaliate immediately on the Green expulsion, there are no signs that the country’s government has any plans to change tack. It has issued new travel advisories to its citizens but judging by live television interviews of departing tourists on the day following the expulsion, it seemed to have little effect.

Fiji’s problems are mounting. The economy is rapidly heading southwards. Tourism is taking a battering. Employment is rising to worrisome levels. Human rights issues persist. At a time like this, New Zealand and Australia need to reassess their Fiji policy and urgently need to bring in pragmatism and sensitivity in view of the prevailing situation.

It would work far better than continuing on the present rigidly iron-fisted policy. For it runs the real risk of driving the regime further to the edge of the precipice –which may serve to derail the steps it is taking towards restoring the democratic process.

They need to take note that Fiji has moved on since December 5, and appears to be making steps towards holding elections given the tremendous pressure both from the international community and aid agencies.

But Helen Clark’s comment after the Green expulsion that Fiji’s assurance that it will hold elections in 2009 was made only to secure much-needed aid betrays her government’s unwillingness to give the Fijian interim administration a chance to prove its intentions.

Criticism on New Zealand and Australia’s policy in Fiji –and the Pacific in general—is growing. Late last month Samoa’s senior opposition leader La Mamea Ropati publicly appealed to the two countries to let Fiji handle its own affairs. An increasing number of common people both in New Zealand and Fiji are calling for greater sensitivity in New Zealand’s policy towards Fiji.

New Zealand is a country that is much loved in Fiji –and, in fact vice versa. It would be a pity if its unimaginatively rigid and insensitive policy ultimately proves instrumental in driving a wedge between people-to-people relations between the two nations.