Regime picks a fight as NZ pressure intensifies

Samisoni Pareti
Seven months after taking over power, Fiji’s military strongman Frank Bainimarama is still hitting the headlines. No sooner had the Pacific Islands Forum working committee released its report that disagreed with the regime’s insistence that polls could not be organised any earlier than 2010, Bainimarama dropped a bombshell: New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Fiji, Michael Green is declared persona non grata and must leave the country by June 19.

Confirmation of Green’s expulsion didn’t come from Bainimarama’s foreign affairs ministry, but from the office of Winston Peters, foreign minister of New Zealand, in Wellington on June 14.

“Expelling diplomats is not the way for neighbours to conduct their relationship,” Peters said in a strongly-worded statement.

Fiji’s confirmation statement came later the same day, in which Bainimarama’s office labelled the expulsion as something that had to be made “with deep regret and reluctance.”

Exactly what incensed Suva to expel Green neither Bainimarama nor his foreign affairs minister Ratu Epeli Nailatikau were willing to divulge. Their written statements said the New Zealand envoy had interfered in Fiji’s domestic affairs.

What exactly Green had interfered in, if he had at all, was not readily known. Two days before Green flew out of Fiji, Bainimarama told journalists that Green had been in “their face” since the coup of December 5, 2006.

Nailatikau, however, offered nothing more. He explained that under the Vienna Convention, Fiji was not obligated to divulge the reason for the expulsion.

There have been speculations that a rugby match in June triggered the diplomatic war. Green and Bainimarama shared the same VIP box during the match between the Junior All Blacks and Fiji’s national 15, but it was the Kiwi envoy, not the military chief who is also prime minister of the country’s military regime, that got the honours to be chief guest.

Bainimarama at a media conference at the military barracks on June 17 denied the expulsion had anything to do with the game.

He however couldn’t hide his distaste for the choice of chief guest, questioning the motive of the local football union in getting Green to officiate.

Other media reports spoke of a speech the New Zealand senior diplomat had delivered in April at a local school fair, which was critical of the Bainimarama regime.

Green himself confirmed he got a formal note of protest from Suva over his remarks.But he and his bosses in Wellington believed the remarks were nothing new and certainly didn’t warrant such an oppressive reaction like an expulsion.

“New Zealand opposes this coup as we opposed the coups of 1987 and 2000 because it was unconstitutional, illegal and unjustified,” Green had told the school fair at the small river town of Navua, south of the capital, on April 21.

“There was no political crisis in Fiji except the one caused by the Republic of the Fiji Military Forces, and Fiji faced no problem that could not be resolved by democratic and parliamentary processes.

“We believe that each of Fiji’s coups has done great harm to Fiji’s political, economic and social structures and conditions. Some people I meet consider this latest coup to be different and its objectives to be desirable for Fiji.

“But illegal and unconstitutional methods, including in this case the removal of a validly-elected government by the armed force can not achieve positive outcomes, however good the intentions of the coup-makers.

“Those responsible for the 2006 coup say they want to improve Fiji’s democracy. We say that democracy improves by practising democracy, not by suspending it and removing properly elected governments.”

Wellington had since said that it won’t stoop for a tit-for-tat. For one thing, Fiji had already recalled its high commissioner in Wellington as he had completed his term.

While Suva had indicated it would not block a replacement for Green, New Zealand is not keen in finding a successor, saying its deputy high commissioner in Suva will look after its Fiji chancery for now.

Interestingly, when New Zealand said it would be reviewing its current aid programme to Fiji because of Green’s expulsion, Bainimarama replied there was nothing more Wellington could do against his island nation (see story on page 24).

Aid had been severed since the coup last December and travel to New Zealand had been slapped on all members of the Fiji military, the regime he heads, and their families.

Yet only a day later, Bainimarama’s finance minister, Mahendra Chaudhry publicly protested that Wellington together with Canberra were working in concert to block international financiers like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank from lending a hand to Fiji.

Chaudhry didn’t specify what exactly the two governments had done, except to say they would only succeed in delaying Fiji’s return to democratic government.

Green’s expulsion must have come as a moral booster for a regime that has found itself isolated and treated almost like a pariah state since it forced the Laisenia Qarase Government out of office.

Not even six months into his reign, Bainimarama was forced to remove the draconian public emergency regulations he had slapped on the island nation that had seen numerous critics hauled up to the barracks for degrading and humiliating treatment.

The European Union had wanted the emergency laws withdrawn if Fiji was to benefit from its F$400 million aid package, including a F$260 million sugar reform assistance. This also meant that soldiers would no longer do police work, although the change did not change the brutal tactics of the authorities when a young Suva man died allegedly while in police custody in mid-June.

An equally demoralising blow was the public withdrawal of a senior Malaysian lawyer Mah Weng Kwai from the position of chair of a Bainimarama creation, the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption, FICAC.
Kwai, until recently president of LawAsia, said he had to withdraw following pressure from his colleagues, including a few in Fiji.

A big blow for the Bainimarama regime however came on June 7 when the working committee of the Pacific Islands Forum tasked to study the general elections timetable of the Fiji regime found that polls could be convened as early as November 2008, some 18 months earlier than what Bainimarama had scheduled.

The four-member committee agreed that boundaries of some constituencies because of the movement of voters had to be re-drawn, and for this to happen, it was important to hold a population census which had been deferred from last year.

Fiji’s voter registry had to be updated and improved, and a mass educational awareness launched to educate voters on its complicated alternate voting system, in the hope of reducing the high proportion of invalid votes.

In spite of these pre-requisites, the Forum committee still felt the island nation should be ready to go to the polls as early as November 2008. “The timetable we have outlined is considerably shorter than the 36-month timetable proposed by the interim government of Fiji, which would schedule an election for June 2010,” said the Forum working committee report.

“The difference seems to arise from the fact that our timetable shows that the census population figures can be available earlier than the interim government believed, and that we have proposed a number of simultaneous activities that the interim government’s timetable assumed would be sequential.”

The committee among other recommendations recommended against dropping the alternate vote system for now and the introduction of electronic voting. “We have been told the interim government is exploring the possible use in future elections of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) designed and used in India.

“Although the EVMs were generally successfully deployed in India’s last general election, it should be noted that they were used in a simple majority, first-past-the-post, voting system.

There has been no indication so far that the voting machines could be adapted to the more complex
Fijian system of preferential voting, where the voter is entitled to rank selected candidates in a sequential order of preferences.”