For the six-member Pacific Islands Forum Ministerial Contact Group on Fiji, the most jaw dropping moment in their July visit to the island nation was their tour of its Elections Office.
Only three or four people made up the office staff and there was hardly any work being done at the two-storey complex in the capital city’s Toorak suburb.
For the six foreign ministers of countries who are members of the Forum that included Australia’s Stephen Smith and his beleaguered counterpart across the Tasman, Winston Peters (other members being foreign ministers from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu), it was the most visible evidence that the regime of coup leader and military strongman Frank Bainimarama was not going to hold the general election he had promised Forum leaders by March 2009.
That conclusion, this magazine has been told, formed the bulk of the MCG (Ministerial Contact Group’s report to outgoing Forum chair and prime minister of Tonga, Dr Fred Sevele.
The report signed by the MCG chair, Dr Sevele’s foreign minister Sonatane Tu’akinamolahi Taumoepeau-Tupou, was tabled at the Forum leaders’ meeting in Niue in August.
The gist of the Tupou report was that Fiji was able to hold an election in March 2009 despite frequent pronouncements by the Bainimarama regime that the elections office would need at least 12 to 15 more months in order to be ready to convene the polls.
“When the chair of the electoral commission told the MCG that the office won’t be ready until 12 to 15 months time, ministers were literally shocked,” a person who was also at the meeting told ISLANDS BUSINESS.
“Seeing the horror looks, the deputy supervisor of elections (Soro Toutou) quickly interjected that the office could even be ready as early as nine months,” said this person who asked not to be named.
A comparison of the Tupou report and the final communiqué of the Forum Leaders meeting in Niue showed leaders had absorbed almost wholesale the MCG’s recommendations.
“Leaders reaffirmed the importance of the (Fiji) interim government honouring the undertaking it made to Forum Leaders in 2007 to return Fiji to democracy by holding an election by March 2009, and to accept the outcomes of that election,” reads Paragraph C of the Forum 2008 communiqué.
“Leaders acknowledged the importance of maintaining and encouraging continued pressure from the Forum and other members of the international community to meet the March 2009 deadline.”
They also “reaffirmed the readiness of Forum members to continue to assist Fiji prepare for that election.”
The only major difference between the communiqué and the Tupou report is paragraph marked l in the Forum communiqué as the matter of suspending Fiji’s membership of the Pacific Islands Forum was not raised nor recommended by the six foreign ministers who are members of the MCG.
All the ministers recommended were for Forum leaders to hold a special meeting later in the year to review the Fiji situation. It was the leaders themselves who made the threat of suspension.
Paragraph l of the 2008 communiqué reads: “Leaders agreed that following the receipt of the Ministerial Contact Group’s second report, the Leaders would consider a further special meeting of Forum Leaders by the end of 2008 to consider special measures in relation to Fiji (consistent with paragraph 2 (iv) of the Biketawa Declaration) and that measures to be considered include the suspension of particular governments from the Forum.”
The cited provision of Biketawa gives Forum leaders leeway to “consider other options” when handling a member that is in crisis “including if necessary targeted measures.”
But according to an “objective” analysis of the Pacific leaders’ decision sought by ISLANDS BUSINESS, the Niue Forum had given “targeted measures” a new definition and is a “leap into the great unknown.”
“They have involved their ministers as well to be ‘partners in crime,’ that is, to use their collective intellectual capacity to create a precedent when one did not exist before,’ wrote the author of the analysis.
“Now will the MCG be bold and game enough to recommend suspension when they know that the situation they have found themselves in is unprecedented? Suspension is a new extreme definition of ‘targeted measures’ that may not have been intended in the first place and this is against the spirit of the Biketawa Declaration founded on the Pacific Way.
“It will not be practically workable. It will be costly for the region in economic, financial and other terms.
“It will apply serious brakes to our collective efforts at regionalism, regional economic integration and the Pacific Plan.”
That the decision to suspend Fiji could threaten the solidarity of the Pacific Islands Forum, this analyst argued stemmed from the fact that a number of Forum islands countries—especially the small islands states like Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru—depend on Fiji in key sectors like trade, aviation, shipping, education and health.
“A suspension can lead to adverse impacts on these sectors and their interests, [and] a number of leaders will thus think twice before deciding on Fiji’s suspension,” said the analysis.
As a way forward, this analyst, who is a retired foreign minister, suggested Forum countries put the suspension threat to good use against Bainimarama’s regime.
With powerful blocks like the European Union and the Commonwealth letting the Forum take the lead in handling Fiji, the analyst believed Fiji’s leaders could be convinced to speed up its election preparations.
“They need to wield this big stick to put pressure on Fiji to pull up its socks otherwise, it will lose all that is already in the bag.
“Other intermediaries like the Commonwealth and the United Nations are strongly recommended to use this opportunity to expedite political dialogue for a political solution (Government of National Unity, recall of parliament, etc.).
“In the process, these intermediaries can also make arrangements for an exit strategy for Bainimarama and/or offer a face-saving device to allow Bainimarama to pull back from the brink of disaster that awaits us at the end of this year.
“Thus Bainimarama pulls back and a political arrangement is put in place to expedite general elections in March 2009, give or take 1-2 months.
“The last thing we want is for Bainimarama to call the leaders’ bluff and come December, the region will end up with a situation far worse than anyone of us had ever contemplated.
“And this can spell irreparable damage to our fledgling regionalism.”
Just one month after the Forum meeting, the big stick approach this analyst predicted seemed to have had some impact.
On September 23, Forum chair and premier of Niue, Toke Talagi confirmed to Radio Australia he had received a letter from Fiji’s leader, seeking “re-engagement” with the Forum.
In particular, Talagi said Bainimarama said his regime was ready to resume participation in the Forum’s joint working group (comprising Forum government officials and Suva-based diplomats) and the Forum foreign ministers’ MCG.
“I was happy to receive the letter because that’s exactly what the Pacific Islands Forum leaders wanted, the re-establishment of contact, ensuring continued dialogue, the holding of general elections as quickly as possible or certainly by March 2009,” Talagi told the international radio service.
“His (Bainimarama) letter was a proposal for re-engagement but there was no suggestion on how this was to be done.”
Without giving details, the Niuean premier also confirmed that Bainimarama sought some amendments to the joint working group’s terms of reference. He added he was not sure what in particular the commodore was referring to.
Before Fiji broke off its participation with the joint working group months before the Niue Forum, its terms of reference were fivefold; that the group should assist Fiji’s return to democracy, the restoration of civilian rule, upholding [Fiji’s] 1997 Constitution, cessation of human rights abuses and addressing allegations of abuse, and support for a credible and independent anti-corruption commission.