'Mahendra Chaudhry, as the prime minister ousted by the coup, caustically regards investigations as being too slow and inadequate. Yes, unfortunately, some of those who plotted against his ill-starred government will escape justice...'


The cogs and wheels of justice can grind exceedingly slowly in Fiji-though also actually faster than in many other countries-but they are producing results that enhance the credibility and good standing of a country that has endured stressful times since a coup in 2000.

By February, according to police commissioner Andrew Hughes, 2499 people had been implicated in coup-related offences. Of the 24 alleged plotters, the courts had so far dealt with 11. Six executors of the coup had been jailed, but none of the 21 people alleged by informants to have financed the coup.

Since February, four other figures in the events of 2000 have gone to jail, each for eight months. One of them is a cabinet minister and important paramount chief. One other cabinet minister awaits trial; so does another ex-cabinet minister, but for a matter completely unrelated to the coup.

Some other, but not many, prosecutions arising from 2000 are expected. Whether they will remain prime culprits is uncertain. But what is certain is that some key instigators have so far escaped prosecution. Names have been bandied about, but some cohorts of the coup's ostensible leader, George Speight, will escape penalty because investigators have been unable to rake up sufficient evidence against them.

Nearly all those prosecuted-hundreds-were insignificant participants easily incited to the violence of 2000 to become mere rabble. They were prosecuted, convicted, and mostly left off with a warning.

Some of the more notorious and culpable figures have escaped with rather light sentences of imprisonment. Several so-called “life” sentences, including one for the ostensible leader and some army mutineers, will really amount to prison terms of 11 or 12 years. That is a very cheap price to pay for the failed high treason of attempting to steal a country, causing the deaths of a dozen or so people, destroyed the jobs and businesses of tens of thousands more, and economic losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions.

Police investigators and officers of the public prosecutor's office have been stretched to the limit dealing with the coup. Both had important corruption cases to deal with also, some of them complex, as well as the normal spate of run-of-the mill murders, rapes, armed robberies, and house break-ins, including an ugly new wage of house invasions by gangs of violently inclined thugs.

The political climate in which coup investigations and prosecutions have, and are, being conducted has been precariously difficult, heavily tinged as they have been with considerations of race. Judges dealing with the coup and related cases need protection.

Mahendra Chaudhry, as the prime minister ousted by the coup, caustically regards investigations as being too slow and inadequate. Yes, unfortunately, some of those who plotted against his ill-starred government will escape justice. The enforcers of law and order in Fiji do, however, deserve credit for nailing those they nailed so far. May they manage to nail a few more.

Treason related prosecutions have put Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase in an invidious position since some of his cabinet ministers and important political allies have gone to jail, or face the possibility of landing there.

Mr Qarase has openly expressed sympathy for some of those convicted, beginning with the former vice president. They were just doing their duty as Fijians, as they saw it, upholding Fijian political supremacy, he says. That philosophy is understandable, but the motives of certain of the figures who graduated to jail from the debacle of 2000 were more heavily coloured by a lust for personal ambition, power, and wealth. To Mr Qarase's great credit, his promise when he became leader after the coup that justice would be administered to the plotters, is being kept.