Ruling party ready to do battle

Robert Keith-Reid

WHAT WAS SHAPING UP TO BE A long, bitter, ugly and communally divisive general election campaign in Fiji will now probably become a short and nasty one.

Laisenia Qarase

Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, leader of the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL)-led coalition government, could delay an election to early September 2006. It must be held by September 11, when his government's five-year term will expire.

Qarase in the past has spoken in terms of enjoying a full five-year term. But now the SDL headquarters is talking of being ready for an election by October (2005), if necessary.

What could have changed SDL's thinking? Because it suspects that some of its indigenous support may be waning or could do so.

A new party, the National Alliance (NAP), was launched in April with the aim of partly replicating the Alliance, a composition of Fijian, Indian and other parties, which ruled quite successfully for the first 17 years after independence arrived in 1970.

If NAP gears up in time, it could snatch up to half-a-dozen seats, perhaps more, from the SDL and may be some from Labour.

At least 20 small Fijian splinters, now registered as political parties, could erase SDL's majority in some constituencies.

Ratu Epeli Ganilau

The SDL was set up after the coup of 2000 as an all-Fijian party dedicated to the preservation of Fijian political supremacy over the Indians, who form about 38 percent of the 860,000 population.

Now it is accepting non-Fijians, having become conscious that its supremacist policies don't guarantee it victory in the next election.

Compared with the 2001 election, the next poll could put more seats in the hands of more non-Fijians and Fijians who support more open parties, notably the Fiji Labour Party, which was ejected from being the government after the 2000 coup.

A September 2001 election left the SDL with a strong coalition position in the 71-seat parliament. It won 33 seats itself, and allied with the six MPs of the more openly Fijian supremacist Conservative Alliance Matanitu Vanua (CAMV) and the lone MP for Rotuma Island. It also gathered two defectors from the ranks of the small “general” (non-Fijian, non-Indian) community. The opposition is composed of 28 FLP and two general MPs.

Three-and-a-half years after the election, loyalties are wavering or shifting.

The government is embarrassingly on bad terms with the army, whose commander, Frank Bainimarama, ignores government directives to keep quiet.

He keeps pointedly declaring that the army will not allow any deviation from a respectable democratic government. He suspects the government of wanting to go soft on coup plotters.

Another new party...launching of the New Alliance Party.

Conscious of who keeps it in power, the SDL has to keep the CAMV happy. A problem is that the CAMV wants to see everyone jailed for the 2000 coup freed, including the leader, George Speight.

Last August, a CAMV parliamentarian, Ratu Rakuita Vakalalabure, the deputy speaker, was jailed for six years for his part in the coup, along with vice president, Ratu Jope Seniloli.

The government had an excuse, alleged bad health, for freeing Seniloli last November, only three-and-a-half months after his jailing.

There's been so far no such let off for Vakalalabure. He is awaiting the outcome of an appeal against his conviction.

In April, there was more discomfort for the SDL when a magistrate passed eight-month jail sentences on the CAMV parliamentary leader, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu; another influential CAMV figure, Ratu Josefa Dimuri, who is a member of the Senate; and two other chiefs. All four were convicted of supporting the coup by being involved in the takeover of the army barracks and police station on the island of Vanua Levu.

Lalabalavu is the paramount chief of a large area in the north and was the cabinet minister for lands and mineral resources until he resigned from ministerial duties a day after his conviction.

Qarase replaced him in cabinet with another CAMV supporter, Samisoni Tikoinasau, Speight's elder brother, whose demand is for pardons and amnesties all round.

Only nine days after their imprisonment Lalabalavu and Dimuri were released (the other two had been hospitalised with medical problems).

The prisons department said it was normal policy to release prisoners on good behaviour conditions, and a requirement to carry out public or social work as directed for convicts sentenced to less than 12 months in jail.

As with the early release of the vice president, the release of the two northern chiefs aroused strong protests from the army, opposition parties and some civil society organisations. They all thought it was due to political influence (flatly denied by Qarase) that Fiji and its justice system had become an international laughing stock.

A few days after the release and another angry row between the army and government, the attorney-general, Qoriniasi Bale, a shrewd controversial figure, announced the government would legislate to exempt from prosecution chiefs who intervened in such troubles as the coups to use their traditional powers to quell violence and restore peace and order.

That's a kind of law that could have kept the entire jailed bigwig chiefly pals of SDL out of jail. At their trials, all claimed that their only role in the coup was to try to restore law and order. If there's to be another coup, then perhaps they'll be free to be players in it immune from unpleasant repercussions, if they play their cards rights.

Will there be another coup? If the new National Alliance Party (NAP) wins the support it is capable of gaining, it could-post election-become positioned to be the junior partner in a coalition with Chaudhry's Labour Party. But again, also with SDL if Qarase, who has the respect of the Indian and expatriate business communities, decides that he can risk dumping the CAMV for NAP.

As for the army, well, it insists there won't be another coup even if the characteristically prickly Chaudhry does return to power. That prospect, privately alarms even some the FLP's old guard.