Fiji's Charade Of Democracy and New Zealand's Hypocrisy and Double Standards In Its Defence.

David Lange, New Zealand’s late charismatic Prime Minister was heading New Zealand’s government when third ranking military Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka opened up the Pandora's box of coup coup culture in Fiji in 1987. Lange was close to Fiji and other Pacific islands, as he had studied law with many prominent Fiji lawyers during his university days. He had a soft spot for Fiji and it is because of this that today Auckland in particular and new Zealand in general, can be proud of a large Indo-Fijian population who came here after racial cleansing by fundamentalist regime in Fiji. This cycle did not stop and just the other day Fiji saw its fourth coup.   Since those days, NZ Labour Party was perceived as friends of Fiji; especially as it had empathy with Fiji’s Indo Fijians, like Girmit ship Syria, found themselves shipwrecked in Fiji. In fact in 1987, David Lange had contemplated sending NZ frigate to defend Fiji’s democracy, but was overruled by the caucus.

Therefore, NZ Prime Minister Helen Clarke's defence of Fiji's democracy is understandable and in fact expected from any civilized democracy. However she went overboard in defending a democracy that was not worth defending and which she allowed to deteriorate, and only tried to lock the stable door once the horse had bolted.

Just after 9pm on November 27, 1999, a police constable stopped a car on a wet Wellington night in New Zealand’s Capital City. This resulted in the sacking of the then Police Commissioner Peter Doone, who lost his job for merely condoning his partner driving a vehicle after a few glasses of wine, and questioning a constable why he had been stopped.

In comparison look at how Fiji treats its failed, ineffective and criminally negligent Commissioner of Police who was caught with his pants down in the coup of 2000, police vehicles were used to transport illegal guns from the military’s raided armory and somebody who failed the whole police force. However, this same Commissioner was cleared by a government-set kangaroo court, and he was subsequently promoted by Qarase as Fiji's Ambassador to United Nations. Would Helen Clark or the New Zealand Government allow this in her country? Would she post Peter Doone as its Ambassador to UN in New York? Why then should Qarase be allowed to govern with this travesty of justice and warped sense of governance?

Fiji's Attorney General Qoriniasi Bale has quite a disturbing history. In New Zealand, a lawyer of such a standing would not even be allowed to practice, let alone become a Cabinet Minister and Chief legal advisor to the government of the day. Therefore one needs to question Australian and New Zealand leaders of their unreasonable and ill-conceived views of Fiji’s democracy. Would the New Zealand Prime Minister appoint such a disgraced lawyer as her Attorney General or former criminals in her cabinet? Would she promote somebody as a Minister who admits to have committed sedition on public TV? Fiji’s Prime Minister Qarase is guilty of all these.

What does Qarase do himself, let alone one of his Ministers? In Fiji a company, Fijian Holdings was established to ensure Fiji’s 14 provinces had an opportunity to participate in an investment company. However Qarase as then CEO of the Fiji Development Bank used his position to acquire four times more Class A shares in this company than his Lau Provincial council, for which such a company was opened in the first place. Other cronies and fat cats also own more shares than their provinces.Sitiveni Rabuka, when Prime Minister, had granted $20m loan to Fijian holdings to ease it out of financial difficulties.

However, as soon as Qarase was appointed as Interim Prime Minister by Bainimarama in 2000, one of the first things he did was to convert this loan into a grant. Lo and behold, $20m of taxpayer’s money was used in a Company in which Qarase and his family and friends had direct shares and interest.

Would Helen Clarke allow herself to abuse her position in such a way or allow any of her Ministers to get away with this. This is the type of leadership that Fiji inherited from the events of 2000 when Qarase went in as interim PM and spent $20m of taxpayer money in agriculture scam to buy votes. A poor fall guy has been jailed for abusing his office while the politicians who instigated this scheme to hoodwink common natives through cargo cult and handouts got into power.

It is for actions like these that New Zealand has been voted the third least corrupt country in the world. However, the New Zealand government stands to be accused of double standards. It applies one standard of governance in its country and feels that completely opposite is acceptable in neighbouring Fiji.

You may ask, but what has that got to do with what is happening in Fiji? Exactly, that is just the tip of the iceberg that is what Bainimarama is calling the clean-up campaign.

New Zealand had a controversial Foreshore and Seabed Act in 2004. This was because of the indigenous perception that they owned God’s gift to mankind. However NZ Government in its right mind and rationale dictated that national assets should be held in trust by the government for all its people rather than be exclusively reserved for a close group of greedy people just because of accident of birth.

Despite so much opposition and controversy, NZ pushed for its Foreshore and Seabed Act which states that "full legal and beneficial ownership of the public foreshore and seabed is vested in the Crown, so that public foreshore and seabed is held by the Crown as its absolute property"

However Fiji’s Qarase has done the completely opposite with his Qoliqoli Bill. After having disposed Indo Fijians from land, the politically expedient nationalist regime in Fiji was intending to dispossess the indo Fijians of little livelihood they had left in the Sea. Fiji's equivalent of the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, known as the Qoliqoli Bill, proposed the complete opposite of New Zealand's version. The Qoliqoli Bill says that "all proprietorship rights and interest in qoliqoli areas within Fiji's fisheries waters are transferred to and vest with qoliqoli owners" The irony is that the Native Land trust Board, which is ill –equipped to manage 90% of Native land, most of which has gone to bush after after Indo-Fijian tenants were driven out, are also vested with managing Qoliqoli, the fishing rights. Soon they will manage air, I presume, hot air.

The Fiji and New Zealand laws are completely diametrically opposed. People should ask Helen Clarke why what is not right for New Zealand indigenous people is right for Fiji's.?

My issue with the New Zealand government is that Fiji is its neighbour, and political uncertainties on its doorstep is bad for New Zealand, so why did it not advise Qarase on his poor governance. Could it not have advised Qarase on the Qoliqoli Bill before things went from bad to worse? It is not that the Military took an involuntary instant action. Qarase had been warned for some months, if not years. If NZ cared, it could have been pro-active in hauling Bainimarama, and providing a New Zealand tax-payer ride for Qarase for a summit, before the milk was spilt. Obviously, New Zealand’s answer is that it does not tell a sovereign nation how to manage its affairs.

What hypocrisy!! The same New Zealand feels it is alright for it to tell the Army Commander of a sovereign nation how to run his army. Not only is the New Zealand media ignorant of Fiji affairs, but they are equally naïve about it. They shoot their mouths off through parachute journalists who relish in rubbishing things in its Pacific neighbours without first appreciating the fact that Fiji is not a model of democracy.

Fiji’s Chiefly system, a legacy of the colonial era, is incompatible with democracy. Fiji’s indigenous population is still confused that the chiefly ascribed system makes Kings by the accident of birth while the White Mans voting system makes commoners like Rabuka and Qarase very powerful people through another system.

If New Zealand cared for the Pacific Nations, it would have paid more heed to rumblings in the neighbourhood. The New Zealand Government doesn’t blink an eyelid to host Pakistan’s Military Dictator, Musharaff, or sleep with China with atrocious human rights records, just because of trade, and yet calls a trip to Fiji as a trip to hell. How arrogant, insensitive and patronizing!

My close friend Rajendra Prasad who is also the author of Indo Fijian suffering, “Tears in Paradise” very eloquently stated in his recent writing that in the heat and dust of Fiji politics, two important elements that are in play have lost focus. Both are important that have given civility and dignity to humanity.

The two elements are - democracy and justice. Prime Minister Qarase seeks shelter and protection under the cover of democracy and Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama is in pursuit of justice. He does not want the coup criminals to be set free and the controversial legislation passed. Although, it is the right of the Government to pass legislation, such rights need to be exercised in the best interest of the nation.

Democracy does not give governments the unfettered right to pass laws that are a clear abuse of its democratic powers. In Fiji's case, passing laws to facilitate the release of coup convicts is an insult to the army, an affront to the judiciary and a mockery of democracy.

Indeed, democracy is one of the finest human institutions. It has certain basic values like justice, freedom and rights for all its citizens.

Sadly, not all democracies give due weight or recognition to these values. True democracies across the world are in the minority. Imitation democracies litter the world with rogue leaders like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who have made dictatorship largely irrelevant.

The advantage for such regimes, ironically, is that they can, and do, retain their membership of the United Nations and other regional organisations. They join in the chorus pontificating with other member nations chanting the mantras calling for democracy, transparency and accountability while at home they engage in systematic culling of their people or rendering them destitute through their vile policies and practices, some very deeply rooted in racism and ethnocentrism.

This has been Qarase’s hallmark in governance. I know it as I have been at the receiving end of the Lauan Mafia and I know how they indulge in ethnic cleansing in Fiji. You have to be an Indo-Fijian to really appreciate this.

Prime Minister Qarase often let his mobs loose to maul Indo-Fijians as if deriving pathological pleasure from it. This is how the king of democracy ruled in Fiji. Ironically, Hindus and Muslims have shown greater forbearance than those who claim to be Christians. In Fiji, if they did not turn the other cheek, they certainly swallowed their pain and sorrow without resorting to retaliation or violence in any form.

It is interesting to note that those who had actively participated in the destruction of democracy through the May 2000 coup are today beating their chests and wailing at the demise of democracy in Fiji. They include Fiji’s Churches; especially the politically oriented Methodist Church, Fiji’s politicized Great Council of chiefs and the ultra-nationalist section of indigenous population. They are raising their voices and asking for restoration of democracy, justice and the rule of law in Fiji.

In May 2000, the same people moved around with sword in hand and slaughtered democracy and held hostage those whose folly, ironically was that they were democratically elected! For fifty-six days, the so-called champions of democracy partied and danced on the grave of democracy, with music provided by some of the Bible hugging weirdo shepherds of Christ. In Fiji, even the Bible is not spared to justify the unjustifiable.

The hooded shepherds abandoned love and sponsored malice, hatred and violence against Indo-Fijians. They indulged in satanic rituals and sexual orgies in the temple of democracy. They are the same people who today are shedding crocodile tears for restoration of democracy and rule of law.

While this was happening, the suffering Indo Fijians were bashed, robbed and raped, and then New Zealand was in deep slumber. It never called Fiji hell then. The actual sufferers are the poorer section of population of both races, who are paying the price for the greed of ineffective leaders, and perhaps, lethargy and un-neighbourly actions of its neighbour, New Zealand, which now tries to lock the door when frankly, the horse has bolted. The common people of Fiji have already suffered enough and are still suffering because of extremely poor governance and criminally negligent management of our rich resources.

Therefore New Zealand’s stance against the people of Fiji, and sanctions affecting common people are questionable. Its protection of a questionable, immoral, unethical and a corrupt democracy is too ideological and of little practical use to a country which is a bastion of clean governance in the world. The poor of Fiji will not only become poorer with the double standards of New Zealand’s leadership, but the ruling party has also become poorer because a large number of people I have spoken to will make their views known at the next ballot box.

The New Zealand Labour Party had a slim chance in the last election. If Qarase can be deemed to be politically immature in gauging the situation, the same is true for the New Zealand Labour Party and its handling of Fiji's situation. With revamping and change in the leadership of the National Party, the New Zealand Labour Party seriously needs to do a post mortem of its handling of the Fiji situation. Unlike them, there are still many Kiwis with a heart for the common poverty-stricken Fijians trapped in coup coup democracy. Its barking up the wrong tree could prove politically costly.

Instead of barking at Bainimarama, if New Zealand Government used their bark and snarled at Qarase and his racist, corrupt and ultra-nationalist regime in time, then Fiji would have been spared its misery today.

With the benefit of hindsight, I pray that any other charade of democracy like Zimbabwe should have a son like Bainimarama who could have nipped that so called democracy which would have spared immense suffering for its common people and stopped dictators and despot leaders masquerading as democratic leaders like Mugabe.

What Bainimarama did is to have stopped another Zimbabwe on New Zealand’s doorsteps. Perhaps he has been a bit late, because Fiji’s lush green cane farms have already been rendered into bush as has happened to farms confiscated from white farmers in Zimbabwe. That country is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Fiji has been lucky in this respect. Some things are still reversible with good, visionary national leadership and good governance. Perhaps Fiji’s Indo Fijians and inland indigenous population have been saved from being pushed out of sea with the shelving of the Qoliqoli Bill.

New Zealand needs to pitch in and act like a good neighbour and help Fijians mould Fiji into a model of democracy that we all can be proud of.

I will frankly say that New Zealand together with Australia should stop crying over spilt milk or running after the bolted horse. They should help clear the mess and help Fiji build a democracy which has a sense of social justice, equality, freedom and equal rights for all.

The unfortunate part is that neither New Zealand’s (nor Australia’s) naïve leadership nor its indifferent media can appreciate this.

Let us hope commonsense will prevail.

Cry, beloved country. May God bless what is left of Fiji.

This Paper was presented in a  Seminar: Fiji Coup Coup Democracy, held by Coalition for Democracy in Fiji, in Auckland on 20 December, 2006 The Author, Thakur Ranjit Singh, is a human rights activist, social worker, a former publisher of Fiji's Daily Post and an advocate of good governance.

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