Robbie Robertson

In 1987 the Fijian general election delivered a multiracial coalition, including an Indo-Fijian party, to power in Suva for the first time since independence. The unseating of the iTaukei – Fiji’s major ethnic group, longtime ruling aristocracy before independence, and political powers-that-be – inspired the country’s third-highest ranking military officer, Lt. Col. Sitiveni Rabuka, to stage a coup.

The central government, Rabuka told a group of Fijian trade unionists in 1991, was “the goose that lays the golden egg.” But “for whom did the goose lay its golden egg?” So Professor Robbie Robertson, Dean of Arts for the  Social Sciences & Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, asks in a recent book from ANU Press titled The General’s Goose: Fiji's Tale of Contemporary Misadventure.

Rabuka staged two coups in 1987 alone, and set the country on a path – a misadventure, Robertson says – that has had lasting impacts on the country’s political system. With Fiji set for general elections in 2018, The Diplomat spoke to Robertson about the country’s history of complicated ethnic politics, coups, and what to expect of the upcoming election.

The 1987 general election in Fiji brought to power a multiracial coalition, which included an Indo-Fijian party. What was so shocking about this change in leadership?

This was the first time since independence 17 years before that government had changed. And it changed in a way that upset Fiji’s racialized politics; a party came to power disavowing race as the basis for development and for politics. The former leaders, many of whom represented the iTaukei aristocracy, seethed at their loss of power and plotted their revenge.

Shortly after the election, Sitiveni Rabuka staged a coup to return power to native Fijian hands in the form of Governor-General Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau – but he overthrew Ganilau later in the year. How did Rabuka come to be at the center of this year of coups?

A shadowy terrorist group – the Taukei Movement – acted on behalf of the elite that had lost power. It attacked and burnt down selected targets to create an atmosphere of fear. But it also looked for a military solution should its destabilization tactics to precipitate the downfall of the new Labor Coalition government not succeed. With the military commander overseas and the second-in-command unlikely to support its goals, the Taukei Movement turned instead to the third highest officer, Lt. Col. Sitiveni Rabuka, who had only narrowly staved off a court martial for disobeying orders while in Lebanon. Rabuka saw a coup as a new career opportunity, and in enacting it on April 14, 1987, he also dismissed his two senior officers in order to seize control of the military.

But Rabuka had little political experience and gladly surrendered day-to-day control to his patron, the governor-general. Unfortunately, as the economy nose-dived and as military abuses grew, Ganilau sought to reconcile the two opposing parties. He did not invite Rabuka to these meetings, with the result that Rabuka believed that not only would the very party he had ousted be returned to office but also that he could now be prosecuted. Accordingly, he seized power back from the governor-general on  September 25, 1987 and declared Fiji a republic in order to stave off legal challenges to his actions.

What’s the relationship between Fiji’s British colonial history and its recurring political instability?

The relationship is not quite as direct as many people might think. Certainly, when Britain withdrew from Fiji in 1970, it bequeathed a constitution that couched everything in terms of race. But this was not Britain’s decision only. Fiji’s eastern chiefs had invited Britain to rule Fiji in 1874 in order to strengthen their control over their own people and those who did not accept their authority. In this objective they succeeded. They agreed to independence solely on the grounds that their power be maintained. Hence, the institutionalization of race aided that process, enabling them to appeal to race to defend themselves against any challenge.

Indo-Fijians, the descendants of indentured servants brought to Fiji by the British from India, made up a significant part of the Fijian population up to the 1980s. What impact did the coups – and their link to the rise in politics of Indo-Fijians – have on the community?

It is important to remember that the Indians were never a united people. Indian-ness does not denote ethnicity. It is a national name, and the Indians who came to Fiji were divided in terms of where they came from, the northern Uttar Pradesh and the southern Tamil regions. Hence, they were divided also in terms of ethnicity, religion, and language. A small proportion from Gujarat and Punjab also came to Fiji as nonindentured business people. Only once Fiji became independent did some among them try to call themselves Indo-Fijians, but the term was never officially recognized because it carried with it the Fijian name deemed only suitable for the iTaukei.

By the time of the first coups, Indo-Fijians comprised close to half of Fiji’s population, but they remained as divided politically as they were socially. However, what made 1987 different was the Labor Party’s ability to marry the interests of many Indians with those of largely urban Fijians. Hence, Indo-Fijians saw the coups as a deliberate strike against their political freedom and against any challenge to the status quo. Over the next decade and more, as their political freedoms declined further, thousands of Indians migrated and the Indian proportion of the population fell to under 37 percent.

What links are there between Rabuka’s coups and Fiji’s later coups in 2000 and 2006?

The 2000 civilian coup, despite enjoying the support of one military unit, lacked overall military support. However, in terms of goals, it was similar to the first 1987 coup. Its leaders sought to restore power to the iTaukei, after Rabuka’s constitutional changes in 1999 inadvertently permitted the return of an Indo-Fijian dominated government. Nonetheless the coup failed and later in 2000 the dissident military unit rebelled against the new military commander, Frank Bainimarama. That action also failed, but it marked the beginning of a long process of disquiet on the part of the commander at the iTaukei government he has placed in power, especially when it sought leniency for the mutineers and coup-makers. Eventually that disquiet led to the 2006 coup and an attempt to rid Fiji once-and-for-all of its racialized politics.

Rabuka himself entered politics, more formally, in the 1990s. After laying low following the 2006 coup, which brought Frank Bainimarama to power, Rabuka seemed to be re-emerging into the political arena. What role does he play in contemporary Fijian politics?

Rabuka spent the earlier years after 1987 parrying with the interim Prime Minister Ratu Mara. Once Mara retired from that role and a new constitution came into place, Rabuka won control of a new iTaukei political party and secured power through the ballot box in 1992, until that party lost power in 1999, in large part because the iTaukei’s monopoly on political power enabled many other divisions with the iTaukei to resurface. Rabuka left politics in 1999, although he still offered himself as a political leader or as a president during the 2000 coup. He was later tried unsuccessfully for supporting the 2000 military mutiny.

Not surprisingly his relationship with Bainimarama remained tense, and only dissatisfaction with the leadership of the chiefly ordained SODELPA party eventually enabled his political resurrection as its leader in late 2016. But many younger iTaukei see him as tainted by his past, unable to offer anything new or dynamic for the future. That, and continuing party divisions, seem to offer Rabuka few prospects of seizing back control in the coming general election in 2018.

Fiji is set to hold general elections some time this year. Do ethnic divisions still play a role in defining political divisions or is that firmly set in the past now? What drives political divisions in modern Fiji?

Ethnic divisions no longer divide Fiji as they did in the past. The 2013 constitution bestowed the name “Fijian” on all citizens, and dismantled the power once held by the old iTaukei aristocracy. Elections are no longer conducted along ethnic lines, and proportional representation within a single electorate ensures that the party that is able to win has support from a broad section of citizens. There is only one house of parliament; the senate that in the past had been dominated by the Great Council of Chiefs was abolished along with the Council.

Fiji itself is greatly changed since 1987. It is now more urbanized (56 percent compared with 37 percent in 1986), population growth is low (0.6 percent annually), and it has now experienced eight years of growth compared with the dismal record of the two decades following 1987. For that reason, the main issues confronting government in the upcoming election will most likely bear on its record in office since 2014, particularly its handling of national disasters like Cyclone Winston. If the opposition remains divided, it is unlikely that human rights or constitutional issues will garner the attention they might otherwise deserve. Nonetheless the ruling FijiFirst Party could be returned with a reduced majority and be forced to address these issues.